Succeeding on the international stage promotes Canada as an athletic and world power. No other event draws the attention of the entire world and gives an opportunity for each country to showcase their best. Canada finished with 12 medals at these games (3 Gold, 6 Silver, 3 Bronze), down from the disappointing 14 medals garnered at the 2000 Sydney Games and well below the 22 medals picked up at the 1996 Atlanta games. It's fruitless to try to extrapolate how much each dollar of funding affects Canada's medal count but it is quite apparent that if athletes are provided with quality coaching and training time the performances are bound to improve. Canada needs to look no further than their backyard for quality coaching. Like the brain drain that has seen doctors and engineers migrate to the U.S., Canadian coaches have left for coaching positions with more economically stable programs like the Australian and U.S. programs to name just two. The extra money for Canadian athletics isn't that hard to find, that is if you look for it. Maybe cutting back on Governor General Adrienne Clarkson's trips and excessive hat collection and pumping it into athletic funding would be a more appropriate use of promoting Canada.

Coaching can't be all to blame for Canada's woes at these games. Perdita Felicien, the men's eight rowing team, Simon Whitfield, Alexandre Despatie and Emilie Heymans are all proof positive of that. While Despatie and Heymans did mange to win medals, much more was expected of the two. The same goes for Simon Whitfield who won the gold four years ago in Sydney; this time around he managed a disappointing 11th place finish in the triathlon. But perhaps the biggest disappointment came when the men's eight rowing team finished in 5th place after entering the Olympics as heavy favourites. Felicien was Canada's lone hope on the track and she choked under the pressure when she tumbled over the starting hurdle. While you have to feel for her fall there's no nicer way of putting it; she succumbed to the pressure and turned a jump that is routine into a nightmare.

Providing individual financial incentives is another option that the Canadian Olympic Committee may want to consider to motivate athletes. Japan for instance was offering $250,000 for each Japanese gold medal earned. Although taking into account budget constraints the Canadian athletes would probably end up getting the product of the week from that creepy guy at Canadian Tire. Seriously, is this guy supposed to make me want to visit the store? I'm afraid of even going near the store in the fear that I'll bump into one of these obsessive shoppers who creams his pants every time he sees a new MotoMaster wrench.

It was funny to watch people's reactions to Canada winning a medal because often the medal came in such a low profile sport (Mountain Biking) or offshoot of mainstream sport (Artistic Gymnastics) for instance when Canada won their second medal of the games.

- Did you hear Canada got a 2nd medal?
- Oh yeah! In what?
- Trampoline
- Trampoline? Is that even an event? I thought that was something that kids do in the backyard on their 9th birthday!

	Paul Hamm is the Lil' John of the gymnastics world. Yeah! Oh-kay! (Source: liljohnonline.com)

What's more confusing? Why Jimmy Kimmel insists on talking through audience applause when no one can hear him or why soccer player Mia Hamm and gymnast Paul Hamm each share the same last name but have it pronounced differently (Ham vs. Hom). Speaking of Paul Hamm, how fast did this guy hightail back to the U.S. after calls were made for him to return the Men's all-around gymnastic medal to the South Korean? (The judges incorrectly deducted the starting value of the South Korean gymnast's routine thus dropping him to bronze.) If Hamm has an agent (I'm not sure there is such a thing for gymnasts) then he needs to be advised of how much PR mileage he could gain from being known as the guy who gave the gold medal back. In this situation it would be optimal to be known as the guy from the PG-13 movie that everyone is rooting for and not that guy from the R-rated movie. While I get that the judges made the error, Hamm has to step up and admit he is un-deserving of the gold. It'd be like mistakenly giving Lil' John a Grammy as top songwriter. Skeet! Skeet! Enough said. How many people sing this song without actually taking in the meaning or intention of the lyrics?

Best news headline of the Olympics offered up from MSNBC: "Meet U.S. Softball's latest superstar." Latest? Did we miss the first softball superstar?

	Perhaps training against wildlife toughened Shawn Crawford up. (Source: Fox Broadcasting)

I wonder how many people realized 200m Gold medallist Shawn Crawford was on Fox's original Man vs. Beast broadcast? After watching him finish fourth in the 100m race I couldn't help but think he might have felt more comfortable racing against zebras or giraffes rather than Justin Gatlin, Maurice Green or Francis Obikwelu. I'll hand it to Crawford he was looking really bulked up in a "this is the biggest I can possibly get with tainting the urine cup" way. Maybe he re-dedicated himself to training after the zebra whooped his ass. It's really not a bad way to train. If you can compete with half the animals in the Serengeti, chances are you're ready for the Olympics.

While I enjoyed the last two weeks of wall-to-wall sports coverage I'm excited about turning the focus back on some more conventional sports like the World Cup of hockey, the baseball playoffs, the start of the NFL season and the NBA, where each game does not consist of essentially rolling out racks of balls and having a 3-point contest.