Sports has the power to unite countries
Posted Jun 17, 2010 By Tara Gesner
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Tweet ThisEMC Lifestyle - Never underestimate the importance of sports!
Saturday night my husband and I watched 'Invictus'. Directed by Clint Eastwood, the 2009 film stars Academy Award winners Morgan Freeman and Matt Damon.
In the film, Nelson Mandela (Freeman), the newly-elected president of South Africa, teams up with François Pienaar (Damon), the captain of the country's rugby team (the Springboks) to help unite their country after the end of apartheid.
Aware that South Africa continues to be racially and economically split, but believing he can bring the country together using the universal language of sport, Mandela rallies the rugby team as they make their historic run to the 1995 Rugby World Cup Championship match. It works!
Fast-forward to Cypress Mountain Feb. 14, during the 2010 Vancouver Olympics, Canadian moguls skier Alexandre Bilodeau claimed the country's first gold medal on home soil.
I still remember the crowd going berserk as his numbers were posted.
On Sunday, Feb. 28 - in the final men's ice hockey game that couldn't have been scripted any better - Sidney Crosby brought our nation to its feet, scoring the game-winning goal.
Not only did Canada beat the United States 3-2, but also the gold medal win was our country's 14th - breaking the record for the most at a Winter Olympics. From coast to coast Canadians erupted in a sea of red and white.
There were definitely several high fives handed out in the Gesner household.
Almonte's own Olympian Perianne Jones (cross-country skiing) told me recently, "I got to stand on the start line and hear thousands of fans cheering for me." "It's a moment I will never forget. It provided me with such a sense of identity."
The Vancouver Olympics - Canada's Olympics - left all of us with a positive legacy, as well as a new sense of national pride.
These are the moments you wish lasted forever... where nothing else matters.
Success for any team or country in sports is a source of national pride.
I can't count the number of times I've heard people say, "I just want a Canadian team to win the Stanley Cup."
The 2010 FIFA World Cup, running June 11 to July 11, has been deemed "the one month every four years where we all agree."
Now, if only politics could be a game. Wait a minute ...
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