It's time the media stopped referring to Canadians as "former Olympians."
Once an athlete has competed in an Olympic or Olympic Winter Games, he/she is an Olympian. Period. Not a "former Olympian."
In Randy Starkman's column today, a reader refers to Debbi Wilkes who won a figure skating medal in 1964 with Guy Revell as "former Olympian Debbi Wilkes." She will NEVER be a former Olympian. She will be an Olympian "who competed in the 1964 OWG" but never a former Olympian.
Pretty well everyone knows that it is extremely difficult to represent our country in the OLys or OWG, so let's give these athletes their due.
Big media giants like Sun Media, or QMI it is called now (I think) perpetuate this error. If I could find out how to contact DAVID LANGFORD who is the chief sports person for Sun Media, I would give him my opinion on this. But he is harder to locate (e-mail-wise) than chicken's teeth. If you know his email, let me know!
The sports editor at the Kingston Whig Standard tells me that they just print what comes off the wire from their media giant. Well, folks, that just isn't good enough. If he cared about our Olympians, he would edit out the error!
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