Saturday, February 2, 2002

Looking for gold in all the wrong places

By STEVE SIMMONS -- Toronto Sun
 In a tiny room, not far from the ski hill, Ross Rebagliati sat behind a table and a microphone and began to explain about who he was.

 This was before the medal ceremony, the drug test, the controversy of Nagano.

 All we wanted to know, on the day the first Canadian won the first gold medal of the 1998 Olympic Games, was who the heck this Rebagliati fellow was.

 This is a scene repeated at almost every Olympics, winter or summer. The scene of the Canadian who comes from nowhere. The story of the great unknown.

 It was the first day of snowboarding, a new sport in a new Olympics, and nobody was paying much attention to Rebagliati on this snowy day. Another Canadian, Mark Fawcett, was supposed to be the story. And if not him, then Jasey Jay Anderson.

 But Rebagliati?He was a guy who had won hardly anything until he won the biggest prize of his life.

 This is what makes the Olympics different and special, all at the same time. It is a three-week adventure of sport, human spirit and amazing accomplishment. And somehow, every country that competes at the highest level, has a Ross Rebagliati to call its own, a guy Sports Illustrated never considered in its pre-medal picks, a guy who just happened to have his biggest race on the biggest day at the biggest sporting event in the world.

 I can't forget the picture of Rebagliati's face, just days before the drug test, the appeal and all the controversy that followed. I can't forget that look of amazement and astonishment as he sat and answered the kind of questions Wayne Gretzky or Mario Lemieux never have to answer.

 "Where are you from?"

 "Have you ever done anything like this before?"

 And in Nagano that day, one reporter stood up, knowing the few lines on Rebagliati in the Canadian team handbook would not suffice for his story, and asked somewhat incredulously: "For the people of Canada, can you tell us who you are?"

 A few days later, Canada knew more than it wanted to know about Ross Rebagliati.

 It wasn't all that different on the first weekend of the Sydney Games. Another new Olympic sport. Another athlete no one expected to hear from.

 Truth was, it was in the women's triathlon that Canada was supposed to have a chance. It was there it had somewhat of a favourite in Carol Montgomery.

 Not Simon Whitfield.

 But the first gold medal for Canada turned out to be one of those too-good-to-be-true, made-for-television Olympic stories. Whitfield was well back in the race. Then closer. And then suddenly closer. And then the most remarkable 500-metres in Canadian triathlon history.

 It was as though Whitfield was moving and the rest of the picture was on pause. And madly, writers and reporters scrambled to relate the story of someone they were meeting for the first time.

 This is what the Olympics brings, moreso than any other event of its kind. These are the surprises it provides.

 And almost always one for a Canadian.

 A Regabliati. A Whitfield. Or an athlete such as Kerrin Lee-Gartner, experienced but unexpected, atop the medal podium.

 Who will it be this time? Who knows?

 That's why we watch the Games. For these kind of moments and these kind of stories.