Thank you, Simon Whitfield

For the first time during the Beijing Olympics, I jumped up and down, and screamed at my TV. The cause of this excitement was Simon Whitfield's race for the gold during the Men's Triathlon competition.

In the end, Whitfield won a Silver but the guts he showed during the race was better than the majority of Gold Medal-winning performances that I have seen so far. As amazing as Michael Phelps, Guo Jingjing, and Usain Bolt are, there is something anti-climactic about watching an unchallenged winner.

Whitfield steadily hunted down the lead group of runners, repeatedly hanging off the back, falling away then struggling back into contention until the last kilometer, when he threw his hat off and charged ahead with everything he had left. He was passed by the Gold Medal winner in the last 30 meters but, without a doubt, Whitfield had done his best.

If every Canadian athlete showed as much competitive heart as Whitfield, I wouldn't care what the medal count was.

More sour Olympic notes:

• Who are those annoying McDonald's commercial kids? The three boys and two girls are so generic that they could be mistaken for quintuplets and their dialogue delivery makes the otherwise bland punchlines acutely painful. I thought McDonald's was a multinational corporation and a major sponsor of the Olympics. They couldn't afford something better than a bunch of brats exchanging weak repartee in and around a McDonald's during prime time Olympic coverage?


• The programmers at the CBC obviously have a passion for softball and women's volleyball (court and beach). I waited in vain for a repeat airing of the Women's Marathon, while Joe has yet to see any ping pong or badminton matches. Meanwhile, CBC chose to show, in its excruciating entirety, Canada's loss to Venezuela in softball. And what the female volleyball players lacked in backside coverage, CBC made up for in game coverage by forcing their audience to watch every riveting timeout, regardless of whether a Canadian was playing. Whatever happened to the highlight reel? Our only Olympic broadcast alternative, NBC, actively denied the existence of Canadian competitors; for instance, failing to show a single one of medal contender, Blythe Hartley's dives in favour of the lower ranked American divers.
  
• Finally, please bring the Summer Olympics back to this side of the world. I am fed up of being sleep deprived from staying up past midnight in order to catch live action from the Games.