Montreal's Best And Brightest Miss Olympic Mark

The staff over at The Gazette and Team 990 are either bored or lack any imagination these days. I was thoroughly disappointed with the rationalization of Canada's Olympic performance.

Personally, I think Canada did well. Here's why: they don't get enough public, government and private support. Simple as that. Anyone who doesn't think money = medals is deluding themselves. In this way, it's amazing we win any medals at all.

The question is how far do we want to go? Obviously, I doubt we'd go the Chinese route. On the other hand, setting some standards and striving for excellence is not a bad thing.

Let's review some writers who left me scratching my head:

Stu Cowan - Sports Editor: I once emailed Stu a few years ago and he was kind enough to respond in a professional manner so by all accounts he's a decent guy. But...no free pass here.

He asked if it changes anyone's life if we win medals. He prefaced this notion to build his argument that more funding isn't needed. That public money should go into other stuff. Of course there's some truth to this but the reality is that we participate at the Olympics and many nations take it damn seriously. Not committing and giving our full support makes a mockery of the spirit of competition and our athletes. Why do we have to do something at the expense of another? I disagree with Stu. Funding is key. Perhaps we should spend the money better? Cut the 600 member COA a little and send less but more efficient athletes?

Canada won 18 medals despite operating in an apathetic society obsessed with finding smug excuses rather than doing the hard work of rolling up the sleeves, pumping the cash and designing a true program of excellence to attain the full potential of our athletes. Imagine what we could do with more! I firmly believe we should do more.

Jack Todd - the wannabe sports writer who won't go away. Once again proving his limited skills in understanding sports. Why must he always try and belittle and begrudge with pointless cynicism? In his attempt to dismiss an athlete's accomplishment (Michael Phelps) he tried to somehow posit the notion that swimming is easy. Why is this guy still around? Writing that Phelps earned "McMedals" is beyond shocking even for a "Mcwriter" like Todd.

Norman Webster. As far as I know he was a former editor. Dunno if he's a sports junkie but his attempt to somehow assuage Canada's mediocre performance by linking it to population and the Americans is ludicrous. What did he do? His logic led him to claim that since America is ten times the population of Canada they should have won ten times the medals. Since they didn't, that is taken to mean Canada did better.

We really should make stats class a prerequisite in our schools. I suck at math but even I understand that this method has drawbacks. I presume that people who use it like the fact that America always looks bad. No kidding! There are a limited amount of medals given out. Do the math. Big countries will always look bad. Medium sized countries will always look average and small countries will always look great. Even if the U.S. wins double the medals they would still look worse than Togo, Jamaica and Barbados. Does anyone truly believe these countries are "more athletic" than the States? I certainly don't.

Here's a simple example: Canada won 18 medals with a population of 33 million giving you a .6 ratio. In order for the U.S. to match that they need to win close to 200 medals (out of 956). Now, let's assume Canada wins 25 medals next time - or .76. The U.S. would have to win 250 medals to match this. In other words, for Canada's seven medals the U.S. has to win an additional 50. Does this make sense? The "margin of error" is tighter for the U.S. in this way.

If one wants to spin things this way then you have to look at it from another angle as well. For example, Canada is ten times the population of New Zealand. By Webster's (and he's not alone) calculations that means given New Zealand's nine medals (three gold) Canada should have won 90 medals and 30 gold vis-a-vis New Zealand. Notice how we tied with gold medals It doesn't stop there. Holland has 20 million people. So, Canada should win 1 1/2/ times the medals. Instead, it finished 18 t0 16 and with the Dutch earning more than double the gold medals at seven to three. Cuba is a third of our population. Ergo three times the spoils for Canada, right? Cuba won 24 medals with one less gold. Australia is around 20 million people. They won 44 medals!

Population to medals ratio is misguided and doesn't prove anything. There are so many factors and variables that come into play when designing, funding and training a national program. It's asinine to reduce it to such a simplistic calculation. If one really wants to "equalize" the playing field then delegations of athletes sent to medals won is a better (though far from perfect) ratio to use I suppose. If we do this, we find that the U.S. beats Canada by a WIDE margin. In fact, Canada's ratio is not impressive. 344 athletes to 18 medals is not a good ratio.

One last note, people go off about the Americans winning most of their medals in the pool. So what? Here's a thought: how about we stop whining and actually try and get some for ourselves like the Aussie's did? If we don't want to then the least we can do is not squeeze our sour grapes and turn them into acidic vinegar. Oh by the way, the swimming medals accounted for 31% of America's production. It reached 45% for Australia. Yet no one seems to bring this up.

No matter how you dice it, Canada's three gold medals is too low for a country with our talent and resources.

Elliott Price. Price falls too easily into the hysterical typical anti-Toronto/America thing we often read at the Gazette and hear on Team 990. He went off about Sports Illustrated about how upset he was that they picked Canada to win 14 medals. They weren't that far off as it turned out and the rhetoric used was parochial at best. Who cares what SI thinks? To my knowledge he harped about it a few times.

The Americans are not out to get us. Fret not friend. "The don't know we exist" is a popular phrase uttered by sensitive nationalists. Advice time: How about we force them to acknowledge us by, I don't know, actually doing something? And then they go on to talk about, well, American sports.

PJ Stock. See Webster. But Stock, likable as he is, really needs to concentrate on getting his thoughts together better. One question he posed caught my ear. He asked a listener what he was prepared to do to support Canadian athletes. He's absolutely right. Put your money where your mouth is. Nonetheless, I thought this was unfair. Here's why: This is Canada. We are experts at all talk no action. Funding for the amateur program already comes from taxpayers. Asking a citizen to dip into his pocket again in a society that does not a) have much disposable income and b) is not private oriented simply went against the grain of Canadian culture. Stock was mixing American sensibilities with Canadian ones. In America, they say "I should" when faced with a problem. In Canada we say "the government should" in two official languages.

The Team 990 has a bit of a "public radio" feel to it now as one savvy sports friend of mine put it.

One last thought. China won 51 gold medals and 100 total. The U.S. won 36 and 110. How each nation reached the objective couldn't have been any different. The LA Times report was not propaganda "attempting to make excuses for the Americans" as some have oddly claimed. Rather, it is a fact. China destroys families. They completely miss the point of what sports are supposed to be. It couldn't be any different in America. Besides, they did win: last I checked silver and bronze matters at the Olympics and rankings should ALWAYS be compiled with that in mind. Or else just give gold medals, right?

For me, the manner in which some of the aforementioned attempted to rationalize Canada's performance (often falling to typical and tired comparisons to the Americans) left me feeling that they could have presented their cases better.

I do expect better perspectives from people in positions to form and inform minds.