Firstly congratulations to Alex Bilodeau and Canada for winning its first gold medal on home soil. He performed awesome in the Mens moguls and definitely had a gold medal run that had all the ingredients.
As an Aussie i was cheering for Dale Begg-Smith and unfortunately he didn't get the win but Alex Bilodeau put on a great peformance on home soil and edged out Dale Begg-Smith for the gold.
Now for the commentary on the joke which is CTV
CTV and its representation of Canadian Journalism has unfortunately hit a new level of ineptitude with its hatchet job on Dale Begg-Smith in its pre event coverage. As a country immigrants to vilify somebody for leaving Canada at the age of 15 to follow both a work and sport related dream is very hypocritical. Not to mention the fact that Canada has prospered from successful athletes from other countries on countless occasions. This includes individuals such as Donovan Bailey and Daniel Igali who have won Gold for Canada.
The piece form CTV definitely bordered on sensationalist negative journalism in which they fabricated a story based on there desire to paint somebody who left Canada 10 years ago to pursue other opportunities 10 years ago.
Lastly to all those people who shouldn't be allowed access to social media outlets such as twitter due to there inability to conduct rational thought that are calling Begg-Smith a traitor and taking joy in somebody missing out on gold by a small margin I have the following commentary for you which will take more than 140 characters.
Firstly, if you look at Begg Smiths podium reaction it is nearly identical to when he won gold in Turin four years ago. The fact the guy does not show a large deal of emotion in victory or defeat is not something that anybody needs apologies for. In fact his reaction on the podium was exactly the same as when he won gold in Turin.
Secondly, the guy is 10 ties more successful then 99% of the population and the fact he has the focus to make this happen is something that we can all take lessons from. Form this regard seeing someone who has made business and sport succeed in his early 20's is something that I look at as inspiration.
To wrap up congrats Canada and Alex Bilodeau on winning Gold. Also congrats to Dale Begg-Smith for an awesome performance in which and being a shining example of how to focus and execute on your goals.
To CTV all I can say in response to your campaign "Local TV Matters" in the case of your appalling and pitiful standards of Journalism it does not and if there is any sense in this world we will not have pay any extra to see your hatchet jobs and depressing excuses for journalism into the future.
Jeremy Hopwood
I would have to agree with you here (although being Canadian of course I was elated that Alex Bilodeau took the gold over Begg-Smith). The media mentioned not a word of the actual reasons that Begg-Smith left Canada and starting racing for Australia...
ReplyDeletehard to defend a guy who has made millions off of creating and selling adware and spyware...
ReplyDeleteDear anonymous thank you for your comment. There are a couple considerations to your comment that I would like to add for your consideration.
ReplyDeleteWhen Dale Begg-Smiths company was established and likely made most of its profit was around the year 1999/2000 when adware, spyware, pop up ads and even unsolicited email campaigns (SPAM) was a lot more legitimate as a business pursuit. Right or Wrong this was the case at this time and I know of a lot of people who where involved in the industry at this time point when it was seem as a legitimate revenue model.
Obviously some legislation and the accepted cultural boundaries have changed over the past decade however at the time of 2000 these were significantly different and adware/spyware was seen as a potential way to drive revenue in order to support content being published on the internet.
I would argue that in my opinion that adware/spyware is in some regards the ancestor of the google, yahooo, bing based advertising that you see when you do a search or open up your email on a web based client. To some degree existing mainstream applications such as Windows Live Messenger and Yahoo Messenger are considered to be adware applications.
I was just pumped because I considered it a Canada 1/2/4/5. Not a bad showing.
ReplyDeleteGood to see some thought processes going on here rather than just another person lapping up what the media dish out.
ReplyDeleteWe've bumped into Dale a few times while he's been in Perisher and he's one of the most humble and down-to-earch guys you'd ever meet.
He's very shy.
He puts back into the ski-program by mentoring some of the kids. Ask them what he's like and they will paint you a completely different picture to that of the media.