Athletes’ performance at the Olympics games can be attributed to so many things-lawful and unlawful. While some athletes (and at times their trainers) rely on doping to succeed at the Olympic games, others would rather go through the more rigorous path of hard preparation for the games.

Amateur athletics have always caught the attention of sports lovers-including authority figures-when a young individual pulls a dazzling performance at a local games competition or in school events. However, the government seemed to turn a dead eye to the plight of amateur athletic trainers that these future bright stars deserve, until the release of the budget for the 2004/2005 fiscal year. It culminated at $120 million, to go towards general improvement in high performance sports.

Though this increase in federal spending on sports represents an all time high, it could not help Team Canada at the Athens games for two simple reasons: it was too late in coming and government bottle-necks in actual release of funds was not guaranteed to improve.

The bright side to this is that, over the next couple of years, funding for the winter games at Turin should not be the worry of coaches and the Canadian Olympic Committee (COC), if the federal government lives up to its word.

It would have been comforting for ministers Stan Keyes and Hélène Chalifour Scherrer to have mentioned that amateur athletes would get a boost to their incomes when the funding announcement was made last May. These athletes have had to rely on credit financing and their parents for training and upkeep costs.

Naturally, athletes do not get sponsorship deals until they prove themselves at major competitions, usually the Olympics. The government needs to rise to their aid and help them focus more on the tracks and field rather than on credit collectors.

A close look at the COC and corporate funding for Canadian athletes reveals that a top amateur athlete can only receive guaranteed funding of about $18,000 a year.

The crux of the matter is that when an athlete is not properly groomed from the start then there is always a percentage loss in performance, which in most cases is difficult to recover from. Improved performance at the Olympics is not impossible to attain, but will have been achieved only when all hands are on deck in the sporting community and the government.

At this stage the government holds more stakes than others because poor amateur funding is mostly responsible for the absence of excellent performances at the Olympics.

If Canada expects more from its future athletes at the Olympics, then the government has to do more for amateur athletes, for it is true that to whom less is given, less (or at times, nothing) can be expected. It’s not too late to shift gears and include the well being of amateur athletes, and not just that of equipment and facility in the funds provided for sports development. There’s at least another eighteen months to effect a change in due time for the Turin games.

-Ahmed Ogunsola

To me, this issue is a truly confounding one. How does Canada’s athletic system manage to produce so few successful athletes? It is not the small size of our population –Australia has only two thirds the population and yet won over four times as many medals in this past Olympics. Nor is it the calibre of our athletes-Canada’s diverse population is made up of people from every country, background, ethnicity etc.

But if it’s not a lack of raw talent then I must believe it is a lack of ability to cultivate talent. And that, I think, is the answer.

Good athletes do not emerge on their own; rather, they need to be found, trained, and motivated. When Canada had the world’s fastest sprinter, it also had a coach who went to all the schools around Toronto looking for his athletes, who did not turn those athletes away for being unable to pay, and who, more than anything, had a love for his sport and the brains to turn that love into something meaningful.

In Canadian sport, such a combination of love, dedication, and brains is rare indeed. I think the reason is complicated to explain, but easy enough to understand. Firstly, most intelligent, highly motivated people seek jobs that not only pay decently but also jobs that garner them respect. In Canada, I believe that coaches get precious little respect and most get even less money.

Oh sure, you may be able to name the coaches of professional teams, but these are not the sports that will earn Canada Olympic glory. Instead, it is those many coaches around the country who, rather than being paid excellent money or earning the respect of Canadians across the country, coach once they finish their day jobs and work in complete obscurity.

And that’s the second problem. It’s incredibly hard to produce incredible athletes when you come to practice exhausted after a day (or night) of work. Professional coaches are able to dedicate their time away from practices to studying their athletes and their sport. The coaches to whom Canada has entrusted its amateur athletes must dedicate their time away from practice to making their real living.

In truth there are probably many very important problems with Canadian sport. But this losing attitude that we cultivate by not supporting a development infrastructure has got to be right up there with the worst of them.

-Amara Gossin
VARSITY STAFF

I have heard it all regarding the “great Canadian Olympic funding debate,” and I am getting tired of it.

At the Athens Olympics this past summer Canada won 12 medals in total, three of them being gold.

Before I get into the debate people should remember 1976. That year Canada hosted the Summer Olympics in Montreal. What was most embarrassing about those games was that Canada did not win a single gold medal, yet people are complaining that we only won three gold medals this year.

It seems to me that Canada has improved in the way the country performs at the Olympics. What is discouraging to me about this Olympics is that as a country we are no longer significant world players in such premier sports as swimming and track and field.

Last year the government of Canada spent $90 million on athletics in this country and that is a lot of money that could go to other things. To me there is no reason we should increase this funding.

For the simple reason that Canada is a winter country and as a country we excel in winter sports, such as: hockey, lacrosse, speed skating and snowboarding. If the country should increase athletic spending it should go to the winter sports and not the summer sports, in my opinion.

And I know what people are going to say to this: “But Australia wins so many medals and as a country they have half the population of Canada.” But you must see through this argument, because Australia only funds sports that they deem winnable, such as swimming and cycling. They do not fund all sports equally.

Is it fair to only fund sports that some politicians believe we have a chance of winning? Of course NOT!

Australia won 49 medals in Athens. If you combine Canada’s medal outputs from the 2002 Winter Olympics and 2004 Summer Olympics they have won 29 medals, only trailing Australia by 20 medals. So if, as a country, we increased spending on the Winter Olympics we could easily eclipse Australia in the combined medal count. Australia hardly funds their winter sports teams.

So instead of complaining that Canada has only won 12 medals, the people of Canada should be proud of our athlete’s accomplishments.

-Mark Ilczyszyn
VARSITY STAFF