Carrying the hopes of a nation

Reporting from Vancouver, Canada — 

The year before the 1968 Winter Olympics, skier Jean-Claude Killy was virtually unbeatable, winning 12 of 17 World Cup races and turning into the athlete upon whom the host country’s hopes rested at Grenoble, France.

“In everybody’s mind, I was supposed to win a lot,” Killy said Tuesday.

When he reached the starting gate for his first race in Grenoble, only 130 miles from his home in Val d’Isere, Killy dealt with that pressure in an unusual way.

“I decided to think the Olympics were being put on for me and me alone,” Killy said. “They were in my own country, my own slopes, my own snow, [French President] General De Gaulle was there, 45,000 French fans were there cheering for me.

“Psychologically, you either die from that or it is an incredible boost. I took it as all positive.”

So it didn’t bother Killy that he had won only one of six races in the part of the 1968 World Cup season prior to the Olympics?

“I was frightened by nothing,” Killy said.

And he won a lot -- all three races then on the Olympic program.

In the Vancouver Games, the Canada men’s hockey team finds itself in the same position as Killy, with an added dimension: Those athletes must win in their country’s national sport.

In a January Canadian Press Harris-Decima poll, 35% said the Games would not be a success without the men’s hockey team winning gold.

“There isn’t a Canadian out there who does not have their fingers crossed that on the last day of the Games, Canada will win a gold medal in men’s hockey,” John Furlong, CEO of the Vancouver Olympic Organizing Committee, said Tuesday.

No wonder 53% of those polled said the Games would be a success if the men’s hockey team wins gold, even if Canada doesn’t make history by topping the medal count for the first time.

Being first in gold or total medals would be especially significant because Canada won no gold in its two previous Olympics on home soil -- the 1988 Calgary Winter Games and the 1976 Montreal Summer Games.

An athlete bearing the weight of a nation can have spectacular triumph, as quarter-miler Cathy Freeman did at the 2000 Sydney Games, where she lit the torch and stood as a symbol of pride for her Australian Aboriginal people.

They also can wind up disappointing millions of countrymen -- or in the case of hurdler Liu Xiang, the 1.3 billion Chinese who despaired when an injury led him to withdraw before the first hurdles round at the 2008 Beijing Olympics, when he was expected to win a second straight gold medal.

“I feel we gave him too much pressure,” Guo Xinlin, 21, a college student in Liu’s home town, Shanghai, said the day of his withdrawal, while stopping for a moment on a downtown street where billboards were adorned with Liu’s image. “People had too much expectation from him.”

Canadian figure skater Brian Orser can understand that. He was the reigning world champion heading into the Calgary Games and the best bet to keep Canada from another medal shutout, but Orser finished second.

“I felt like I wanted to apologize to Canada for not winning,” Orser said in a recent conversation.

Then there was Kostas Kenteris, the reigning Olympic 200-meter champion heading into the 2004 Athens Games, where he was considered a likely candidate to light the Olympic caldron.

Kenteris escaped the pressure by missing a drug test one day before the Games opened, allegedly because he was in a motorcycle accident a Greek investigation would show was staged. Five days later, in the midst of an International Olympic Committee investigation, Kenteris withdrew from the Olympics “for the best interests of the country.”

There is virtually no chance Canada will need the men’s hockey team to win its only gold medal, but that will not lower the public’s expectations.

“I can’t think of any group of athletes anywhere in the world that would have more pressure than this team,” Dave Cobb, VANOC’s deputy CEO, said Tuesday, “but I also don’t think there is a group of athletes that can handle that pressure better.”

Cobb, who spent 12 years as an executive with the NHL’s Vancouver Canucks, thought the men’s hockey team would handle the situation the way Killy did.

“These guys have all played from World Junior Championships to World Championships to Stanley Cup finals, so I think they welcome the pressure,” Cobb said.

“I think if you go into something feeling relaxed, you won’t be at your best. I think they will thrive on this.”

phersch@tribune.com