Take your marks. Set. Shuffle!

The Ontario Senior Games, an Olympics for oldies: get serious. A bunch of senior citizens tottering about on skates, HA HA HA. Over 60s playing ice hockey! Oh don’t, you’ll make me laugh so hard I’ll pee myself.

I was game for a laugh. I was at the front of the queue for tickets. Oh, hold on, there were no tickets. All events were free to watch. I suppose they had to be when the youngest competitor was 55! Gee Ontario, you really know how to put on a sporting spectacle (that’s event, not reading glasses).

London on the other hand - capital of my homeland, shining beacon amongst world cities – is hosting the real Olympics next year. You know, the one with real athletes, elite sports folk, the cream of the crop. Olympians who execute their chosen sport at a level that us mere mortals can only dream about.

I like many others am in awe of these athletes and, if I weren’t living in Canada, I’d be elbowing my way to the front of the queue for tickets to the Olympic Games 2012.

Hmm, tickets that I have to register for now, a year and a half in advance, without knowing exactly how many I can buy, or just how expensive they’ll be. Tickets, which once I’m registered I’ll have no say in the row or seat allotted to me. Tickets that I have to pay for even if I change my mind tomorrow… Free to watch, touché Haliburton you got me there.

Oh yes but I’ll be ensconced in one of the wonderful new stadiums constructed especially for the London Olympics… on land grabbed from small businesses under compulsory purchase orders and built at vast expense to British tax payers. Haliburton didn’t even build a new bus shelter. Didn’t cost you folk anything either though, did it.

But the 2012 Olympics will leave an amazing legacy to youth: Permanent state-of-the-art stadiums and training grounds for the elite athletes of the future, so the London Mayor tells us. Have you seen the London Mayor! I’m starting to doubt my hubris, here.

Ontario, Haliburton, your Senior Games have now been and gone, quite literally. There’s not a shred of physical evidence that they were even here but a few short days ago. I saw them though, as did many other local folks, and that’s what counts. I saw the Alpine Skiing. I saw the above mentioned old fogeys fling themselves down the slopes, ski suits and skin flaps fluttering in the wind, at speeds that would frighten many a skidooer. I can’t ski. I was suitably impressed.    

I’ve met the legendary gravel voiced Mr Ted Vasey a time or two in the village and I watched him and his fellow ‘Over 55s’ battle it out in the hockey arena against their provincial rivals. There was no smirk left on my face after witnessing the speed of skating feet and crunching blows of tackles in that game. I can safely say I’m in awe of these hockey playing seniors now. And, if Ted growls next time we meet you won’t see me for dust.

And so the tale goes on. I can’t play volleyball. I’m terrible at badminton. Nordic skiing is a beautiful and strenuous art that one day I hope to be mildly proficient at. Bridge, nope, can’t play that either, although physically I may stand a chance against some of the players!

While London will glow in the world spotlight for a few weeks next year, the political and financial turmoil that the Olympic Games will wreak; the transport headaches, hotel price hikes, right royal rip-offs that will be endured; and, the potential multi-million pound white elephants (velodromes, equestrian arenas, gymnastic halls, handball stadiums) that the country will be left with will leave Brits asking was it all really worth it?

Haliburton, on the other hand basks in the glory of a neat, trim, well run Senior Games, done and dusted with everyone still smiling. Good on you all, I say.

But, watch out predictive skaters. I have 15 years to master skating and learn to tell the time. Then, I’ll be vying for a medal!