Seems former gold medalist and pot culture hero Ross Rebagliati isn’t going to be the saviour of democracy after all. The Liberals just sent out a late Friday afternoon press release announcing he was withdrawing as the Liberal candidate in Okanagan-Coquihalla.

When Rebagliati announced last year that he was going to take on the Stockwell Day in the next federal election, he appeared to view himself as something of a political saviour. I covered his nomination meeting when I was a reporter at Kelowna.com and heard him speak at length about how he was going to use social media to reach people under 40 and inspire them to get interested in democracy and voting.

“I think I’m going to bring the country together.”

He actually said those words.

But perhaps now the reality that Rebagliati was in over his head has set in and he’s realized politics isn’t the arena for him if he wants to do something meaningful with his celebrity.