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Money
needed for podium finishes
By Tom Maloney
Calgary Herald
Looking
toward the 2010 Winter Olympics at Vancouver-Whistler,
sports executives say, the time is now.
They don’t want to hear about new national
sports plans, or a regurgitated
Participaction strategy from the Otto Jelinek
days, or equal treatment across the board. What
they want, and need, is the money to groom athletes
for 2010.
Federal secretary of state for sport, Paul DeVillers,
has secured the $310
million requested from Ottawa for Olympic structures.
Now he’s awaiting cabinet approval on a
plan submitted at the same time, earlier this
year, for athlete development.
“We’re going to have an awful lot
of egg on our face if we don’t come through
with the money to have competitive athletes at
those Games,” DeVillers told the Herald,
during an interview in his Parliament Hill office.
“In principle, the whole plan was laid out
all at once—the monies, the increases in
budgets we think we’re going to need to
get us there, but only the authorization to fund
the physical plant was given. That’s where
we are—we have to put the meat on the bones
for sport development.”
DeVillers is simultaneously advocating a plan
aimed at getting Canadians more fitness conscious.
He’s also thinking about establishing a
central fundraising unit which would disseminate
dollars to the sport organizations. But none of
this happens overnight, and the winter sports
are sending urgent messages about Vancouver-Whistler.
Says Dale Henwood, president of Calgary-based
Canadian Sport Centre: “We are gold medallists
in making plans, but our ability to implement
them is mid-to-back of the pack. It takes dollars.”
On
Tuesday, Canadian Olympic Committee CEO Chris
Rudge met with DeVillers
and told him: “If you have only $10 million
to give, then give it all to coaching.”
That said, Rudge believes it critical for the
health of Canadian amateur sport to look toward
2010 from two perspectives—a national sport
plan that would include training centres such
as the one proposed by Calgary
Olympic Development Association, and secondly,
the development of elite
athletes toward Vancouver-Whistler. “They
are not mutually exclusive,” he said Tuesday
night.
This
past summer, the COC announced a controversial
plan to identify athletes with the optimum chances
of success in the Olympic Games, and divert $3
million of funding to them exclusively. In November,
the COC board will consider another spicy proposal—to
relax its strict, hotly debated team-selection
standards. There’s a further proposal to
maintain the rigid standards for summer sports
but loosen them for the winter sports.
In theory, by sending more winter athletes to
the 2006 Games in Turin, Italy, the odds of producing
champions for Vancouver-Whistler would be improved.
Ken Read of Alpine Canada is one proponent of
that idea. “It gets into the debate of what
the standards mean and what they do to enhance
performance,” Rudge said. “From my
perspective I haven’t seen an area of life
endeavour where, if you lower the standard, the
performance goes up. On the other hand, the argument
is made that a kid’s exposure to one Games
helps psychologically for the bigger show down
down the road.”
DeVillers
seeks up to a 50 per cent increase for the amateur
sport system, which is presently funded to about
$90 million.
“The consensus is, it takes 10 to 12 years
to train an Olympic-calibre athlete and we have
seven, so we better have done some things right
up to now or else we have a major problem,”
he said.
Prior
to Lillehammer in 1994, and Sydney in 2000, Norway
and Australia respectively identified sports with
the best medal chances and channeled
money toward training in those specific sports.
Sports considered longshots
for medals—such as ski jumping and biathlon
would be for Canada— received scant resources
by comparison. DeVillers agrees with dedicating
resources, but curdles at the thought of discrimination.
“I think you go to the athlete, his coach,
trainer and equipment man and say, ‘OK,
what do you need to get to the podium?’
“ DeVillers said. “Is it a new sled,
better technique, a new masseuse or psychologist
. . . what is your specific need? Then you say,
‘here’s the money to do it.’
If you do that across the board with your contenders,
you’re going to see the results. That’s
the COC’s preoccupation, and we support
that 100 per cent. But we need to look beyond
as well to that broader base.”
Whatever the philosophy adopted, what’s
accepted is, Olympic performances of late have
disappointed the country. Progress is required.
“I always say, if you do what always been
done, you get what you’ve always got,”
Rudge said, following his two-hour meeting with
DeVillers.
Read
points to the Americans dedicating $40 million
to the training of winter athletes across the
board for 2002 -- opposed to the Norwegian and
Australian plans. The U.S. team reaped a record
medal harvest by result. “Because they realized
that’s what would make the Salt Lake City
Games not just successful, but wildly successful,”
Read said. He argues some sports—bobsleigh
for example—can develop a medal contender
from scratch in four years. It’s not too
late, he insists, but it’s getting there.
“We can in 6 1/2 years develop a team that
will be right there with other top winter nations.
Absolutely. The Americans proved it,” he
said. “Do we want to have the Americans
figure out the Winter Games better than we can?
Come on, Canada. What we need is the leadership
in sport, in the private sector and government
to make it a priority to invest early, to invest
now, when it can truly make a difference, rather
than waiting until the 11th hour.”
Henwood advocates a high-performance secretariat
working at arm’s length from the government
and the COC. Its mission would be to turn Canada’s
Olympic performance around—to produce medals.
Referring to the November COC vote, he thinks
of some 70 people representing the entire breadth
of sports in this country, and realizes nothing
can be resolved amicably. “The weakness
is central leadership,” he said. “Until
control (of funds) is given to an independent
group focused on high performance, there’s
a problem.” The trick now is securing those
funds, whether from government or the private
sector.
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