Debate: Why don’t Canadian athletes win more medals?

So far, Canadian competitors at the 2011 World Track & Field Championships have yet to wind up on the podium. Journalist Paul Gains’ provocative piece on cbc.ca today questions this lack of success – and supplies a bold explanation.

Comparing Canada’s results to the successes of smaller countries like Belgium, Cuba, and even Grenada, Gains throws down the gauntlet: “If these championships aren’t a wake-up call for Canadian athletes, coaches and officials, then they are either comatose or delusional.” His warning: “Canadians are in for a dull time next summer” in looking forward to success at the London Olympics.

Canadian heptathlete Jessica Zelinka: 5th in Beijing Olympics, 9th in Worlds this week - a best-ever for Canada

Gains has a point. Daegu so far hasn’t been a hot spot for Canadian competitors. No Canadian has come close to winning first, second, or third in any event. (Dylan Armstrong may yet buck this trend in the shot put.) The question is, why not? What’s the matter?

In answer, Gains raises two issues: motivation – “a desire to succeed” – and a national culture of hard work. He cites Kenya as a place where success has bred success, with Olympic champions continually inspiring young runners to take up the national tradition of world-class distance running. Gains is not convinced that the Canadian approach is as effective: “Our athletes,” he writes, “must lay down their mobile phones, cut back their Facebook and Twitter time, train harder, learn from the best, and have blind faith in whatever training program they receive. The alternative is to take up chess.”

In Canada, athletes in all sports (except ice hockey) are faced with some variation of this – what, query? accusation? – at some time in their competitive lives. The questions: Why aren’t they more successful on the world stage against the world’s best? Why do they sometimes sound happy just to be there, happy just to make the final, happy just to be representing Canada? Or – are they actually happy with 8^th or 12^th or 23^rd place? Are they maybe just being polite (yep, they’re Canadians) when Scott Russell interviews them for CBC-TV?

It’s a complex problem – but let’s look at it from the athlete’s point of view. As anyone who has ever been an elite performer knows, the time, expense, and commitment to the sport precludes much of anything else in life. From pre-teen years until the end of a career, training and competition take up most spare hours, compromising studies, employment, relationships, and anything approaching what most people call a balanced life.

The athletes I know have made this bargain willingly and are grateful for the chance to do what they love. But – as these online comments (from athletes) on the Paul Gains piece show – without a lot of financial support or public recognition, most athletes in Canada have found it hard to train and find world-class coaching and competition:

Are you trying to tell me that forcing our athletes to work at least full time hours at RONA stocking shelves, plus whatever other job they need to be financially stable, and then training with what little time they have left doesn’t equate to success at the highest levels of competition???? Do you think Usian Bolt stocks shelves at his local hardware store? Do you think any of the American athletes work multiple jobs to fund their training? We don’t even fund our athletes at the university level, which is why this athlete was forced to go to the States for a scholarship to further pursue athletic dreams (would have much rather stayed in Canada). We need to make a couple choices as a society. Do we care about sports that don’t place in or around snow/winter conditions? Do we actually want to be successful? Are we willing stand behind the people who can be successful for us? This article… impl(ies) our athletes don’t want to win, which is outrageous. Make a choice Canadians… Do we… actually give our athletes the opportunity to not be embarrassed at the international level? (Canada34)

Having trained with a number of Olympic level athletes, the contention that Canadian athletes lack a desire to succeed is an insult to many. Never mind shoe contracts and agents, let’s talk about sufficient support for our athletes. Yes facilities are important but so are opportunities for competition. We as a society have to make a choice. If we value events such as the Olympics and the IAAF champs AND want to make a good showing, then we have to invest in our athletes. As it stands now, Canadian athletes will be hard pressed to win any medals but it is not for lack of effort or lack of desire. Nor is it from spending too much time on facebook. (1500m Guy)

Here’s the reality: in Canada, unless you’re a hockey player, or a rare figure in another sport (Steve Nash? Clara Hughes or Donovan Bailey, maybe? Ken Read & Steve Podborski in their day?) you toil in obscurity in between Olympic Games or World Championships cycles, slogging out the hours with only other athletes and family aware of what you’re up to. And, yes, maybe also stocking shelves at RONA. Then, every four years for a week, the spotlight shines on you – and people who until the day previous had never heard the words parallel bars or heptathlon or snowboard-cross demand to know what’s wrong with Canadian athletes.

Canadian kayaker Adam van Koeverden won the World Championship in the K-1000 ten days ago. This guy has been a monster on the world stage for years. And this week, Canadian tennis player Vasek Pospisil, just 21, thrashed his opponent in a first-round match at the U.S. Open. Neither item made sports headlines; instead, Canadians were fed stories about the Philadephia Flyers’ off-season negotiations with contract holdouts and about NFL fantasy football picks.

Early in 2010, Sport Canada took some flak for its “Own the Podium” program – the program that yielded 14 gold medals at the Vancouver Winter Olympics, the most ever for a host nation. That program didn’t just throw money at the athletes it supported; it backed them in every way, with top-level coaching and competition, travel to international meets and championships, and a four-year focus on a singular goal: medals. The criticism? That the program was too elitist, too much about winning at all costs, too aggressive. This is where Paul Gains’ article strikes a real chord – in Canada, sometimes, national introspection and self-awareness (the very qualities that simultaneously make Canadians a nuanced, sophisticated, and multifaceted people) make it tough to just get out there and win.

But maybe the problem lies less with the athletes themselves than with the small-mindedness of some Canadian sport governing bodies, with the Canadian media’s obsessive focus on just a few (professional) sports, and – yep – with Canadian sports fans’ lack of interest in most other sports until it comes time, every four years, to wonder why the athletes aren’t doing better.

Both Canada34 and 1500m Guy in their comments above refer to a choice that Canada must make: to truly support amateur athletes (financially, yes, but also morally and publicly) – or to stop asking what’s wrong when they’re not on the podium. It’s way too late for Athletics Canada to truly kick things up for London. If Gains is right – and most likely he is – Canada won’t win many medals on the track. But if Canadians want their runners, throwers, and jumpers to do well in the Sao Paolo Olympics in 2016, that journey starts now. And – just like in Kenya – success needs the involvement of more than just the country’s athletes.