Peter Watts: Team Canada is part of our Olympic legacy

It’s hard to believe that there have been eight Winter Olympic Games since the Calgary Games of 1988. For those of us who were involved in those Games 30 years ago, it’s a clear reminder that time marches onward.

The 2018 Winter Games will be underway in just over three weeks. More than 200 athletes will don Canadian uniforms and put their dreams on the line over the course of 17 days of competition. Millions of us will watch from afar, gathered around television sets at ungodly hours of the day to watch our best against the world’s best, in South Korea.

It is the fun part of the Olympic movement: watching the performances, taking note of the records and the medals won, hearing the anthem (which always sounds better farther away from home) and seeing the flag waving over the Olympic village.

We are reminded that the Games at their best are about sportsmanship. Remember how speedskater Gilmore Junio gave up his place in the race in Sochi so that his teammate, Denny Morrison, could compete? Morrison wound up winning a medal.

I am reminded that part of the strength of the Canadian team is its alumni. People like Roger Jackson, and Ken Read, and Cathy Priestner Allinger, who helped write the Own The Podium program in 2005. They made a contribution to Canadian sport that, like the Calgary Olympic facilities, will leave a legacy for the future.

Which brings us to the question of whether Calgary should host an Olympic Games again. The arguments are spread across the map: cost, security, a tarnished Olympic image, and on and on. But for 17 days, the athletes of the world will show us all why the exercise still has value.

And it is that legacy factor that should be a part of the consideration for a potential Calgary bid for 2026. The late Jack Perraton, who led an unsuccessful bid for the 2005 World’s Fair, once told me….”you don’t plan for the day the Games open, you plan for the day AFTER they close.”  That’s legacy. That’s what the 1988 Games delivered to this community. That’s what Frank King and all of those other folks set out to deliver in 1981 when the Games were awarded.

If the 2026 bid is to go forward, it should have that same goal.  As for the fun part of the Games, I think the athletes of the day will take care of that story very nicely. After all, they have a rich heritage of achievement on which to build a new set of dreams.

LISTEN BELOW: Isabelle Charest, former short track speedskater and head of Team Canada for the 2018 Olympic Winter Games, speaks about the strength of the team headed to South Korea.