Long after the logistical snafus, accidents, lack of snow and other let-downs have been forgotten, the Vancouver Olympics will be remembered – at least by Canadians – for a spectacular overtime goal in the final of the men’s ice hockey. Not long after the nation had groaned at an equalizer by the United States – when less than half a minute of regulation time remained on the clock – the 22-year-old Canadian wunderkind  Sidney Crosby, flicked a shot past  the competition’s MVP ( US goal-tender Ryan Miller) before he could even prepare a block. Crosby’s golden goal sealed an historic hockey double with Canada’s women’s team which had won gold against the US the day before (the emotional equivalent of the West Indies beating Australia in consecutive Test matches in the Caribbean),  and set a new record for gold medals won by a host of the winter games. More importantly, it gave Canada, the constant target of their southern neighbour’s scorn and condescension, the pleasure of inflicting on the Americans a comeuppance for the ages.

Before these games, Canada had modest expectations for its athletes. When Alexandre Bilodeau won the country’s first gold on home soil, with a near-perfect run in the moguls skiing, the relief was palpable. (Bilodeau’s gold was especially welcome since it came at the expense of a Vancouver native who had chosen to ski for Australia after falling out with coaches for the national team.)  But once the athletes found their stride and started to stack up the medals, the national mood was transformed.  Some stories exemplified the Olympic spirit. The figure skater Joannie Rochet, won a bronze only days after her mother’s sudden death; Shelley-Ann Thompson, the child of Jamaican immigrants, earned Canada a silver in the two-women’s luge competition. There were gold medals in snowboarding, speed-skating, ice-dancing and even curling, 14 in all by the end of the games.  Of course, there were also disappointments – after two hours of racing in a 50 kilometre cross-country skiing event, less than two seconds separated the Norwegian winner from the fourth-placed Canadian – but these were more than offset by the team’s larger success.

By the end of the games, the Canadian public had grown unusually proud of its team. Flags were waved and cheers of “Go Canada” occasionally rose above the background chatter at some of the larger events.  As the games reached their climax with the men’s hockey final, boisterous crowds gathered in cities across the country, hoping and praying that the team – most of them overworked multimillionaires from the American National Hockey League – would redeem an earlier loss to the United States. On the day, despite playing below par for most of the tournament, the team responded. Sidney Crosby, when it mattered most, gave his country something more than redemption.

Any West Indian of a certain age will remember what it felt like when we used to dominate a corner of world sport.  After the mid-70s, when other Test-playing nations faced the daunting task of dismissing Greenidge, Haynes, Richards, Kallicharan and Lloyd and then steeling themselves against the equally fearsome quartet of pace bowlers, we knew the thrill of standing tall on a world stage. Some of us may even remember the pleasures of retribution against the English following their captain’s egregious insults in 1976. In an interview before the upcoming West Indies tour of England, Tony Greig infamously boasted that “[T]he West Indians…  if they get on top are magnificent cricketers. But if they’re down, they grovel, and I intend… to make them grovel.”  When a barrage of ferocious, short-pitched fast bowling reduced the English to a comprehensive 0-3 defeat, Greig at least had the good grace and humour to prostrate himself and “grovel” as he walked towards the pavilion after his final dismissal. Our cricket team’s record in the 1980s – especially the two satisfying ‘blackwashes’ in England – spoiled many of us into thinking that our success would last for decades, but athletic hubris, amateurism and mismanagement quickly put an end to those hopes. Today, half a century after the failure of Federation, West Indians must take the consolations of sport where we find them. Instead of the joys that come from supporting a winning team, we are mostly left celebrating individual athletic triumphs like those of Usain Bolt and Brian Lara.

International events like the Cricket World Cup, Olympics and World Cup football underscore the lost opportunities of West Indian integration. Our diehard support of one of the most underwhelming teams in world cricket shows just how badly we yearn for something more than individual successes. If regional unity is ever to mean something more than Caricom agreements and vague political gestures, our politicians should give serious thought to fielding a single West Indies team in other sports, perhaps even in the Olympics and in world football. At first glance this seems laughably improbable, especially since Jamaica and Trinidad have already made their way to the top level of international competitions, unaided. But it is worth remembering that at different times Antigua, Barbados and Guyana have all punched well above their weight in the cricket team, yet that has always remained a region-wide undertaking.
A West Indian football or Olympic team would certainly have teething pains – not least because both sports currently recognize only national teams – but its difficulties need not prove insurmountable. If a region as internally competitive as Europe can produce a single Ryder Cup team to compete against the Americans, there is no reason why the West Indies cannot produce single teams in sports other than cricket. Until that happens, however, we must watch from the sidelines, and wonder repeatedly how differently all of this might have turned out if we had not surrendered the dream of Federation.