Patriot Hearts (2 page)

“René, I’m just telling you that if the U.S. scores in overtime I’m going to stab you in the heart with my pen. I am, René. I am going to do that.” I took my pen out of my jacket and held it high in the air. “Remember,” I said.

I’m not sure I was smiling.

I don’t remember leaving my seat during the intermission. I was paralyzed with fear, like most people in the building. We all wanted a win so badly. We could all read the tension on each other’s faces. No one was smiling. People rubbed their hands nervously. Others chewed on fingers. The religious prayed.

I’m not sure I took a breath again until seven minutes and 40 seconds into overtime. When Sidney Crosby scored I jumped up and raised my hands in the air. The place exploded, releasing a beautiful energy in the process. Everyone was hugging and kissing and jumping up and down. I saw many people crying. People looked so relieved. Some looked exhausted, as if they had played in the game themselves. On some level they had: all of the country was on that bench alongside the players.

I looked at Jacques Rogge, and he too seemed relieved. I looked at René, and he was still smiling. Despite his hopes for a shootout I believe that, like Jacques, in his heart René wanted Canada to win. He loved hockey and he knew how much the game means to our hockey-mad nation.

As the crowd continued to sing and chant and immerse themselves in the moment, I stood watching, saying nothing. I thought of that wonderful scene in
Chariots of Fire,
my all-time favourite film that I’ve seen 20 times or more, when Eric Liddell, the devout Scottish Christian, lines up as the underdog in the 400-metre sprint at the 1924 Olympics in Paris. He had been the favourite in the 100 metres, but because the race was held on a Sunday it was against his religion to compete—so he didn’t. Against all odds he wins the 400 metres. The camera pans to the crowd where his coach, Sandy McGrath, is standing amid all those cheering and celebrating, his hands in his coat pockets, a satisfied smile breaking across his face. Rather than going nuts, he is calmly soaking it all in.

That’s kind of what I did as the crowd continued to sing and wave Canadian flags. I wanted to look and admire and immerse myself in the moment. Suddenly, I felt a tug at my jacket. It was my 12-year-old grandson, Henrik, the son of my daughter Maria.

“How did you get here?” I asked.

“Mom sent me,” he said.

“So,” I said. “What did you think of that?”

“Awesome,” Henrik answered.

I put my arm around his shoulders and we both looked out at the ice, where the players were celebrating and taking turns skating around with a giant Canadian flag supplied by a fan.

“Why don’t I go get Mom?” he said. Off he went.

A few minutes later Maria was by my side. Maria is a tall, tough, disciplined cookie who runs marathons. I often thought she had inherited her competitiveness and intensity from me. There was a time in our lives when our relationship wasn’t the best. It had taken some time for it to grow back into something that resembled a normal, healthy father-daughter bond. Now we stood looking down at the ice, not saying much. The red carpet was rolled out. Jacques Rogge was getting ready to hand out the gold medals.

He started with goaltender Roberto Luongo, the Vancouver Canucks goalie and local hero whose play is often celebrated during games by chants of
“Luo-o-o-o-o-o.”
When Jacques put the gold medal around Roberto’s neck the chant began:
“Luo-o-o-o-o-o.”
Eventually he got to the overtime hero, Sidney Crosby, and the place went crazy. Jacques hesitated a few seconds before putting the medal around Sidney’s neck so Canada’s newest hockey hero could enjoy the moment. And then it was time to play the national anthem.

The crowd started singing as the Canadian flag was raised. I looked over at Maria and put my arm around her. Tears streamed down her beautiful face as she sang along. It was such a warm, happy moment for us both. After it was over, Maria and I hugged and said goodbye. Behind my seat was a bank of televisions showing scenes of celebration taking place on streets from Halifax to Victoria.
CTV
had sent its helicopters to the skies to shoot the instant euphoria. Then they cut to what was going on in downtown Vancouver. Thousands of people had poured out onto the streets to join in a massive party.

I couldn’t help thinking that the celebrations would be mixed with a little sadness that the Games were coming to a close. For two weeks the entire country had been on a very rare kind of vacation. Now it was over. Now it was time to go back to work. For life to return to normal, but maybe a new normal.

Something profound had taken place. Thanks to the Olympics, thousands of Canadian children would get out of bed the next morning with new heroes and new dreams. They would now want to be on that Olympic stage one day themselves, playing hockey or blasting down a mountain on a snowboard. These Games would be a gift to the country for generations.

The Olympics were going to be judged a success regardless of how the men had done that afternoon. I knew that. Everyone at the Vancouver Organizing Committee knew that. But we wanted more. In order for people to feel as if they’d woken up in a new country the next day, we needed something extraordinary. Sidney Crosby made it happen.

I couldn’t help but think about the complex and sometimes difficult road I had travelled to arrive at this moment. A journey that began in Ireland and that was powered by my own thoughts of Olympic gold.

1
            

“Welcome to
Canada
—Make Us Better”

M
Y OLYMPIC DREAM
began when I was 14 years old. It was October 14, 1964, to be precise. I was sitting in the living room of our family home in Dublin watching television. I had been glued to coverage of the Tokyo Summer Olympics since they’d begun a few days earlier. On this afternoon, I was watching the men’s 10,000-metre race. The favourite was a fellow named Ron Clarke of Australia. At the time, he held the world record. Clarke took an early lead in the final, and by halfway through the race four runners were within striking distance of him, including Native American Billy Mills.

With two laps to go, Clarke still held a convincing lead. There were only two runners close enough to challenge him—Mills and Mohammed Gammoudi of Tunisia. As they took the final turn, Gammoudi soared in front, with Clarke straining to keep up. Mills looked like he was losing steam. Down the final stretch the American tapped into some miraculous well of energy and power and sprinted past a bewildered Gammoudi and Clarke to win.

The announcers were stunned by what they had just witnessed. Most in the stadium were in the same state of disbelief. Mills had run faster than he’d ever run in his life; his time was 50 seconds better than his personal best—an almost unthinkable accomplishment. It was also a new Olympic record.

For whatever reason, the race would have a profound influence on me. Maybe it was Mills’s underdog story, one a kid from a working-class Irish family could relate to. Maybe it was the mesmerizing finish. But from that moment on I wanted to go to the Olympics. I remember throwing on an old pair of Keds right after the race was over and taking off down the streets of my neighbourhood, imagining myself in the Olympics. I ran four kilometres to Phoenix Park, the biggest and most famous public space in Dublin. By the time I ran home I was an Olympic champion.

I watched a lot of the 1964 Tokyo Olympics. Many athletes made an impression on me: American sprinter Bob Hayes; Peter Snell, the great middle-distance runner from Australia; Joe Frazier, the boxer from the United States. But none left quite the same mark as Billy Mills.

At 14, life was a giant possibility, and I was probably more of a dreamer than most kids growing up in Ireland. I was born in Clonmel, in the county of Tipperary, on October 12, 1950. The town is situated on the northern bank of the River Suir and rests in a valley surrounded by the Comeragh Mountains. In Irish history, Clonmel was noted for its resistance to Cromwell’s armies, which had successfully sacked other communities nearby.

My father, John, who went by Jack, was a prison warden, or, as they were called in Ireland, a governor. Governors typically lived on the jail grounds, which meant I was raised, quite literally, in prison. We bounced around a bit. When I was six we left Clonmel for Dublin, where we stayed for three years before relocating to Portlaoise, in the Irish countryside. When I was 12 we returned to Dublin for good.

Living in a home that was attached to the walls of a prison was different. There’s no other way to put it. Depending on which prison my father was working in at the time, our house could be separated from the jail by bars. At one stop, I remember being able to look through my bedroom window into the prison yard and watching the inmates playing soccer. In Clonmel, the jail was for low-risk inmates, and some prisoners would work on the grounds of our house. I would see them all the time but be forbidden to talk to them.

As my father moved up the ranks of the penal system, the prisons we lived in housed more dangerous prisoners. Perhaps the most notorious of all was Mountjoy Jail in Dublin. Not far from our house at Mountjoy was a stone cross that marked the grave of Kevin Barry, a member of the Irish Republican Army who was hanged by the British on November 1, 1920, when they ran the prison. Barry was among a group of
IRA
members killed at the prison between 1920 and 1921, who collectively became known as the Forgotten Ten.

My father felt that Mountjoy was not the kind of prison that should be housing serious political criminals. It was too old, and its technology wasn’t sophisticated enough to thwart the creative minds inside and those inspired to spring them out. Not long after my father retired from Mountjoy, three Provisional Irish Republican Army volunteers escaped from its walls aboard a helicopter that actually landed in the prison’s exercise yard. The escape created a worldwide sensation and a major scandal in Ireland. My father had been right.

I was the third of five boys. My brothers were Jim, Eamonn, Brian and Terry. I had a younger sister named Rosemary who would become the closest of my siblings.

Like most families in Ireland, we never had a lot of money, but my dad did have a reliable job so we were better off than many. But nothing was ever wasted in the Furlong household. When I eventually grew to share the same shoe size as my father, I inherited his hand-me-downs. They were always laughably ugly. I was teased mercilessly at school whenever I wore them. Mortified, I eventually scraped together enough money to buy a brand new pair of running shoes. I would carry the runners in a plastic bag, and out of sight halfway to school I would change out of my father’s secondhand office shoes and put on my new ones. On the way home, I would change back.

My father was a towering figure. Almost six feet tall, he was handsome, dignified, humble, extremely intelligent and fiercely disciplined. He was an avid reader and a wonderful musician. He would lead singalongs in which we were all expected to participate. Little was grey in my father’s world, certainly not when it came to what was right and wrong. Perhaps that’s not all that surprising, given his job. Growing up, there was never much ambiguity about what we should and shouldn’t do. We never helped ourselves to seconds at the dinner table without asking. We never did anything outside the home that could embarrass the family, like steal or destroy property. Our rooms were expected to be spotless. My father would inspect them on weekends. He was a Latin scholar and expected nothing less than A’s from us in Latin at school.

In his day he was a great athlete. When I began to take athletics seriously, eventually making top teams and representing Ireland in various sports, he became both my biggest fan and biggest critic. I remember returning home in the wee hours of the morning from trips I went on with my sports teams. Often, Dad would be waiting up to dissect every minute of the game, homing in on my mistakes over my triumphs. While it may not have been clear to me at the time, my father wanted me never to be too satisfied with a performance. There was always room for improvement.

My mother, Maureen, was a gentle soul. Tall, elegant and reserved, she was a wonderful cook and took pride in making the home as comfortable as possible. She was also extremely religious, as was my father. We lived in a typical Catholic home, with crucifixes and pictures of Christ and saints everywhere. There was church every Sunday, and mass before school was common during the week.

When I think of my parents, I think about how loving their relationship was. There was never any conflict in our household, at least not between them. In fact, I don’t remember a single argument between the two. I can say that I enjoyed a loving upbringing. But that doesn’t mean my childhood was without its troubles.

I was a quiet introvert, scared and often nervous. Whenever a teacher called my name in the classroom I was horrified I might have to speak. Part of that fear, I think, stemmed from the fact that we were never in one place long enough for me to establish meaningful friendships with other kids. I hadn’t been at St. Vincent’s School more than a couple of days after we moved back to Dublin when the homeroom teacher barked out my name.
Oh, God, no,
I thought. He walked between two rows of desks before stopping in front of mine. I felt ill.

“I presume you play Gaelic football,” the teacher said.

I hadn’t yet taken up the sport. Scared to admit it, I replied that I did.

“Good,” he shot back. “Because we’re playing tomorrow and I expect to see you suited up.”

I raced home after school and told my mother what had happened. I had to have Gaelic football boots—now, today. Although we didn’t have much money, my mother always found a way to get us what we needed. She always had a few pounds stashed away for emergencies. So we walked into town that afternoon and bought a pair of shiny new football boots.

I had watched Gaelic football on television. The game is played on a field similar to a rugby pitch but much larger. There are 15 players a side, and the object is to kick or strike the round soccer-sized ball into the other team’s net or over the crossbar. Players advance the ball up the field by passing or kicking.