And Another Thing
More Olympics stuff, this time from the manly sport of ice dancing.
US figure skater Tanith Belbin was born in Canada and raised here until she was 14, at which point she went to the States to further her skating career. She did just that, having just won the silver medal in ice dancing with her partner Ben Agosto. Obviously, this is wonderful for her, her family and friends and etc, etc. Also obviously, people in this country are interested in ice dansing, so we should be covering it regardless of whether Canadians have a shot to win it, which we didn't after our top pair had to pull out because of injury.
But do we have to pretend she's Canadian?
This isn't surprising, and it isn't a big deal, but it's pretty pathetic. She chose to become an American and compete for the States, and good for her and I'm glad it worked out for her, but I'm no more interested in her progress as an athlete than I am in any other American athlete's regardless of where she was born. To be clear about this, it cuts the other way as well-I'm just as proud of Lascelles Brown's silver medal as I am of any other Canadian's achievements, to take the obvious counter-example.
There are two streams of thought that these two medals bring up, one about the absurdity of nationalism based sport and the other about the nature of patriotism in a civic nation. I'll take the trivial one first. These two cases show up just how goofy it is to have nationally based teams at an event that is ostensibly about the best in athletic achievement. Brown has been Pierre Lueders' brakeman on the (non-nationality based) World Cup bobsled circuit for the past two years, because he and Lueders together make a very good team. But to compete at the event that is without question the biggest event in bobsledding, Brown had to change his citizenship, which is pretty clearly:
a) a major bureaucratic hassle and;
b) completely unrelated to athletic performance.
I'm not saying Brown wouldn't have wanted to become a Canadian citizen, but he shouldn't have had to to compete with his team on his sport's biggest stage. I'm not saying that I don't understand the appeal of these nationalistic appeals, or even that they don't work remarkably well on me. I'm just saying that they cut against the idea of athletic competition.
Now, on to the psuedo-sophistication. The pathetic attempts to have it both ways on Belbin and Brown's respective silver medals speak to a sort of confusion as to what makes someone Canadian. On the one hand, celebrating Belbin as a Canadian medal (not that any as far as I know is putting half a silver or some such ridiculous thing in the Canadian tally) says that being Canadian is a matter of where you come from. Celebrating Brown's says that Canada is the community of people who are Canadian citizens.
I know which vision of citizenship I prefer. I was born in Vancouver, but my father was born in Scotland, and he'll sometimes say that he's the best Canadian in the family because he chose to be one. There's nothing wrong with choosing, as Belbin did, to be something else. But it does mean, unless you maintain your original citizenship, that you aren't Canadian anymore. And, in the specific and incredibly rare cases of people athletically gifted enough to compete in the Olympics, if you choose another country, you aren't competing for Canada in any way. That's not to say that people who know Belbin shouldn't be over the moon for her, just that attempts by Canadians who don't know her to claim a little share of her reflected glory are more than a little sad. Besides which, we've got enough to be proud of as it is: the athletes who decided, regardless of where they were born, that they wanted to compete on our behalf.
US figure skater Tanith Belbin was born in Canada and raised here until she was 14, at which point she went to the States to further her skating career. She did just that, having just won the silver medal in ice dancing with her partner Ben Agosto. Obviously, this is wonderful for her, her family and friends and etc, etc. Also obviously, people in this country are interested in ice dansing, so we should be covering it regardless of whether Canadians have a shot to win it, which we didn't after our top pair had to pull out because of injury.
But do we have to pretend she's Canadian?
This isn't surprising, and it isn't a big deal, but it's pretty pathetic. She chose to become an American and compete for the States, and good for her and I'm glad it worked out for her, but I'm no more interested in her progress as an athlete than I am in any other American athlete's regardless of where she was born. To be clear about this, it cuts the other way as well-I'm just as proud of Lascelles Brown's silver medal as I am of any other Canadian's achievements, to take the obvious counter-example.
There are two streams of thought that these two medals bring up, one about the absurdity of nationalism based sport and the other about the nature of patriotism in a civic nation. I'll take the trivial one first. These two cases show up just how goofy it is to have nationally based teams at an event that is ostensibly about the best in athletic achievement. Brown has been Pierre Lueders' brakeman on the (non-nationality based) World Cup bobsled circuit for the past two years, because he and Lueders together make a very good team. But to compete at the event that is without question the biggest event in bobsledding, Brown had to change his citizenship, which is pretty clearly:
a) a major bureaucratic hassle and;
b) completely unrelated to athletic performance.
I'm not saying Brown wouldn't have wanted to become a Canadian citizen, but he shouldn't have had to to compete with his team on his sport's biggest stage. I'm not saying that I don't understand the appeal of these nationalistic appeals, or even that they don't work remarkably well on me. I'm just saying that they cut against the idea of athletic competition.
Now, on to the psuedo-sophistication. The pathetic attempts to have it both ways on Belbin and Brown's respective silver medals speak to a sort of confusion as to what makes someone Canadian. On the one hand, celebrating Belbin as a Canadian medal (not that any as far as I know is putting half a silver or some such ridiculous thing in the Canadian tally) says that being Canadian is a matter of where you come from. Celebrating Brown's says that Canada is the community of people who are Canadian citizens.
I know which vision of citizenship I prefer. I was born in Vancouver, but my father was born in Scotland, and he'll sometimes say that he's the best Canadian in the family because he chose to be one. There's nothing wrong with choosing, as Belbin did, to be something else. But it does mean, unless you maintain your original citizenship, that you aren't Canadian anymore. And, in the specific and incredibly rare cases of people athletically gifted enough to compete in the Olympics, if you choose another country, you aren't competing for Canada in any way. That's not to say that people who know Belbin shouldn't be over the moon for her, just that attempts by Canadians who don't know her to claim a little share of her reflected glory are more than a little sad. Besides which, we've got enough to be proud of as it is: the athletes who decided, regardless of where they were born, that they wanted to compete on our behalf.
posted by Ian Gray | 9:34 p.m.
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