As sports fans turn the corner into 2014, pondering the upcoming Olympics and assorted other events, including the World Cup and the Stanley Cup playoffs, they might want to keep in mind the words of the great screenwriter William Goldman. “Nobody knows anything,” Goldman wrote in “Adventures in the Screen Trade,” referring to so-called experts in Hollywood trying to handicap what films would be big what films would bomb.
Ditto for sports, which, of course, is the very reason we keep watching.
Predictions are a mug’s game. (For confirmation, ask anyone whose ever handed over a couple of bucks to his local bookmaker. Or, check out where the so-called experts predicted last year’s Toronto Blue Jays would finish.)
One thing does seem fairly certain, if one really wants to go out on a limb. Sports this year–at least for Canadians–will be a whole lot more exciting than 2013. It’s hard to imagine how they couldn’t be.
Some questions to ponder:
*Can Canadian athletes match their performances in Vancouver in 2010 (26 medals, 14 of which were gold, including both the men’s and women’s hockey teams) in Sochi?
*Will Canada have a collective nervous breakdown if the men’s hockey team fails to win gold?
*Can Sochi produce anything akin to the great (or not so great) Olympic Opening Ceremonies that Canada produced in 2010? Everything that happened inside was pretty darn good. But when they moved outside: oof!
I refer to Wayne Gretzky’s ride through the cold rain on the back of pickup truck with nothing to hold on to but the Olympic Torch. His smile morphing into a grimace, Gretzky was surrounded by crowds of dead-enders, stoners and screaming yahoos. A giant Kodak moment.
*Could this be the year that the Stanley Cup returns to Canada? Need anyone be reminded that that hasn’t happened since 1993? Does the law of averages come into play here? Um.
*Can the Toronto Raptors lose enough games to get into the running to draft hometown star Andrew Wiggins, generally considered the best player in US college basketball?
Some short snappers: Will professional soccer ever take off in Canada? Will the Toronto Blue Jays ever take off, period? Can the Saskatchewan Roughriders repeat as Grey Cup champions without the help of their home crowd? Will Milos Raonic, Vasek Pospisil and Eugenie Bouchard rise as high in the tennis rankings as everyone hopes? Will Blue Jays management have the good sense to find a place on the team for Munenori Kawasaki?
*Can Brazil win the World Cup with the help of its home fans?
*Will there be a collective decision by the sports world to end its denial about the extraordinarily dangerous aspects of concussions?
*And the perennial: who will be the first famous athlete to fail a drug test in 2014?
To discuss the upcoming year, RCI called sportswriter and author Bruce Dowbiggin.
Terry Haig spoke by phone with Dowbiggin at his home in Calgary.
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