Pens’ Crosby to be face of 2010 Olympic Games

February 11, 2009 at 12:00a.m.

PITTSBURGH (AP) — Sidney Crosby didn’t need to watch the Olympics last summer to know what swimmer Michael Phelps was going through in Beijing.

The around-the-clock attention. The lack of privacy. The inability to eat a snack, talk to another Olympian or have a casual conversation without being overwhelmed by reporters and photographers. The two weeks of waiting to see if he would make the tiniest mistake, say the wrong thing or frown when the world wanted a smile.

One year from Thursday, all of his native Canada — plus millions worldwide — could be watching Crosby with a Phelps-like scrutiny in Vancouver as he tries to lead the home team to an Olympic gold medal in its national pastime.

Canada’s skiers, skaters and snowboarders will be closely tracked, too, but not like the hockey players will. In Canada, Vancouver may be remembered as being the Sidney Crosby Games.

“It’s a different situation for sure — we’re talking the world and we’re talking about more than just hockey,” Crosby said Tuesday.

Crosby competes in a team sport, not an individual one, so he can win only one gold medal, not the eight that Phelps won in swimming. That makes the 2010 Olympics all the more challenging to a player who will be only 22 in Vancouver, yet will carry the hopes and expectations of a country where hockey isn’t just a sport, but a way of life.

If Crosby can lead Canada to its second Olympic gold medal since 2002, he is likely to be as revered at home as the stars of the Canada-Russia Summit Series in 1972. Should Canada fail, as it did in Turin three years ago, he might have to live with it the rest of his career.

That’s a burden to which Phelps can relate. The American swimmer handled the athletic pressure well with his record performance, though he has run into problems at home after recently being photographed smoking marijuana.

Crosby knows Olympic hockey is a big stage, and is less forgiving than the NHL playoffs.

“It’s one game, too, in the Olympics, it’s not like a series,” said Crosby, the face of the NHL since he was the rookie of the year at age 18 in 2005-06. “So if you lose, it’s easy to kind of say, ‘Oh, if we had this or what if we had that.’ The fact is it’s the Olympics and you’re talking about countries and every country is strong now and there are no weak links.”