athletics canada strategy

[octothorp]

Before the Olympics, Athletics Canada had a somewhat controversial plan to try to produce better results at Athens: use a stricter qualifying standard than what the Olympics themselves use, so that only those Canadian athletes with a realistic chance of medalling would be sent to the games. And now, with only a couple races left with Canadian content, we have zero athletics medals, and I don't think we even had any top-five performances, either. Hopefully our last hurdler/1500 runner can change that. The optomist might say that having fifteen athletes not win any medals is better than having 30 athletes not win any medals, but zero is still zero. The more athletes you send, the better your chances of someone sneaking in for a medal. I suspected from the beginning that it was more about saving money than about producing better results. And honestly, given the generally poor funding for athletics, saving money is a defensible position. What do others think? Was it a flawed strategy?

[troutman]

I think the problem is more that Canadian athletes are now "clean", and most other countries are not.

[octothorp]

Well, that probably has something to do with it, too.

Given that we've got Dick Pound on our side, we should be able to use it to our advantage, the way that the Egyptians used a position of authority to get boxing medals, or romanians used a position of authority to get gymnastics medals.

[Sylvanfan]

We're using Dick Pound to beef up judging for Figure Skating medals next Olympics!! :P
Come on everyone knows that.