The feast this week has, of course, been substantially more satisfying and more gratifying than last week’s famine for Canada’s Olympic squad.
After collecting exactly zero medals in Week 1, our athletes entered competition this morning with 15 — three of them gold. They also climbed into a 12th-place tie in the medal standings, which is noteworthy because the Canadian Olympic Committee had set a pre-Games objective of finishing among the top 16 countries.
When all is said and done in Beijing this weekend, Canadians won’t need to bury their heads in shame. There won’t be any countries you’ve never heard of ahead of Canada in the standings. And we’ll wind up well ahead of many other proud and prominent nations, including Sweden, Austria and Greece.
We will not be red-faced. We will not be humiliated. We will not be embarrassed.
Still, while the Canadian team will leave Beijing with more hardware than its predecessors in 2004 and 2000 at Athens and Sydney, respectively, it will be hard-pressed to match the 22 medals Canada earned at Atlanta in the 1996 Summer Games. And it will come nowhere close to the Canadian-best 44 medals amassed at Los Angeles in 1984.
“It’s a shame, frankly, because we really could be doing much better in Beijing,” lamented Jane Roos, founder of a decade-old charity devoted to raising funds for Canada’s Olympians.
“Our athletes do everything on their own personal power to increase their chances of becoming medallists, but we as a nation could provide them with the direct funding that could enhance their performances. Our rowers, for example, need to eat 6,000 calories a day. How do you eat that much from $1,500 a month from the Government? Our rowers shouldn’t need to worry about how they’re going to pay their food bills. They shouldn’t need to worry about how they’ll pay their coach or how they’ll get to training camps.”
Roos has come up with an innovative eight-dollar donation/sponsorship program in a bid to help future Canadian Olympians.
“Our athletes are at a major disadvantage when it comes to funding,” she said. “Canadians need to realize that, if they donated a mere eight dollars, they could impact the lives of Canadian athletes and, indirectly, impact their own lives, because I guarantee our results at the next Olympics would be more impressive and more satisfying.”
Canadian kayaking king and flag-bearer Adam van Koeverden is personally donating $800 to his fellow Olympians.
“This,” van Koeverden said, “is a vital program for our athletes’ future.”
Check it out at www.canadianathletesnow.ca.
CFL Report
Be sure to check out this week’s CFL Report for a profile of Montreal Alouettes running back Avon Cobourne, who is in the midst of an historic season.
Marty York is Metro’s national sports columnist as well as an
instructor at the College of Sports Media in Toronto. You can also read
his columns at www.freemyteam.com.
He
can be heard each Wednesday night on Vancouver radio station CKNW with
Sportstalk host Dan Russell.
Contact Marty at marty.york@metronews.ca
