Olympic Superpowers That Have More Medals Than Canada...

[North East Goon]

I was under the impression that most of our funding from all levels is being heavily leaned towards our Winter athletes right now. Due to the games in Vancouver. I am going to guess 3 medals total for Canada.

[Hemmer]

One individual, Michael Phelps, has won more gold medals (11) in the last 2 olympics than the entire Canadian Summer Olympic teams have won dating back to 1996. Amazing.

[Cowboy89]

Originally Posted by Muta

So then why does it seem like the rest of the world is trying to field the best competitors they can, and are actually winning medals in the process? Maybe we know something the rest of the world doesn't.

If we can't even field a winning team in 'BS sports', how the hell are we supposed to be taken seriously right from the get-go? Surely these sports would be the ones most easy to train for, and win at.

Quite frankly we don't need to overpower the world in the Olympics to consider our country a great place. China, the US, and in the past Communist countries need to win these medals for propaganda purposes. This is why the Chinese have 11 year old gymnists that they fudge documents in order to prove they're 16 (The minimum age to compete in womens gymnastics), why the US in the past has taken steps to ensure their athletes are clean for testing days but don't care about doping the rest of the year, and why Communist bloc countries injected many female weightlifters and other female competitors with enough testostrone to levels exceeding most men.

The whole thing is a joke and my sense of nationalism is actually enriched when my country isn't the one partaking in excessive garbage to win the most medals. We have much greater priorities with our tax dollars and corporations their donations than Olympic athletes.

[The Yen Man]

Originally Posted by Cowboy89

Especially medals in BS sports that hardly anyone cares about when there's not an Olympics. "Ooooo we are falling behind the rest of the world because our women's sychronized divers are not competitive with the Chinese!" or "damn our national pride should be zero because our rhythmic gymnastics team blows."

And that right there is basically why Canadian athletes still get so little funding, and why Canada does so poorly in the Olympics. The majority of the people honestly don't really care, and do not want their money going towards these so called "BS" sports. So if that's the attitude, then people really have no right to complain when Canada comes up short on the medals.

Personally, I wouldn't mind if more tax dollars were put into developing athletes, but I guess I'm in the minority here.

[Jagger]

Well on the plus side, for me at least, Britain has 7 medals so far! From what I've heard though they are bitching about that over there. Australians are mad about finishing 3rd, Americans are probably upset that China has more gold medals than them. It just seems to be that people like to bitch and complain. They're never happy.

Whatever. A couple of weeks after these Olympics most people won't care how many medals Canada won.

[wookster]

Originally Posted by FlamesAddiction

Sounds like excuses to me. You realize that athletes in most countries get almost zero funding... I mean, look at a lot of these little African, Latin American, and Asian countries that seem to do well relative to their size. Many of those athletes get little support from their governments. Personally, I would love to see a level playing field where a country's wealth and ability to spend doesn't affect how many medals a country can win.

Honestly, does winning medals at the Olympics really make a big difference to the average citizen? I don't think it changes our lives at all one way or the other. For the people directly involved, maybe, but not for most of us.

Personally, I think there is a lot to be said for a country that can get past something superficial like piling up medals.

Actually I have to disagree with a lot of this. The country's that are the summer Olympic powerhouses like China, Australia, Japan, Russia and the US get complete funding. They were talking about it on NBC the night before last during their olympic coverage. Australia poured massive funds into their Olympic program before they hosted the olympics in Sydney and it showed as they had their highest medal count ever at 58.

I think that the medal count means a lot to the average citizen. If you hear people talking about Canada at the olympics do you hear them saying "so and so finished 20th but did a personal best..."?? No, you hear..."we have ZERO medals after day 5..." Not to mention how much of a source of pride that it is to compete against the world and actually win.

I agree that it is a great story when someone from a little known country can walk away from the olympics with a gold medal. This is a great for that country. If a person from Uzbekistan finished in the middle of the pack....who cares, who notices....but when they win, then the world notices and people start to say, "where is this country?" and actually take notice of it and learn about it.

What irks me is that we send hundreds of atheletes to the summer olympics to basically be spectators when our country has the means to be able to train them to be among the best. One swimmer from the US is going to win more medals then our entire country.

I know most people don't care about the summer olympics but this is why IMO...we suck at them anyway, why bother...

At least we will kick butt in 2010 in Vancouver....

[Ozy_Flame]

Actually here's something to make the frustration hurt a little less.

In the 1988 Winter Olympics here in Calgary, we were only the second country EVER to not win a single gold medal in any events as the host nation (Yugoslavia being the other). And the Winter Olympics is Canada's niche, too.

Thinking about that, it doesn't sting now as much as it must have stung back then.

[FlamesAddiction]

Originally Posted by The Yen Man

And that right there is basically why Canadian athletes still get so little funding, and why Canada does so poorly in the Olympics. The majority of the people honestly don't really care, and do not want their money going towards these so called "BS" sports. So if that's the attitude, then people really have no right to complain when Canada comes up short on the medals.

Personally, I wouldn't mind if more tax dollars were put into developing athletes, but I guess I'm in the minority here.

But holy cow, could you imagine if the government announced that they were going to put millions into rhythmic gymnastics so that we could compete with the Chinese and Americans for medals? People would freak out.

I'd rather them fund an arena for Edmonton.

[Ozy_Flame]

Originally Posted by FlamesAddiction

But holy cow, could you imagine if the government announced that they were going to put millions into rhythmic gymnastics so that we could compete with the Chinese and Americans for medals? People would freak out.

I'd rather them fund an arena for Edmonton.

Better than a useless gun registry.

[troutman]

When judging Olympic performance I think it is useful to look at medals won per capita. Historically, Canada and the US have done about the same.


http://www.nationmaster.com/graph/sp...ime-per-capita

Finland is #1.

Canada and US are doing about the same at #29 and #28.

[FlamesAddiction]

Originally Posted by Ozy_Flame

Better than a useless gun registry.

Sure, no argument here, but I could think of a hundred ways to spend the money better than either of those. And at least with the gun registry, as big of a waste as it was/is, the money was put back into our own economy.

[arsenal]

As a former amateur athlete, I have an obvious biased towards providing more funding to athletes.
The amount of time, effort and sacrifice that these people put into pursuing their dreams of representing their country on the worlds biggest stage is astronomical.

As a country, we should care how well we do at the Olympics. It's part of having national pride. That's why we care so much about the world jr, and how well the men's and woman's hockey teams do during the winter Olympics. Why can't that extend to the summer games as well?

All I am hearing is this country does this, and that, and we have no hope against them because of doping, age fixing etc, so why even bother?

So if we can provide our athletes with the means, time, and support to be competitive on the world stage, and do it cleanly and legally, would that not make you feel better as a Canadian? That we can produce athletes that are able to compete against, and over come countries that are cheating?

[RougeUnderoos]

Originally Posted by FlamesAddiction

Sounds like excuses to me.

It sounds like whining to me.

If I wanted to go kayaking every day instead of going to a job that actually pays, I wouldn't gripe at any amount of money someone gave me to do it.

I like to see Canadians do well and hear the inspirational stories and all that but really, my pride and our 'national pride' is not and should not be tied to how good one Canadian happens to be at an obscure sport that very few of us will ever have the chance to try.

Kind of funny that the Americans kick ass at everything but in reality they are the fattest people in the world. We, on the other hand, do lousy at the Olympics, but we are the second fattest people in the world and proud of that!

[Hemmer]

I think I heard that Canada has the 7th largest team at the Beijing Olympics. For me, I would propose that instead of funding and sending over so many 'middle of the pack' athletes.. we should focus on the elite ones and do what we can to develop them instead.

[Gozer]

I'd rather put more money into amateur or recreational sports than Olympic or international.

Spend our time and money supporting average Canadian citizens doing non-elite sports.

[Ozy_Flame]

Come to think of it, alot of Canadians may have been soured over the whole Ben Johnson incident and the national embarrassment that was, and in light of recent steroids / enhancement scandals in sports like baseball, cycling, etc.

[Russic]

Perhaps I'm in the minority here because this is a sporting forum, but I fall into the category of simply not caring. I know it's quite heartless of me to say so as these athletes pour their lives into the games, but I really would rather my money not go to development of teams. Yes, for 2 weeks every 4 years everybody gets up in arms about how Canada is so terrible at the olympics, but as soon as it's over nobody gives a damn. Even our athletes who win don't get a whole lot of exposure once the games end.

I'd much rather the money go to something a little more useful to the Canadian public. I just don't understand what return we get on this investment. Even if we came home with 25 gold medals I'd still question how useful that is to us as a country.

[North East Goon]

Originally Posted by Hemmer

I think I heard that Canada has the 7th largest team at the Beijing Olympics. For me, I would propose that instead of funding and sending over so many 'middle of the pack' athletes.. we should focus on the elite ones and do what we can to develop them instead.

This seems like the most reasonable thing to do. Success in world meets and World championships should get you the funding you require.

[The Ditch]

I just don't understand the argument about spending tax payer dollars. I'm always blown away by the CBC getting a billion dollars a year from tax payers you don't think you could take 10% of that and give it to athletes?

[GirlySports]

Originally Posted by Ozy_Flame

Actually here's something to make the frustration hurt a little less.

In the 1988 Winter Olympics here in Calgary, we were only the second country EVER to not win a single gold medal in any events as the host nation (Yugoslavia being the other). And the Winter Olympics is Canada's niche, too.

Thinking about that, it doesn't sting now as much as it must have stung back then.

We've done that twice! We never won a gold medal in Montreal either.
Of course it's not a really fair stat when you're hosting an Olympics games that has the Soviet Union and East Germany in it.