Ottawa promises cash to boost medal count.

The Record (Kitchener, Cambridge and Waterloo) - Scoring up to $40 million of federal funds for new sports facilities at Canada Olympic Park should boost the country’s medal take at the 2010 Vancouver Olympic Games and beyond, proponents of the grant said yesterday.

Backed by a host of elite Canadian athletes beneath the flaming 1988 Winter Games cauldron, Industry Minister Jim Prentice announced the infusion that will combine with $69 million from the province to build the Centre of Sports Excellence. “The importance of these facilities to the people of Canada will be borne out time and time again,” said Prentice.

Construction on a complex to include an international-size hockey rink and another of North American dimensions, along with a 40,000-sq.-ft.-high performance fitness facility, is expected to be complete sometime in 2009.

Calgary Olympic Development Association officials had hoped construction would begin last spring to take advantage of the lead-up time to the 2010 Games, where they hope to finish first in the medal standings.

Nonetheless, Olympic gold medallist speed skater Catriona Le May Doan said the new digs should have an immediate impact once they are finished. “It’s to be fully prepared for 2010,” she said.

CODA is still seeking corporate donations to reach the $276-million budget goal for the project that will also ultimately include a 100,000-sq.-ft. office building for administrators.

Hockey Canada president Bob Nicholson said the development will follow the lead of other countries’ policies of seamless organization that have produced athletic success.

“Athletes, coaches and administrators will be together all the time,” said Nicholson, adding the funding infusion will ensure the Olympic park’s future relevance. “We can see this whole mountain will change in the next 15-20 years.” The new centre will bring together a host of sports sciences under one roof.

Prentice said the investment will also be a boost for southern Alberta’s economy while raising the profile of healthy lifestyles.

NEW FARNHAM GLACIER FACILITIES KEEP NATIONAL ALPINE SKI RACERS IN CANADA.

Upcoming Sport Presentations at Mt. Royal College.

a) Ian Bird from Sport Matters (www.sportmatters.ca) will be speaking in the Jenkins Theatre on Wed., Octo 17th at 2:00. This is open to the public. Ian will be addressing two topics:

- Given that Alberta is leading Canada, with economic and political hegemony expected for at least the next 3-5 years, how is sport maximizing this opportunity?

- Sport Matters Group has recently argued that sport in Canada is moving – or ought to be moving – towards a new economics. How can we work together to create a new economics that generates new forms of capital, strengthened partnerships with corporate Canada, and supply side economic policy frameworks that assist organizations and leaders in achieving financial growth.

b) Panel Presentation on Media and Sport, Wednesday, October 31st from 2:00-3:30 pm. The panel will be open to the public with the following panelists already confirmed:

Jermaine Franklin from TSN, Bruce Dowbiggin from the Calgary Herald, Jock Wilson from QR77, Eric Francis from the Calgary Sun and Jack FM, Chris Dornan from CODA and Joslin Green, Publisher of Player Magazine.

Potential Questions could include:
- Is there a potential of social networking websites to take value out of sports?
- How do changing tastes and media consumption habits impact the audience for sport and, consequently, the business models and revenue streams of media and marketing organisations?
- How does the emergence of sites including YouTube where the users  by-pass the established sports media value chain by posting content which can be viewed free by audiences anywhere in the world have an impact?
- Can can sport retain and build its value and relevance as content in a digital media world?
- How will developing technologies impact business models and advertising opportunities around sport?
- Who will hold the balance of power in sports media?
- What’s the role of public broadcasters in the future of sport?
-  Is new media a lifeline or concrete boots for ‘minority’ sports?
- Will new media mean new competition and further inflation in sports rights fees?
- How has the industry evolved and changed; what are the pros and cons?

c) Dr. Steve Norris from the Canadian Sport Centre Calgary will talk about the Long Term Athlete Development on Monday, Oct 22, 2:00 pm in the Jenkins Theatre.

COACHING ASSOCIATION OF CANADA Announces the 2007 Petro-Canada Coaching Excellence Award Winners.

OTTAWA – The Coaching Association of Canada today announced the names of the 30 coaches who are the 2007 recipients of the Petro-Canada Coaching Excellence Awards.

The awards will be presented during Petro-Canada Sport Leadership sportif, scheduled to take place in Halifax, October 12-14, 2007. The Sport Leadership Awards Ceremony will take place on Friday, October 12, 2007, at 7:00 p.m. at the Cunard Centre.

This year, these prestigious awards recognize coaches whose athletes won medals over the past year at open world championships. “At Petro-Canada, we dream big, and that’s why we support coaches who do the same,” says Steven Keith, Petro-Canada’s director of Olympic and Community Partnerships. “We are proud to support the 2007 Coaching Excellence Award winners.”

The winners include many Calgary based coaches:

Scott Cranham of Calgary, coach of Blythe Hartley, silver medallist on the 1 metre springboard.

Melody Davidson of Oyen, Alta., coach of the victorious women’s national hockey team.

Paul Kristofic, of Toronto, coach of downhill silver medallist Jan Hudec.

Marcel Lacroix of Calgary, coach of Denny Morrison, silver medallist in 500 metres and 1500 metres at the world all round championships and 1500 metres bronze medallist Christine Nesbitt.

Neal Marshall of Calgary, coach of Cindy Klassen, winner of bronze medals in 500 metres and 3000 metres at the world all round championships.

Andy Murray of Calgary, coach of Canada’s world champion men’s ice hockey team.

Tony Smith of Cochrane, Alta., coach of Kyle Shewfelt, floor bronze medallist in 2006.

Xiuli Wang of Calgary, coach of Kristina Groves, bronze medallist in 1500 metres and 3000 metres at the world single distances championships.

Own The Podium expects more hardware from Canada’s winter athletes.

The Canadian Press Byline: BY DONNA SPENCER - CALGARY _ The head of Own The Podium expects an increase in the number of World Cup medals Canada’s athletes win this winter.

Canada captured 135 World Cup medals during the 2006-07 winter sport season and Dr. Roger Jackson feels the country is capable of reaching 160 or 165 in 2007-08.

Own The Podium (OTP) is a $110-million, five-year program of corporate and government funding designed to help Canada finish first in the medal standings at the 2010 Olympics in Vancouver. “It is one of the most important years to demonstrate how well we’re doing,” Jackson said Tuesday at a news conference at Canada Olympic Park. “I’m quite convinced we’re going to have more World Cup medals than we did last year.”

The 135 World Cup and 28 world championship medals won last season put Canada second behind Germany in the world, according to OTP.

OTP will spend $23.5 million during the 2007-08 winter sport season and $18 million of it is going to sport federations that are producing athletes with medal potential in 2010. The remaining money goes into athlete support services and recruitment, coaching programs and research and development in sport science.

Alpine skiing, ski cross, curling, figure skating, freestyle skiing, speedskating, luge and Paralympic sports will receive funding increases over last winter. Snowboarding, bobsleigh, skeleton and hockey keep the same funding levels. Biathlon and cross-country skiing saw a decrease in funding. Ski jumping and Nordic combined will receive none. “The reason simply being they don’t have medal potential athletes,” Jackson said of the latter two sports.

Hard financial numbers for each sport will be released at a later date after they are approved by Sport Canada, which is funding a large part of this year’s budget, Jackson said. But speedskaters, for example, which produced 15 medals at the long- and short-track world championship last winter, will see an increase between $300,000 and $400,000, which means about $1.8 million will go to Speed Skating Canada.

“In our sport, of course the expectations are really high in terms of results, but we have proven we can deliver the number of medals that is expected from our sport,” Speed Skating president Jean Dupres said.

Canada’s curlers, hockey players, freestyle skiers and speedskaters produced 23 world championship medals in 2006-07. “Those four sports really demonstrated that they’re right at the top of their game,” Jackson said.

Hockey’s allocation from OTP remained about the same at $1.1 million and most of that goes to the women’s team because the men’s team is not a full-time program. Alpine skiing, snowboarding, figure skating and bobsled each won one world championship medal.

For sports that didn’t produce any, such as skeleton, luge, cross-country skiing and biathlon, there is still the potential for an athlete to win a medal in 2010, which is why they are continue to be funded. “Some of the ones who got zero, like skeleton, we’re expecting three or four medals that could come out of that program by 2010 and that had three medals in 2006,” Jackson said.

Nordic skiing and ski jumping are not left high and dry, he said, as they have received grants from the Canadian Olympic Committee and $50,000 each out of an Olympic coaching endowment fund overseen by OTP. “They are not ignored and they do have the opportunity to demonstrate they are still making progress,” he said.

Ski jumping would have received OTP funding this year had women’s ski jumping been approved as an Olympic sport for 2010 by the International Olympic Committee. Canada’s female ski jumpers have finished in the top-10 internationally. “It was really a perfect sport for us to invest in because we would have seen tremendous growth,” Jackson said.

OTP’s budget in the first of the five years was $19 million and last year it was $21.5 million. “We’ll probably see a larger amount of funding when it comes next fiscal year,” Jackson said.

OTP announced two new programs Tuesday: a $250,000 coaching development program and a $100,000 video technology component.

Short-track speedskating coach Jonathon Cavar hopes the coaching program will allow he and other coaches to learn more about how South Korean speedskaters are trained because they represent the world power in the sport.

“We’re looking at, in the next few months, trying to find somebody to bring in to help us, either from Korea or who has worked within the system,” Cavar said. “It’s about understanding your opponents.”

Each sport will get a video technology specialist trained in Dartfish, a video tool used across all sports to analyze an athlete’s movements. “Video has always been very evident in our sport, but now it’s taking it to a higher level of the complexity of what’s available and we have to have someone who really, truly knows how to use it,” Alpine Canada president Ken Read said.

Sports groups step up push for funds. Survey turns to paying for new facilities.

Eva Ferguson, Calgary Herald - Community sport leaders hope a new survey conducted by the Calgary Sport Council will go beyond identifying the need for more facilities and instead address how they will be built and paid for.

The Calgary Sport Council will meet with a number of sport leaders in focus-group sessions over the next two weeks to discuss the parameters of a new survey examining the city’s recreational needs.

The focus groups, representing up to 24 different sports, will discuss how the sport council’s survey should be conducted—including what kinds of questions should be asked and how they should be worded.

But Ken Moore, past-president of Calgary Minor Hockey, says the survey needs to address whether city hall needs to commit to funding future facilities and how much pressure they’ll put on the province to help out. And with a fall election looming, Moore adds, “I’ll be asking my alderman what does he plan to do to address the problem.”

Ald. Ray Jones called for a report earlier this year on how many indoor and outdoor sports facilities are needed in Calgary after an ice study showed a critical shortage of hockey arenas.

The study, released in January, said Calgary needs six additional ice surfaces in the next five years to deal with serious recreational shortages in the deep south and the northwest. Up to 12 are needed in the next 10 years.

But Jones says the city also has to look at the need for soccer and dryland training facilities for summer. “Lethbridge has more than we do. They have two dryland training facilities, we essentially have none.”

Jones adds that when budget deliberations begin in November, he’ll press for a separate fund to be put aside for recreational facilities. “We’ve spent enough on roads and transit, we’ve spent billions. We need to spend on facilities, too.”

Tim Bjornson, executive director of the Calgary Sport Council, vows the survey results will lead to a strategic plan which will be presented to council next June.
A large part of that plan, he says, will address funding issues—how to build and pay for new facilities.

Cindy Violi, marketing co-ordinator for the South Fish Creek Recreation Association, says the facility shortage is dire with South Fish Creek bursting at the seams. And while the community is looking to twin that facility, raising funds has been a huge challenge.

“The big question is always: Where do you get the money to build these facilities? “And we’re busier than ever. We’re constantly turning people away, there’s not enough gym times, there’s not enough ice times.”

After the sport council meets with its focus groups, it expects to approach the general public early next year in a random telephone interview asking Calgarians their thoughts on sport needs.