Countries that tend to do well in Olympic medal standings are the ones who limit their focus to a small number of medal rich events. Cuba would be a great example of this: despite being overall a very poor country, they won 27 medals at the last Olympics, with 19 of those medals coming in hand-to-hand combat events, such as boxing, wrestling, taekwando, and judo. Australia won 25 of their 49 medals in swimming and cycling.
If we're content to be a jack-of-all-trades, master-of-none country, the current approach is fine. If our big priority is the number of medals, we need to reduce the number of sports that the Olympic program funds, in favour of high-reward events. If we were to channel the majority of our funding into rowing and kayak/canoe, (chosen because we already do pretty well in them, and there are a lot of medals awarded) to the extent that we're a contender in every single event, that's 26 potential medals there. Of course, this would never be done, because it's inherently un-Canadian and would be perceived as unfair to many athletes out there. But many countries who outperform their population and GDP in terms of Olympic medals use a similar approach.
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