Why on earth do we suck so much at certain sports?

[browna]

Originally Posted by JayP

But when he finishes 9th in his best discipline it's Canada's fault for giving him too much money and better coaches? Why isn't this money holding him back in World Cup races, but only at the Olympics?

Cut this losers funding and see how far he gets.

He can then go and train with his soulmate Davis from the US again, and then complain about how the US treats their athletes better as he drops out of the top ten in the world.

Complete, ungrateful, idiot.

[Pastiche]

At this moment I would like to recognize our Olympic hero to-date: John Montgomery.

That guy is effin awesome.

[BandWagoner]

What annoys me is the fact when you screw up, they don't continue on.

Espcially in a sport like speed skating. Yesterday in the 1500 m, Kalyna Roberge in the 1500m semifinal wiped out early but didn't get up to finish the race.

She kind of just looked like "Oh, damn, I wiped out. But I'll slowly get up and push to finish". Then what happens? Three other skaters get wiped out. And all of a sudden she would have been in third if she even tried to get up and pushed hard right away. She might have not finished to advance, but you never know if more people could have wiped out. It's just kind of embarassing the other three who wiped out were pretty much still ahead of her because they got up as quickly as possible.

Is this the common mentality of athletes at this level? "Oh well, if I didn't get it perfect, I don't have a chance so I won't try as hard anymore"

[koop]

Do some of you lose sleep over a poor Olympic performance? It really seems like some people are genuinely angry, and are very quick to call athletes chokers and losers when they never follow the sport at any other time and have no idea what the athlete is capable of. I enjoy watching Canadians win medals at the Olympics, but I think it's ridiculous to label them chokers and losers without knowing anything about them or their competitors.

[T@T]

Originally Posted by Devils'Advocate

Curlers are filthy rich?

Ok, maybe just a little "dirty"
Some teams earn big money threw sponsorships and of course the purses in tourneys. I think Martin's team won $300k at the brier this year.

[Muta]

Originally Posted by Pastiche

At this moment I would like to recognize our Olympic hero to-date: John Montgomery.

That guy is effin awesome.

Agreed. Love the fact that he's all about the beer, too, and in his interview last night someone threw him mickey of whiskey and he pockets it. That was awesome!! Now the whole world sees how much fun we have as young Canadians who go out and compete hard, and play hard too. Love it.

[Schmidtyboosh]

For those who think that all our funding goes to hockey and curling...WAKE UP!!! Have you seen fees for kids to play hockey? And it is all paid by parents and TEAM fundraising, not government funds. Hockey coaches in Canada up to the Junior A Level (and not all Junior A teams may I add) are not paid at all, they are volunteers.

OTP paid nothing to the Mens hockey team, and probably nothing to the curling teams cause they are all professional. I'm also sure that Hockey Canada takes a majority of the financial responsibility for the womens team.

So where did all the OTP money go? That's right all these other sports that IMO, we have choked at so far.

examples
Hollingsworth
Wortherspooin
the Hamil brothers
Both Alpine teams
Chan
Morrison
and who else am I missing?

Most Canadian athletes have no swagger, and they have that happy to just compete attitude. It doesn't matter how much money you pump into programs if the athletes don't have the win at all costs attitude, prime example Shawn White. That guy already have the gold won, could have just went right down the middle of the pipe to the end, but no. He goes and throws the sickest ride anyone has ever seen for fun, and to wow the crowd.

Jen Hial was clearly upset that the LOST the gold. She didn't win the silver, and she will tell you that!

Thats the attitude Canadian athletes need.

[Devils'Advocate]

Originally Posted by fotze

These athletes need to show the same winning attitude I do in my life. I don't half ass anything, I am totally uncanadian, second best is not an option for me. Disregard the fact I spend too much time here because I am ultra successful, surely the top percentile in the world at my profession.

I'm willing to bet that Jon Montgomery spends more time goofing off in bars than I do....

That said, I get what you are trying to say. I do take my job extremely seriously and try to do it to the best of my abilities, but I'm nowhere near the best system designer in the world. Not the top 3, not the top 3,000.

But in this case, it is these people's jobs to be in the top 3. It's their job to compete. It's their job to be ranked against other competitors. And if they take a paycheque and fail, they can be criticized. If I design a system that fails, it may not be as public a failure, but I'd certainly be under fire from management.

[Sparks]

Originally Posted by redforever

The last 15 to 20 years, Phys Ed etc has almost vanished from a lot of North American schools and now the results of this (out of shape young kids) are starting to show. I think parents now are encouraging their children to be more physically active.

Plus, factor in all the video games, etc. We have raised a generation of couch potatoes.

1964 Winter Olympics - 3 medals (of 103)
1972 Winter Olympics - 1 medal (of 105)
1976 Winter Olympics - 4 medals (of 111)
1980 Winter Olympics - 2 medals (of 115)

If those Baby Boomers didn't waste all their time sitting in front of the Television, driving around in their fancy cars, rotting their brains with Rock music and instead, worked their butts off in good honest jobs, we would have won more medals. Bunch of coddled slackers.

[valo403]

Pretty simple really, our best athletes gravitate to other sports.

Austria typically dominates in skiing because they treat it like we treat hockey, the lack of medals in the early stages of the olympics was front page news and a total disaster for them. The sport museum in Helsinki has a large display dedicated to a former ski jumper like we would have to Gretzky, and the Austrian guy who seems to always win ski jumping gets met by massive crowds at the airport. When a sport is elevated to that level in a nation athletes will gravitate towards it, it becomes the thing that young people want to be involved in. We have that in different sports, you can't expect to have it in every sport without mass funding (which is the US model).

[valo403]

Originally Posted by Schmidtyboosh

For those who think that all our funding goes to hockey and curling...WAKE UP!!! Have you seen fees for kids to play hockey? And it is all paid by parents and TEAM fundraising, not government funds. Hockey coaches in Canada up to the Junior A Level (and not all Junior A teams may I add) are not paid at all, they are volunteers.

OTP paid nothing to the Mens hockey team, and probably nothing to the curling teams cause they are all professional. I'm also sure that Hockey Canada takes a majority of the financial responsibility for the womens team.

So where did all the OTP money go? That's right all these other sports that IMO, we have choked at so far.

examples
Hollingsworth
Wortherspooin
the Hamil brothers
Both Alpine teams
Chan
Morrison
and who else am I missing?

Most Canadian athletes have no swagger, and they have that happy to just compete attitude. It doesn't matter how much money you pump into programs if the athletes don't have the win at all costs attitude, prime example Shawn White. That guy already have the gold won, could have just went right down the middle of the pipe to the end, but no. He goes and throws the sickest ride anyone has ever seen for fun, and to wow the crowd.

Jen Hial was clearly upset that the LOST the gold. She didn't win the silver, and she will tell you that!

Thats the attitude Canadian athletes need.

Umm....

http://www.ownthepodium2010.com/Fund...er_sports.aspx

[questionmotives]

Anyone here criticizing our athletes and their attitude towards competing should watch the Melissa Hollingsworth press conference.

She is absolutely devastated with not bringing home a medal and basically apologized to Canadians, which is completely unnecessary.

Hold your head high Melissa, I am proud of you and all of our other Canadian athletes.

One week left, Go Canada Go!!!

[Devils'Advocate]

Originally Posted by valo403

Umm....

http://www.ownthepodium2010.com/Fund...er_sports.aspx

That's a pretty cool site. Thanks.

But $600,000 of $22,000,000 is small potatoes.

I wonder why they didn't split the mens and womens curling like they did the hockey.

[Devils'Advocate]

Originally Posted by questionmotives

Anyone here criticizing our athletes and their attitude towards competing should watch the Melissa Hollingsworth press conference. She is absolutely devastated with not bringing home a medal and basically apologized to Canadians, which is completely unnecessary.

Actually, most people have excepted Hollingsworth and asking why more people aren't as devastated.

[valo403]

Originally Posted by Devils'Advocate

That's a pretty cool site. Thanks.

But $600,000 of $22,000,000 is small potatoes.

I wonder why they didn't split the mens and womens curling like they did the hockey.

Check out the comparison charts, interesting to see how ramped up the spending is from Torino.

[Smell My Finger]

For all the money that backed the Canadian Alpine team and the fact most of these boneheads even grow up on Whistler. The program is a complete bust.
We Ski Canada forced Ken Read out because his son was involved in the Canadian Ski Jumping team instead of realizing Ken Read rebuilt the dismal program from the ashes to podium finishes on the wold cup under his direction.
Canadian Alpine team seemed to lack focus it showed and all week we kept hearing how these conditions intimidated them?
80% of the Canadian Mens or Womens team crashed while about 15% of the countries crashed.

[Ace Handy]

Originally Posted by Devils'Advocate

Actually, most people have excepted Hollingsworth and asking why more people aren't as devastated.

Because they were in the freaking Olympics! I find it hilarious that people are criticizing elite athletes for not coming in the top three in a pool of dozens of competitors. These people are in the top ten of the best athletes in the world at their sport. But that's not good enough for regular Canadians who are sitting on their fat asses watching with a mouth full of Lays.

On the topic of "Own the Podium". We're not going to see the full effect of the funding until 2014 or even 18.

[Papi34]

I think there should be some incentive from the government to do these different sports like they do in the asian countries. Guarantee a paycheck for life if you win gold. I dunno what the solution is but it worries me to think of who the next set of Olympians will be it seems alot of these current ones wont be around in 2014

[Mirajj]

Originally Posted by Papi34

Guarantee a paycheck for life if you win gold.

Nothing like this would ever come to pass. You want to bet your biscuits there'd be some rioting if someone could guarantee that they'd never have to work again because they won a gold. There aren't many issues that taxpayers are willing to stand up on, but I'd be pretty sure that making sure some athlete never had to work again after winning would be one of them.

[Pastiche]

2) Ski-jumping, unbelievable how bad we are at this, why on earth can't we develop at least one jumper every 4 years when we have numerous facilities (4) in this country for training. The Finnish team has one facility and every year they win something.

I'll give the reason we don't compete at ski jumping. We don't have anyone who ski jumps. CODA, run out of Calgary, was practically begging people to use its facilities. It would have paid for anyone to come and ski jump and to develop. No one did. That's why.