If You're Not a Winner, You're . . .

From an article in today's Globe and Mail about athletes adjusting to life after the Olympics:

Dave Steen had barely hoisted a hose in a new career as a firefighter when his past life hit him like a wall of flames.

"Hey, aren't you the guy who lost at the Olympics?" a colleague remarked on his first day on the job at an Ottawa fire hall.

From that day forward, the former decathlete -- who clinched a bronze medal in the 1988 Seoul Olympics -- was endearingly dubbed "loser" by his co-workers.

Now I know some hazing in a job like this is inevitable, but my response would have been a little less magnanimous than Steen's: Let's see you win a bronze in the decathlon, fatass.