If there was a gold medal for premature Winter Olympic whining, the British would be perennial occupants of the middle podium.
Right on schedule, on the fourth of 17 event days, U.K. scribes have written off the Vancouver Olympics as a "worst-ever" Games in the making, an "abomination" for producing the accidental death of a luger and an organizational "fiasco" for slow buses and venue meltdowns.
Don’t take it personally, Vancouver. The boys of former Fleet Street took mere days to write off Calgary in 1988 before it went on to earn the International Olympic Committee’s ‚Äòbest-ever Games’ seal of approval.
You think waiting a minute for most of the four-legged Olympic cauldron to rise out of the B.C. Place floor was a disaster? Well, you can only image how the Brits frothed when a giant inflatable mountain range popped like a balloon in a blustery wind just an hour before the opening ceremonies in Calgary’s McMahon Stadium.
That was just the beginning. They belittled the ATCO trailer media village, bemoaned their lost laundry and, yes, jeered when snow had to be trucked in to bolster cross-country trails in Canmore. All in the first week.
VANOC put on a brave face to the outbreak of hostile international media reaction, which is spreading into a foreign frenzy pile-on. "Is this the worst beginning of a Games ever?," one journalist baited officials Tuesday. And, pray tell, what answer was he expecting? Yes?
There’s no obvious explanation for why London reporters are the most caustic of the contingent, having elevated Vancouver-bashing into an unofficial Olympic sport.
Perhaps they’re dreadfully bored. After all, the BBC alone has more personnel at the Games than the kingdom’s entire 52-member Olympic team. There’s also dispiriting news that bookies back home predict the U.K. will experience a medal shutout in Vancouver, with only an outside shot at the curling podium.
Sadly for them, they have no one to divert their attention like loveable British ski jumper Eddie the Eagle, in 1988.
Even so, the coverage this time is decidedly edgier and the shots cheaper.
Guardian columnist Martin Samuel went postal in his attack in the aftermath of the luge fatality. "Canada wanted to Own The Podium," he snarled. "This morning they can put their Maple Leaf stamp on something more instantly tangible: the nondescript little box carrying the lifeless body of Nodar Kumaritashvili back to his home in Bakuriani, Georgia." Good grief.
Other U.K reporters predict financial disaster for Vancouver, a defensive move given that London’s 2012 Summer Olympics are already $1.8-billion over budget.
They complain of heavy-handed customs officials and no-nonsense security, which is a tad rich from a country where police will have the right to enter homes without a warrant while Olympic officials storm residences or enterprises near Games venues to search for protest material. Then, of course, there’s Britain’s greatest invention for preserving public safety — the new shatterproof beer pint glass.
It’s also instructive to put all the hysterical fretting at Vancouver’s warm weather into context. The temperature at 2014 Winter Olympic host Sochi, Russia will reach 11 C degrees today and 13 C degrees tomorrow.
Not surprisingly, thin-skinned Canadians are filling British newspapers with backlash sneers and jeers.
"London will be worse (in 2012). It will also be dirtier, smellier, and have worse teeth," mocked one offended Canuck. "Just because you long ago abandoned any ambitions in the world – or for that matter basic sense of identity or dignity – and became a lethargic nation of elitist whiners who no one really likes, don’t fault those younger nations who do enjoy and embrace life," snapped another.
Sigh. This silly war of trans-Atlantic words will continue if British journalists continue their campaign to malign a Games which are barely 100 hours old.
Perhaps it’s a genetic disposition. After all, Utrecht University in the Netherlands recently found 40 per cent of British men suffer from a premature tendency which, unfortunately for them and their partners, is medically defined as an inability to last more than a minute in bed.
Oops, sorry. Now THAT’S a cheap shot.
dmartin@nationalpost.com
National Post
Read more: http://network.nationalpost.com/NP/blog … z0foitn2AD
The National Post is now on Facebook. Join our fan community today.
.
