Are Canadian athletes too "Canadian" to win Olympic medals?

Toronto Star Photos

Alex Baumann returns to Canada in 2006.

I marvelled at the against-all-odds performance of the U.S. men's swim team in the the 400-metre freestyle relay earlier this week. It was made for Hollywood, with American anchor Jason Lezak coming from behind to beat France's Alain Bernard to take the event. It was simply delicious, with all the elements of drama from Bernard's prior arrogant comment that France would "smash" the U.S. team to his mistake in the pool. It gave the Americans a victory and kept alive phenom Michael Phelp's much hyped drive for eight gold medals at a single Olympics.

Watching it, I wondered what it is in the U.S. diet that keeps producing these kind of miracle plays. Not that it's never happened for Canadians, but the Americans seem to pull off these amazing results as a matter of routine, living out fairytale scripts. Then, I picked up the current issue of The Walrus and read Katharine Dunn's great piece, "Sink of Swim: Pierre Lafontaine's bid to revive Swimming Canada." I'm not even going to check if I can pull the article down for you because the September issue is on news stands now, and the magazine industry needs all the help it can get.

As a teenaged swimmer from Nova Scotia, Dunn choked in her backstroke event at the Canada Games in Saskatoon. She remembers the starter's gun going off, glancing at the girl in the next lane who was already ahead and thinking: "I don't want this badly enough." Dunn extrapolates to examine the decline of Canadian swimmers since the medal performances of Alex Baumann and Victor Davis in Los Angeles in 1984. In Athens, the Canadian team collapsed. In looking at the problem, Dunn observes:

"What has happened to the national swim team at international meets since the 1980s is a version of what happened with my Canada Games teammates in Saskatoon. Pitted against apparently stronger, richer rivals, do Canadian athletes shrink? Do we, as (former Canadian coach Dave) Johnson suggests, buckle under pressure? More problematic, do we suffer from some sort of national inferiority complex?"

A very interesting point. The article works on many levels. Dunn's experience as a Maritimer explores, without a megaphone, the Canadian dynamic and our own internal inferiority feelings region-to-region. She describes the plans new Swimming Canada CEO Pierre Lafontaine has for rebuilding, as well as the decision by the Canadian Olympic Committee to hire Baumann from Australia in 2006 as executive director of the Road to Excellence program for summer sports. Baumann has long made the point — as he did again this week from Beijing — that it's too soon to see the results of new government funding. Baumann wants the bulk of money for athletes to come from the federal government, a belief Dunn shows is not shared by some U.S. coaches. During the 2004 Olympics, American Murray Stevens described Canada's approach to swimming as "socialist," later telling Dunn handouts don't help athletes. "The more you get from the outside, the less you work for it," he told her. "Mother bird can only help little bird so much."

Dunn asks whether Canadian athletes need to "shake off their own culture" in order to ascend to the podium.

Everybody hopes Canada will win medals in Beijing, however Dunn's article is a must-read. It's a starting point for debate about what's wrong, if indeed anything really is wrong with the Canadian sports system.

A footnote on the swimming events: While we all appreciate how well Canadian swimmers have done in beating their own best times (and there's no doubt they've done this), hearing it so often from the athletes themselves, one wants to shout out: "Yes, but you're not in Kansas anymore."

Plus, the award for more realistic line from a TV anchor: Coming back from Global's report on the Chinese tricks at the opening ceremonies, Kevin Newman laughed and said it didn't seem to be a big problem. As he sees it: "We all know TV is all smoke-and-mirrors."

Nicely put.

Finally, I apologize for the sporadic postings. I'm on holidays, and now back to the Games . . .

Comments

[Rob Brander]

As a Canadian who has lived in Australia for the last 15 years, I have become increasingly confused and almost embarassed about the poor performance of Canadian athletes on the global stage and the sort of inferiority dynamic we seem to have perfected to an art form. Canada and Australia make for a good comparison. Both countries performed poorly in terms of medals at the 1976 Olympics and this kick started Australia into pouring a fair bit of money into their Australian Insitute of Sport. The result has been that from the Sydney 2000 Olympics on, Australia usually sits 4th or 5th in the medal count...and it's not just in swimming that they excel.

Australians compete to win. I have never come across a more sports competitive nation. I'm not all that comfortable with that attitude, as it is rampant at all levels here, and I don't necessarily think that Canada should adopt it, but Canadian athletes often give the impression of "just being happy to be there" and seem satisfied with personal bests. I also don't agree that so much money should be poured into sport. However, it does wonders for the national psyche to be good at something. The sense of national pride and excitement in Australia when "we" routinely bring home gold is incredible. When I check the Canadian newspapers, the coverage about our Olympians is all about disappointment. Yes, we're nice and fun loving but the "lovable losers" tag wears thin.

There is no reason why Canadians can not be world class athletes given better financial support. Why doesn't Canada focus on a few key events to become dominant in rather than send massive teams that accomplish very little?

[john k]

On the question of sports funding, I'd be interested to know what percentage of the funding actually goes to the athletes and how much to those whose events are meeting, memo-writing and pencil-sharpening?

[Claudio Dionigi]

Like Rob, I am a Canadian living in Australia and I agree with Rob that Canada and Australia make for a good comparison (there are a lot of similarities between the two nations). If a federal funding approach is 'socialist' then it's working for Australia. Why should it not work for Canada? I think that the American coach Murray Stevens is wrong on that account.

However, I still don't think that Olympic funding is worthwhile. Sport is essentially a diversion, entertainment, and lets face it, swimming is not really entertaining unless you're a swimmer (or Australian). It's like watching paint dry! In fact, many of the sports that Australia excels at would never achieve mainstream interest in Canada, even though they are very popular here.

Sure, there's always the nationalism. It makes us feel good when our country excels at something. However, the feelings of pride when someone wins a gold medal basically highlights the shallowness and vanity of person or a country that strives to be 'the best' at something for all the world to see; 'look at me(us) I'm(we're) great'. There are other, more fruitful, genuine and productive ways to be liked. The Americans are great at sport but are they well-liked throughout the world? No, generally it's quite the opposite.

Lets face it, in the bigger picture sports is a meaningless pursuit, it's just entertainment. The only meaning in sport is what the individual attaches to it. People relate to certain sports and not to others. Canada will never be a great cricketing nation because we don't associate with it and we find it boring. We are not entertained by it. However, as a nation, we do perform well at some sports because we are familiar with them and we can relate to them (like ice hockey).

I work at an Australian university and a colleague of mine is currently researching the importance of 'passion' in mainstream sports (book forthcoming). As an Australian, he is passionate about sports, especially sports that Australia excels at (like rugby league and cricket). I don't think that this 'passion' serves any good purpose other than as a form of escape and drama for ordinary people, living ordinary lives (arguably an important purpose).

Also, I would never be embarrassed about being Canadian because we don't excel at the Summer games. I just have to look at the obnoxious, ego-centric athletes and attitudes (just look at Liesel Jones from Australia for example) that are promoted on Australian TV during these games and I think to myself "thank god I'm Canadian".

[Rick Grace]

Canada can't win on world stage? How quickly you forget the 2006 winter Olympics, where we finished third over all in the medal standings. Well ahead of countries like Australia and England. So we're a tenth of a second slower at getting from point A to point B? Big deal.

[patrick r]

It is interesting reading the comments and the questions that are being asked here and on other discussion boards about the Canadian Performance in Beijing. Of course this often seems to be “an unofficial Olympic sport” in this country. Several issues are raised and many of the answers can be found in the questions posed. For instance on the question of Accountability, sure hold the athletes accountable, many that I know have no problem with that, however it must be not just be the athletes who are held accountable but the sport organizations at the provincial and national level who need to answer some tough questions, perhaps more than even the athletes.
When we have been successful (look at hockey, skiing, rowing, and certainly swimming here and Los Angeles to name a few) you can find several determining factors; and they are usually money, coaching, organization and athlete development. The failures are usually where one or more of these is absent or not working with a common goal and that falls on the sport federations. Speaking of Goals, preparing athletes is very challenging, to suggest that we only send “sure things” or not send people who obviously cannot win is a folly proposition. The COC has raised the expectations and rightly so, but one should never discount the importance of experience and sending promising, though perhaps green athletes to an Olympics should not be criticized. To somehow suggest that these events are a holiday or not taken seriously by the athletes based on their comments post race displays a huge ignorance of what many of these athletes give up to represent this country. For many elite athletes to compete at the international level, training 30-40 hours or more a week, and usually in complete isolation is the norm. Yet during this time nobody is paying any attention to their struggles or the level of commitment they are giving. If they come to an Olympics and post a personal best who can who can blame them if the internalize their feelings by saying “I am happy, I did my best”. However I acknowledge that frustration with these comments is there and the public has the sense that we as Canadians are being passed by athletically. But I would suggest it (frustration) be used to hold the sport bureaucracy accountable, not the athletes.
Lastly competing is the first step to winning, we must compete in order to have a chance to win. Our biggest problem in this country is that the culture of winning is so ingrained in hockey but absent for the most part in most other sports, (there obviously some exceptions) but until the “tax paying” public moves to hold the sport bureaucracy and the government to the fire and make sport across the country a priority. We will continue to struggle against the top nations in international competition and it is not because we don’t have the athletes or the mental toughness (again see hockey), because we do, they just need to know that what they do is important in non Olympic years as well.

[Johnb]

I'm very tired of paying tens or hundreds of millions (depending on who you believe)on athletes and getting precious little back for it except moaning about not having enough financial support. The U.S. government does not fund their Olympic teams at all. They drum up corporate and private sponsorship to fund their hugely successful teams. We should take a page from their "can-do" book of how to win.

[Rob Brander]

Claudio makes some good points above and in my defence, I have to say that I said "almost embarassed". I have never been embarassed to be Canadian. Just to add to my comment, there was an interesting article in this Saturday's Sydney Morning Herald that questioned the value of winning gold for Australia. It was estimated that each gold medal cost about $50 million and the author used Canada as a comparision, noting that Canadian sports funding is geared more towards community sports participation. Since the Sydney 2000 Olympics and the massive success of the Australian team, obesity has increased in Australia. Not so in Canada. Apparently, Canadians also place quality of life far ahead of sporting dominance, unlike the Australians.

It's an interesting article, worthy of a read. Furthermore, the Australian medal tally has "slipped" a little and there is some outcry and concern about being overtaken by countries like Great Britain, who have copied the Australian template and dumped a ton of money into sport. It all reeks of insecurity and vanity.

So good on Canada for being, well, Canadian.

I am also an academic here and if Claudio reads this, I would be keen to have the details of his colleague writing the book on sports passion.