Canada Is OK with a Good Olympics—But We Really Want Gold

TIME TO SHINE: VANOC VP Andrea Shaw listens while Roger Jackson, CEO of Own the Podium, discusses the rare opportunity the Vancouver Olympics provided to Canadian athletes. (Matthew Little/The Epoch Times)

VANCOUVER—It began with a video montage of athletes training for the Games: skeleton racers sitting in a wind tunnel as a jet of air marks their friction point, freestyle ski jumpers flipping into pools of water, a computer program analyzing the mechanics of a hockey player’s slapshot.

This is what Own the Podium has been working on, the head brass shared at a press conference Tuesday—a program for high-performance athletes on par with what the other Winter Olympic superpowers (the ones that take the gold while Canadians settle for personal bests) provide for their athletes.

Much has been made of Canada’s new go-for-the-gold attitude and the $117 million that backs it up. Own the Podium is a joint effort between the Canadian government and the Vancouver 2010 Organizing Committee (VANOC) with corporate partners kicking in as well.

This is not the Canadian Olympic team we are used to, where athletes struggle through the year, choosing between training time and an extra shift at work to make ends meet. These athletes have personal trainers, sports psychologists, nutritionists, and physio. They can train all year and don’t have to flip burgers at resort restaurants to buy their time on the hill.

Roger Jackson, who heads up Own the Podium, said Canada having the Olympics was a rare opportunity to do something special. The attention directed at the Vancouver Olympics is what finally prompted Canada to create a high-performance program, he said.

“We have never been able to do that.”

Own the Podium has attracted attention south of the border as well, with major American news outlets taking note of Canada’s bold new program. USA Today quipped that Americans who don’t know the phrase “True North, strong and free,” could be learning it soon as the Games get going, referring to the tradition of the gold-winning country having its anthem sung first in the medal ceremony.

“They used to be the nice guys (and gals); now they’d rather leave you buried in the snow on a ski trail,” wrote Time Magazine.

“Canada has an aggressive new attitude,” Stephen Colbert joked on his Comedy Central faux-news show. “In contrast to their previous slogan: ‘Pardon, would it trouble you if we won a medal or two? It would? OK. Never mind!’”

Own the Podium is in part a response to the fact that Canada has never won gold when hosting the Games. In Montreal in 1976 and Calgary in 1998, we left like a lonely bridesmaid.

Gary Lunn, Canada’s Minister of State for Sport, has promised that the program will continue, no longer subject to the five-year sunset clause that is about to pass.

“We are behind our athletes every step of the way,” he said.

That attitude, despite denials that funding will hinge on athletes’ accomplishments in the weeks ahead, has in part come about because of the success the program has already shown. If the Games play out at all like the various 2009 world championships in Olympic sports, we just might “own” the countries we are competing against. Last year we took 29 medals compared to 28 for the U.S. And 27 for Germany, and that included a U.S. medal in women’s ski jumping which is not in this year’s Olympics.

Chris Rudge, CEO of the Canadian Olympic Committee, says Canada’s Olympians have finally been given the tools to do the job, and he wasn’t shy about touting the success of the program.

“We’ve accomplished in Canada what Australia did in 20 years, in a very short period of time.”
This time around, he said, Canadians would not be going into the Games believing someone else’s program is better, or that other athletes had more support.

He said our athletes are “as well prepared as anybody ... We’ve given everything but an excuse.”

“Canada will field the strongest Canadian team in our history,” announced VANOC’s VP Andrea Shaw.

VANOC has been careful to poll Canadians and find out what would make the Games a success in their eyes. While hosting a successful games and making new friends is important, the committee found that what Canadians really want is gold.

With the help of 17 university programs across the country, working out the best clothing, training, and equipment, Canadian athletes will have a better chance to shave off the tenths of a second needed to go from runner-up to ruling athlete.

Last time around in Turin, Italy, Germany owned the medal count, taking home 29 medals, 11 of them gold. Canada came in third in the medal count with 24, after America’s 25, but tied fifth for gold medals.

When a German reporter at the Tuesday press conference asked Lunn what kind of medal count Canada wanted this time around, he said with a smile: “We want to win more medals than Germany ... We just hope we have more medals than you.”