Last week, Olympic swimmer Brent Hayden jumped into the political pool, so to speak, and announced his candidacy for park board commissioner under the flag of fledgling party Vancouver First.
We don’t know much about Hayden, apart from the fact he won bronze in the 100 metre freestyle at the London 2012 Olympics, he rocks a chrome dome and is practically a human dolphin, which would make us a manatee. But we still wonder why he’d hitch his wagon to a party whose other notable candidates include school trustees Ken Denike and Sophia Woo. As you may know, Denike and Woo, or Woonike as we like to call them, were expelled in June from the NPA over a controversy regarding the school board’s revised sexual orientation and gender identities policy. Hint: they’re not fans of it. Hayden, on the other hand, says he is a supporter of LGBTQ rights.
Still, having a high profile figure and quasi celebrity such as Hayden running makes the park board race more interesting than it’s been in years, if not forever. Even more entertaining is Hayden’s Instagram account, which lists his many accomplishments in the pool as well as the fun fact he’s married to Lebanese pop artist Nadina.
However, the photos are the real meat in the sandwich. Or beefcake, we should say. Hayden’s most recent Instagram pics indicate he visited the Scandinave Spa in Whistler where he apparently spent most of the time either shirtless or relaxing in a white terrycloth robe.
Honestly, when was the last time you saw a Vancouver political candidate lounging spread eagle in a sauna or washing his glistening six-pack abs under a hand-pull shower. Former NPA councillor George Puil, perhaps. But we’re pretty sure it was a Turkish mud bath, and it was the free-spirited 1980s, after all.
The strangest image on Hayden’s Instagram site, however, is a short video of a couple lounging in a pool at the spa, staring wistfully at a waterfall, when all of sudden out from under the surface jumps Hayden, flopping like a fish towards the cascading water. Under the video Hayden writes, “I hear getting into city hall is like swimming upstream. Challenge accepted!!!”
A couple things. First off, good on Hayden for having the wherewithal and online savviness to have an actual Instagram account. To the best of our knowledge, Mayor Gregor Robertson or the social media team posing as him, doesn’t even have an Instagram account, though he’d probably just post pictures of himself riding a bike and DJ-ing with captions like “Had totally cool time spinning mad wax with the 19 to 34-year-old demographic that I dig so much #YOLO #VOTEGREGOR.” But we hate to break it to Hayden, the park board isn’t located at city hall. It’s actually at 2099 Beach Ave. in the West End, technically downstream from city hall. Then again, Hayden would have known that if he had ever attended a park board meeting.
