On Monday morning, my opinion of Wayne Gretzky plummeted.Okay, so the man was really good at hockey. I’ll give him that – but his priorities are completely out of whack.

On Sunday, the Canadian men’s hockey team won their first gold medal in 50 years of Olympic tournaments. In Monday’s New York Times, Gretzky was quoted as saying, “Our country desperately needed to win this tournament. I’m happy for the Canadian people.”

I’m happy for the Canadian people too, Wayne. But “desperately needed?”

Did the Canadian people desperately need to be better than the Americans at hitting a little plastic disk into a net while running around on a block of ice? In the same way that Afghan refugees desperately need a place to live? In the same way that Israeli and Palestinian citizens alike desperately need an end to the years of violent conflict? In the same way that AIDS victims the world over desperately need a cure for the epidemic?

Gretzky, however, is nothing more than a product of his culture. The Olympics left Salt Lake City with a construction bill of $4 billion – they put in a whole new rail system, as well as new roads and hotels and restaurants and all the rest.

Why? So millions of people could spend billions of dollars to watch other people play games.

Games.

How many people went hungry the day the Canadians won their gold medal? How many people suffered unnecessarily during the three weeks of the Olympic tournaments? How much of that agony could have been prevented with a budget of $4 billion?

Sports are a luxury – a luxury that we should be grateful we can afford, win or lose. And if we have forgotten that, Mr. Gretzky, I think that what we “desperately need” is a serious realignment of priorities.