Nobody knows Olympic boycotts like Victoria's cycling Willock family.
Bernie Willock qualified for the Moscow Games of 1980, but didn't get to go because Canada wanted to teach the Russians a lesson about Afghanistan.
His brother Martin Willock raced in Los Angeles in 1984, but those Games came with an asterisk because the Russians and their Eastern Bloc friends stayed home, wanting to teach the West a lesson about boycotts.
And now, as Martin's daughter Erinne Willock busts her gut training on the road to Beijing, the Olympics are once again embroiled in politics, people arguing that Canada should stay home to teach China a lesson about Tibet.
Funny how we're so eager to offer our athletes as human sacrifices, yet few of us are willing to take a hit personally.
"It smells of hypocrisy," says Bernie. If Canadians were really keen on punishing China, they would target trade with that country. "Yet we're not asking them to stop shipping their goods."
Bernie was bursting with excitement in May of 1980 when he phoned home from Europe with the news that he had qualified for Moscow. "Buy your tickets," the then-23-year-old told his parents. Then came June's letter from Prime Minister Joe Clark, telling him he couldn't go. "It was devastating."
Niece Erinne, a road racer like her uncle and father, is competing in Europe right now, has a good chance of qualifying for the Beijing Games. Bernie can't imagine politics jamming a stick in a third Willock's spokes.
This has been a lousy week for the Olympic image, though. The global torch relay descended into farce, a Where's Waldo game of hide and seek between anti-China demonstrators whose idea of peaceful protest involved attacking a woman in a wheelchair and, on the other side, a small army of blue-and-white clad "volunteers" drawn from a Chinese paramilitary unit. Some torchbearers sounded less afraid of the protesters than the paramilitary men, whom they described as thugs.
At the same time, we learned it might cost $5 million just to charter cruise ships to house all the Mounties guarding the 2010 Vancouver Games. How twisted have the Olympics become that they need that kind of security? (Though, frankly, experience shows we don't need protection from terrorists as much as we need it from the volunteers -- the tracksuit-sporting, ID-tag-on-a-lanyard-wearing, bureaucratic, power-mad, Orwellian fascists who plague every modern sports mega-event.) The Olympic rings now resemble sniper scopes. What's next, flak jackets for the doves?
Then there are the money and the drugs: The U.S. basketball Dream Team could conceivably start five players whose collective salary topped $100 million this year. Track superstar Marion Jones, stripped of her medals in a steroid scandal, sits in jail. Ben Johnson remains Canada's best-known Olympian. So much for Chariots Of Fire.
The things is, as bloated, corrupt and overly commercial as the Games have become, at their heart remain those athletes who embody the Olympic ideal and the purity of sport.
This is the antidote for those who get cynical about the Olympics: Go to Elk Lake when the mist is still rising off the water, watch the rowers work. Yesterday morning found two of Canada's men's crews -- the lightweight four and the heavyweight eight -- training for Beijing.
They practise three times a day, six days a week, in snow and sleet and rain, with absolutely no prospect of tangible benefit at the end. This isn't a sport that bring glory or gold, other than that found in the medals. "The maximum reward you get is 15 minutes of fame in the newspaper," says rower Adam Kreek. He and his teammates in the eight are the reigning world champions. You have never heard of him.
The federal government pays the very best rowers $1,500 a month (which must barely cover the food bill for athletes who stand, on average, about 8'9"). All of them depend on help from their families. There were no Porsches in the Elk Lake parking lot yesterday. The nicest coat belonged to a brown Labrador retriever romping around the boat house. Rower Malcolm Howard's mother, Anita Howard, occasionally sews and cooks for the team, for which they are profoundly grateful.
Asked why he rows, Kreek cited Aristotle and the pursuit of excellence. Teammate Kyle Hamilton put it this way: "How could you pass up the opportunity to be the best in the world at something?"
Is that more important than freedom for Tibet, or global peace? Of course not, but neither is it an either/or proposition; the two shouldn't be linked. You want to boycott China over Tibet? Fine, then vote with your wallet, buy Canadian-made clothes and Mexican-made electronics and paint your children's toys with lead smelted right here at home. Just don't expect our Olympians to carry the entire burden on your behalf.
"I am certainly sympathetic to the Tibetan cause," says Bernie Willock. But forgive him if, as a victim of political warfare, he isn't keen on other Canadian athletes, family members or not, being used as cannon fodder.
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