The Canadian Olympic Committee has more than $180-million in trust and should start using some of that money to subsidize our athletes, according to the most prominent private fundraiser for amateur athletes in this country.
Jane Roos, who has in the past decade provided hundreds of thousands of dollars to our Olympians from donations to her www.canadianathletesnow.ca website, told Metro in an interview yesterday that she knows “for a fact” the COC is keeping quiet about its bulky trust fund.
“Even though the COC constantly cries poor,” Roos said, “they have plenty of money to give to our athletes. That’s not common knowledge, but it’s the truth.”
Roos was irked yesterday by a Globe and Mail story in which COC chief Chris Rudge, reflecting on Canada’s performance at the Beijing Olympics this month, was quoted as saying he is appealing to Prime Minister Stephen Harper for $30-million in order to make Canada more competitive at the next Summer Games, in 2012 at London.
“Rudge should get the money from the government, yes,” Roos said, “but use some of the $180-million-plus the COC has in trust, too. What is that money put aside for? You can never get a straight answer from the COC. There’s no accountability. There’s no transparency within the system.
“But that money’s there, for sure. Most of it came from Calgary (the 1988 Winter Olympics). So what’s the COC doing with all of it? Why are our athletes not getting enough money to compete properly?”
Metro could not reach Rudge for answers yesterday – sources said he was unavailable because he was travelling – but Roos said she wonders why the COC needs five offices.
“They have offices in Calgary, Toronto, Montreal, Ottawa and Vancouver,” Roos said. “What for? The U.S. Olympic committee has only one office. Does the COC need all the money it has to operate five offices or what? They just don’t talk about it.”
The COC does talk about the fact that, for the first time, it’s rewarding Canadian medal winners with cash. The three gold medallists in Beijing will receive $20,000 each. The nine silver medallists get $15,000 and the six bronze medallists, $10,000.
But Roos insists there’s still plenty of cash left to fund Canadian athletes for Olympic Games in the future.
“Our athletes won medals in Beijing despite the terrible system we have,” she said. “Canadians realize now more than ever that our athletes are underfunded. But the COC has to stop using smoke and mirrors all the time and must stop doing a disservice to our athletes. Canada deserves better.”
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
