FRENCH IMMERSION: WE INTERRUPT OUR REGULAR PROGRAMMING
This is French Immersion, a daily blog about sports – and society – in Quebec, where the personal, the political and the athletic are often indistinguishable. The idea is to present the aerial view, peer into the darker corners of the distinct society’s psyche (in a way that hopefully won’t be as pretentious as that phrase sounds) and hopefully spin a few wacky and wonderful yarns on topics ranging from soccer, to short-track speed skating, to goon leagues, to the national obssession that is the Montreal Canadiens. Join in, comment, praise, denounce, Sean Gordon loves a good argument.
In honour of one of this space’s all-time favourite folk, we’re suspending our usual snark and irreverence for a few sentences to offer a heartfelt and solemn tip of the heavy woolen tuque.
Take a bow, Clara Hughes, you’re going to the Olympics again after winning the 3,000 metres at the Canadian long-track speed skating trials, may these Games not be your last.
Clara, as I’m sure she wouldn’t mind us calling her, is now 37, and participating in her fifth Olympics (three winter, two summer), which makes her the éminence grise of the Canadian team.
She was born in Winnipeg, and lives part of the year in Calgary to train, but her home address is in Glen Sutton, Que., so we’re claiming her dammit.
Her qualification was never really in doubt, but it’s worth noting nonetheless, our expert team of five-rings prognosticators has crunched the numbers, drawn up some fancy pie charts and made the safe and obvious prediction of another medal in her immediate future (Clara, for those of you born in caves and raised by wolves, is the only Canadian to ever win medals in both the summer and winter Olympics).
So hurrahs and huzzahs all round.
On a related note, it occurs to us that the two doyennes of the 2010 Canadian Olympic team are actually both from Quebec.
Both are also speed skaters.
In addition to Hughes, short-tracker Tania Vicent, another of our favourite people, will sport a fancy Team Canada jumpsuit at the opening ceremonies.
It’s the fourth winter Olys for Tania, who turns 34 in a few days and has been on the national speed skating team for half her life – an impressive 17 seasons. That’s longer than even Clara (we haven’t been able to find any other winter athlete who’s been on a national squad longer, but we stand to be corrected if some smarty-pants out there on the Interwebs knows better).
So keep an eye on them both, tender readers, neither gets the attention she amply deserves.
Oh, and if you came here expecting to read something pithy about the Habs’ gag-fest in the Nation’s Capital last night, you’ll have to come back later, when we’ll hopefully have come up with something novel and interesting to say.
On second thought, don’t hold your breath.
