Quote:
Originally Posted by flamesaresmokin
I get tired of people ragging on these athletes who owe the average person nothing. Infact, unless you attend some of these events or watch them any other time then the olympics I think you have no right to complain about performance.
Fact is, these athletes work harder to get to this level then 90% of the population could even imagine.....training as hard as they do while working jobs to afford to go to event like these means they are working 80 hours a week just to make ends meet.
Canada is improving its abysmal funding system but its not enough to see a dramatic increase. The system needs to fund these people more then just for olympic medals. In every one of the medal leading countries the majority of the athletes are not working jobs to support themselves and can just focus on training. Its expensive for the government and tax payers but I'd rather see that happen then money being thrown into useless programs or rebates.
As far as i'm concerned i'm happy if they are out there setting new pb's and national records. The medals would be nice, but be realistic....unless funding reaches levels of other countries on a consistent basis, raising expectations isn't fair.
|
I don't think that you get my point here. Its not that the I think these people owe me anything, or that everyone there ought to win a gold medal. My point is simply that its frustrating and disappointing to see medal hope after medal hope slip away.
I'm happy to see the Canadian records fall as well....but when that still leaves you a few seconds off the podium its a muted happiness. I also question how much of that improvement is due to improving technology and training in general though?
As far as the funding goes I think that Baumann interview alludes to an interesting issue in Canadian sport when he basically says "whats the point of adding another $500k to the funding if there are not capable people to run the program?". (Not a direct quote, but quoted to make this sort of readable).