Hesjedal wins the Giro, but it's not enough to win Canadian athlete of the year
First, let me say congratulations to Christine Sinclair for becoming the first female athlete and first soccer player to win Canada's Lou Marsh award as athlete of the year. She had an outstanding year and elevated the woman's team further than it ought to go at the Olympics, to a bronze medal. She was top scorer in that tournament and was part of what was probably Canada's uniting moment of those games. But now let me ask the obvious question: What on earth were the writers who voted for the award thinking in overlooking Ryder Hesjedal's Giro d'Italia victory?
For everything great Sinclair did this year, I can't quite comprehend how winning what was arguably the hardest sporting event on the planet in 2012 -- even by comparison to the route of the Tour de France -- wasn't enough to seal his name for the award. That no Canadian athlete had won a Grand Tour in cycling before only added to the magnitude.
I suppose you could say that having remembered all the jokes about Canada forever winning Bronze at the London Olympics -- taking twelve in all by comparrison to their solitary Gold -- perhaps it's fitting the Athlete of the Year is someone who came third. But that would be unfair ... to say that would be to ignore the status of Canada in woman's soccer and to look at what the expectations were coming in not to mention the roll Sinclair played in the teams success. Yet if I'm to say that, then it should have been factored in what Canada's status is in professional cycling and what the expectations would normally be at a Grand Tour.
Even internally, soccer may not be a big sport in Canada the way hockey is but it's become pretty well recognised in recent years and there is a growing support for the game, but cycling is still well behind it on the totem pole of sporting significance. Of course, the popularity and size of your sport shouldn't define the achievement from within it by any athlete, but no doubt a lot of the writers -- as it was with the fans who also voted Sinclair as the winner of the CBC Athlete of the Year award over this past weekend -- don't quite understand cycling.
Maybe because the Giro took place in May, long before the Olympics meant that it was forgotten about to a degree. Everything that came after kind of pushed it to the back of the mind, and the memory of how it was celebrated at the time was diluted. Where did those voices go that cried "May as well hand out the Lou Marsh award now," back in May?
It donesn't necessarily take you to try the sport either to understand what it takes to be successful at it ... though go out on the road bike and tackle a few small climbs over fifty or one hundred kilometers to realise what a challenge the sport is ... but until you sit down and watch it, from the one day classics in the spring to the three week Grand Tours over the summer months, you'll never quite understand what it takes to compete at the highest level.
To win the Giro, Ryder Hesjedal was up against 198 of the best cyclists in the World, he won on collective time over the 21 stages with a total time of 91 hours, 39 minutes, 2 seconds over a distance of 3,502 kilometers. That's an average speed of 38.2 km/h.
To win such an event requires both a combination of elite physical conditioning as well as an huge amount of mental strength. It isn't just having the ability and the legs to get you over some of the hardest climbs in Europe, but to wake up each morning and convince yourself to go do it again. To start on Saturday May 5 and know that you've still four Sunday's to go before you see the finish. And that's before you factor in battling for the race victory, something that Hesjedal managed to achieve by just 16 seconds over Spaniard Joaquim Rodriguez. 16 seconds over 3,500 kilometers and 91 plus hours of racing.
Sinclair's efforts to help push Canada to a bronze medal were admirable but I've played both sports for many years and I know which one beats you up more both physically and mentally, and if anything else, surely winning should come at a primium? Then again, these things always were a popularity contest.
