Olympic Superpowers That Have More Medals Than Canada...

[Slava]

^ A similar program has been launched in Canada for the summer games; its being run by Alex Baumann (who helped with the success in Australia). The program is expected to produce results for 2012 at the earliest.

[SebC]

Originally Posted by The Ditch

How embarrassing. Instead of giving the CBC a billion dollars a year of taxpayer money we could give them 500 million and give the other 500 million towards sponsorship and funding for our athletes. Oh I know I know, everyone is going to miss that latest episode of Little Mosque on the Prairie.

To some degreee, that approach could actually yield dividends if it increases interest in the games. Sadly, we're more enthralled with Michael Phelps and fireworks than with Canadian athletes, so it probably wouldn't.

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.

That's what Own the Podium and Road to Success are all about. Of course, the problem with that approach is that you end up not funding the kayakker who finishes 6th and would've been 4th if he didn't hit a course marker.

Originally Posted by Russic

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.

So much government funding ends up going to special interest groups that I really can't be that upset about it as far as calling it a waste of money goes. At least Olympic athletes are a special interest group that I can watch on TV.

Originally Posted by TSN

Canada started the "Road To Excellence" program to help Canada finish in the top 16 at these Games - and the top 12 in 2012. The program will have $20 million to work with in 2008-09, $28 million the following year and $36 million for each of the two years heading into 2012.
The trick is, you have to get results in order to get funding. Trupish said that's backwards.
"We're saying 'give us funding and we can produce' and the government is saying 'produce and then we'll give you funding,"' Trupish said. "It's kind of the egg before the chicken.

I think he means they the cart before the horse, but he's got a valid point. Asking athletes to produce first doesn't make sense... they're just supposed to get there by themselves?

The price of gold, silver or bronze

On the basis of the authors' calculations, it is possible to work out how much it would cost to perform better at the Olympics. Although there are certain anomalies - notably impoverished but sporty Romania - rich countries always perform best.

The Olympics, it seems, is an expensive business: to send an extra competitor, a country has to increase its GDP per head by $260.


An extra medal costs $1,700, and a gold $4,750, in terms of per-capita wealth. The richer the country, the cheaper the marginal cost of improvement: Poland would have to spend four times as much per head as would the US, in order to boost its presence at the games

That's not really relevant to this debate. Those aren't direct costs, just a correlation between GDP per capita and Olympic success. Nobody is arguing that we shouldn't increase our GDP/capita. If those were the actual costs, competing in the Olympics would likely not be worth it.

Originally Posted by Frequitude

There are hundreds of other things our government spends money on that are way more useless than the olympics. You want the government to cut out frivolous spending, target those, not the olympics.

$1B gun registry + $100 million for Olympics + $many billions for health care
<<<
$200 million for olympics + $(many plus 0.9) billion for health care


...and saying that $0 for Olympics + $(many plus 1.1)B for health care would be even better makes me feel extra shame.

I agree with you. And here again I'd also like to reintroduce CP to the concept of decreasing marginal returns. Just because the 10 million we spend on health care has a way bigger return on investment than the 10 million we spend on the Olympics doesn't mean the last 10 million you spend health care will have the same effect. It's a concept of economics whereby the more you spend on something the less you get out of each additional dollar. It's why even though you may consider your housing more important that your transportation you'll still spend money on both. There an optimum split. Likewise, there's an optimum split for the government money, you don't put it all into one thing because it's deemed "more important". Just so nobody thinks I'm contradicting myself, there are things where the marginal benefits from even the first dollar you spend on something doesn't match the benefits of the last dollar you're spending, but I wouldn't put the Olympics in that category. Some of you might, and that would be fair. But the argument that "healthcare is more important than the Olympics so we shouldn't fund them" is fallacious and disingenious at best.



As an aside, are there any women in gymnastics? They might as well just call it girls' gymnastics.

[MrMastodonFarm]

Seriously, the government was willing to spend 153 million to broadcast the games on CBC. Put that money towards the athletes.

[Phanuthier]

Originally Posted by 4X4

=
IMO, the Olympics should be about pitting your strengths against the strengths of other nations. Not about artificially grooming juggernauts in every so-called "skill-set" that the IOC deems a sport.

Well said

Saying that, I'm still waiting for some of these enthuisiests to offer to pay for my hopeful white water kayaking lessons. Who knows, I might be really really good and be able to go to the 2012 Olympics to win gold.

[Devils'Advocate]

Originally Posted by MrMastodonFarm

Seriously, the government was willing to spend 153 million to broadcast the games on CBC. Put that money towards the athletes.

CBC isn't throwing that money away. The reason they bid on the broadcast rights is because they want to make money on this. They are having no problems selling commercials during the Olympics. It's one of the few money makers they have.

Actually, when you take away the money CBC MAKES on the Olympics once they are on CTV, the Canadian taxpayers will be on the hook for MORE of the CBCs operating costs.

[North East Goon]

How does more money produce more medals? I know they would have more time to train, but does that guarantee us more medals?

[Muta]

Originally Posted by North East Goon

How does more money produce more medals? I know they would have more time to train, but does that guarantee us more medals?

No, but better facilities, better resources, more time training (and less time working)... there's lots of things increased funding allows athletes to do.

[blankall]

Originally Posted by North East Goon

How does more money produce more medals? I know they would have more time to train, but does that guarantee us more medals?

More funding = better training

Also a lot of athletes currently have to work full time jobs, more funding would mean they could focus more time on training.

[North East Goon]

Would it be wrong to suggest that we need to find better way's to hide performance enhancing drugs like the frontrunners. Maybe that's where the funds should go.

[arsenal]

Originally Posted by North East Goon

How does more money produce more medals? I know they would have more time to train, but does that guarantee us more medals?

2 others have already mentioned the time. But it would also allow them to travel more, and compete against the best athletes in their sport more.
That's a pretty big thing. We are seeing Canadian records being broken, but no medals. So our athletes are getting better, and faster, but are lagging behind the rest of the world.

If our athletes were able to travel more, compete against the world's best more often, we would see much better results. If you are always competing against the same people over and over again, you are not learning anything new. You may improve a little bit, but not as much as you would if you compete on the world stage more often.

[troutman]

Jim Rome and the Clones are making fun of Canada, and our failure to win medals. Today they are talking about our near misses.

Hopefully by the end of the Olympics, we can say we have more medals per capita than the US.

[Textcritic]

Honestly, why should we care? Sure, it's nice to stick the old patriotic feather in our collective cap every four years, but for the remaining 216 of the 220 weeks that passes between Olympic years, I'm no worse off for Canada's deplorable low-medal count at the Summer Olympics. This is a winter sporting nation: It makes sense that Canada excels in Winter sports, and it stands to reason that this will be where the vast majority of our sporting dollars will be spent.

On a related note, does anyone remember seeing a hilarious mock-ad on This Hour has 22-Minutes aired during either the Athens or Sydney Games?

"Fourth! That's pretty good!"

Always failing to land on the podium ~ A part of our Canadian heritage...

[Devils'Advocate]

But there are a great number of sports THAT ARE PLAYED INDOORS during the summer olympics. There is absolutely no reason why Canada cannot produce Sean O'Sullivan's and Lennox Lewis's.

But the ONE guy we do send didn't fight in over a year because he had no money for traveling to competitions... he had no coach (couldn't afford it).... he trained totally on his own for a full year. And then we send him over and tell him to win a medal.

Okay. If you want to say "we are a winter country... that is where the funding should go".... that's fine. Let's stop funding summer sports altogether. Because giving tiny, tiny, tiny fractions of what is required only frustrates Canadians *AND* the potential Olympians.

[Ozy_Flame]

The majority of sports do NOT need snow or ice to participate in, and some people are saying we should focus all our Olympic funding on winter events? Terrible idea. Not only would we be abandoning the hundreds of thousands of people who enjoy summer sports, but also would be sending a bad message to all Canadians and the world that Canada doesn't encourage active living.

Maybe if we had a strong athletic tradition in both summer and winter sports and proper funding to follow, we could spend less on health care given that citizens would take healthy and physical lifestyles more seriously. Preventative measures are more cost-effective than funding surgeries, beds, wait times, medicine, etc. Exercise and confidence in an athletic system are a prime solution.

Not to mention that properly-funded athletic programs can keep kids from getting bored and getting involved in crimes and/or drugs. That's a whole argument in itself.

[peter12]

The whole Olympic thing is really goofy to me. What a waste of resources on a semi-entertaining show.

[troutman]

Historically, Finland has the most summer medals per capita of any country. Finland is a "winter" country.

[Devils'Advocate]

Originally Posted by peter12

The whole Olympic thing is really goofy to me. What a waste of resources on a semi-entertaining show.

The whole Olympic thing is really great to me. It's a minor expenditure of resources for a very entertaining show. It's the whole world getting together to compete in games of skill. I can think of nothing better.

-=-=-=-=-=-

I have to agree with the person that you should be able to earmark your tax dollars to certain programs.

I think rec centers and sporting facilities should be taken from the essential taxes because having places to exercise should be something that the government should be involved in.

But grey areas like providing coaches and living expenses and so on... I'd gladly chip in $5 to $10. I think many people would. But for the peter12 people, they shouldn't have to.

Now you could say "hey DA, why didn't you donate $10 to the Canadian Olympic Team?" And it would have been as easy as clicking here:
http://www.olympic.ca/EN/booster/form1.shtml
But it's not something that you think of when donating money.

If you do your taxes by paper, on the last page there is "Your refund will be $X." and the next line is "How much of that refund would you like to put towards the Canadian debt?". There should be other options there.

[Textcritic]

Originally Posted by Ozy_Flame

The majority of sports do NOT need snow or ice to participate in, and some people are saying we should focus all our Olympic funding on winter events? Terrible idea. Not only would we be abandoning the hundreds of thousands of people who enjoy summer sports, but also would be sending a bad message to all Canadians and the world that Canada doesn't encourage active living.

Well, I'm not an advocate of abandoning summer sports funding in favour of winter sports funding. I'm merely pointing out that Canada has generally been a poor performer in the Summer Olympics because of where our priorities lie: very little on sports in general, and most of that seemingly on winter activities. I don't know about you, but as one of those "hundreds of thousands of Canadians who enjoy summer sports", I not exactly suffering because of the lack of funding.

Originally Posted by Ozy_Flame

Maybe if we had a strong athletic tradition in both summer and winter sports and proper funding to follow, we could spend less on health care given that citizens would take healthy and physical lifestyles more seriously. Preventative measures are more cost-effective than funding surgeries, beds, wait times, medicine, etc. Exercise and confidence in an athletic system are a prime solution.

Not to mention that properly-funded athletic programs can keep kids from getting bored and getting involved in crimes and/or drugs. That's a whole argument in itself.

So, in your estimation, more funding for sports would make for a better, healthier society via increased opportunities for exercise and alternatives for kids facing the dangers of self-destructive peer pressures.

This is total bunk. Take a look at which two nations are demolishing the competition because of their high priority on sports funding, and tell me they provide for a better quality of life than what presently exists in Canada.

[Textcritic]

Originally Posted by troutman

Historically, Finland has the most summer medals per capita of any country. Finland is a "winter" country.

Sure, but evidently Finland has historically felt different about the promotion of sport than Canada has. In the end, whether Canada comes home with 100 medals or 2, my whole point in all of this is that the vast majority are no better or worse off for it. This is a non-issue that has nothing to do with anything except some artificial sense of national pride.

[Ozy_Flame]

Originally Posted by Textcritic

This is total bunk. Take a look at which two nations are demolishing the competition because of their high priority on sports funding, and tell me they provide for a better quality of life than what presently exists in Canada.

Americans and Canadians are among the top nations in the UN's Human Development Index for 2007/2008. China is an industrializing country, with a growing HDI index and a powerhouse economy.

I am not saying your are wrong with what you are saying, but you are exaggerating the quality-of-life issues in these other countries. Particularly, your comparison between Canada and the U.S. is almost absurd.

Regardless, athletics are a good way to keep kids from getting involved in crime and/or drugs. They have something to work towards and something that keeps them fit, healthy, and engaged in the community, just like other young aspiring doctors, scientists, businessmen, etc.

How you can say athletic programs have little impact on the well-being of kids is simply ludicrous.

You must think then, that kids playing instruments or reading books is a terrible waste of time too.