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Originally Posted by North East Goon
I think the funding should be allocated to those that win. Give them an incentive to medal and you will be handsomely rewarded. I am talking from the gov't standpoint on this one. I love that the private companies such as Visa are stepping up to help the athletes.
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I don't think the monetary rewards make that big a difference; usually these people have advanced to the international level by having a fierce competitive desire. Let's say you offer $250,000 for winning a gold, and Van Koeverden wins two. He probably would have won those medals without the incentive, and you've just spent $500,000 that won't actually improve Canada's medal prospects.
I'd rather see a reward system for the program that produces the medal: If Koeverden wins two golds, the national kayaking / canoe program gets $500,000, in addition to their regular funding. This is money better spent, because it's will go back into training and development programs. It also forces national programs to focus on medal results as opposed to personal bests or canadian records. Of course, there's the implicit unfairness that a sport like swimming or rowing could theoretically get millions from a program like this, while one like softball maxes out at $250,000.
I agree with DA about funding athletes at an earlier age. Of course, you need to be extremely selective, you can't fund any girl who does well at provincials (assume that you take the top 2 in each province in each age group and spend $25,000 per year on them, and that comes to $4 million for the ages of 8 and 16). You need to identify the top four or so nationally in each age group. The rest need to continue to work on their own until they get to a level where they draw the attention of the national program. Again, there's something implicitly unfair there, but these are the sorts of things we need to do to produce medals.