The ongoing catharsis…

Forty years now, I was reminded recently. 1980 will always be a year of triumph and disappointment. It was triumphant in that I qualified and was chosen for the 200m sprint and 4x400m relay on the Canadian Olympic Track and Field team. It was the culmination of my plan from seven years earlier. In grade eleven, at 17 years of age, I had written out my goals, year by year, ending with the 1980 Olympics. I remember showing the piece of paper to my father and asking what he thought. “What do you want to do that for?”  he said brusquely and I was a little taken aback. “Do you know what that means? How much training that it is? You have no idea.” He went back to reading his newspaper. He was right, I had no idea. Back in my room, sitting on my bed, I said to myself, well, I’m going to find out. I wish I still had that paper, physically, in my hands even though it is burned into my memory. For the next seven years I trained and raced. Every ribbon and medal I won I sent or brought home to Dad. I achieved all my goals and then some, year by year. It was international politics that derailed the last step of my plan. Though I had made the Olympic team, we did not compete in the 1980 Moscow Olympics as they were boycotted for purely political reasons by at least 55 western allied nations. It was still the Cold War era, dominated by Cold War policies emanating from Moscow and Washington. The Canadian government sent a letter to my home address. Dad called me on the phone, I had him open the letter, he read it to me and I could hear him struggle, then begin to cry. It stated Canada would boycott the games. So, the last step was denied to me by factors outside my control. It was a difficult time. We did go to Europe to compete, ending up in a big stadium in Stuttgart, West Germany, where most of the countries that also boycotted gathered. We competed, had a big party afterwards and politicians went to great pains to say to us that this meet was not a replacement for the Olympics, which, of course, it depressingly was. Later we  were all sent commemorative bronze medals, it sits lost on a shelf collecting dust. It’s now 2020, forty years on, that in itself is difficult to think upon, but having heard my Dad, my Sergeant-Major, my hero of heroes, cry on the phone is the biggest and hardest part of the whole thing I remember, much of everything else, with time, has become meaningless.