OTP Wins With Ski Cross Investment ... But Not Phelps

THE CANADIAN PRESS

Ashleigh McIvor leads the pack in this Ski Cross event at Vancouver last month.

Own The Podium (OTP) has made a lot of good investments in sports this winter season – the way they’ve helped the ski cross program is one striking example – but they unfortunately got snookered when they bought tickets to hear American swim star Michael Phelps speak in Calgary.

They bought tickets for yesterday’s show from Power Within Inc., a Toronto company founded by Salim Khoja (See post below for their naming as first winner of Sunnyside Hardware Tool of the Week Award.)

OTP, set up to help Canada try to win the medal standings at the 2010 Winter Olympics, used money from their pool of professional development funds to buy the tickets to the event featuring Phelps. They wanted to listen to the story of the world’s most decorated Olympian in the hopes of learning some insights into his approach to achieving excellence. They thought they could gain some additional inspiration and possible share elements of his story with the sports that they interact with.

When Phelps was taken off the roster because of the tempest in a bong pot and Martin Sheen became the headliner, OTP requested a refund from the Power Within Inc. head office, which refused. Gee, these people don’t seem to be living up to the great ideals they and their speakers espouse. (They could run the International Olympic Committee.)

Luckily, OTP has been having a lot more success on the field of play with the sports they are supporting.

They’ve played a big role in helping Canada Ski Cross get set up and off and running as a federation. It’s paid off with 10 World Cup medals this season, including five medals and a men’s sweep in the pre-Olympic test in Cypress, as well as a gold (Ashleigh McIvor in the women’s event) and bronze (Davey Barr in the men’s) this week at the world championships in Japan.

What’s impressive is that in an exciting sport that can be a bit of a crapshoot, Canada has improved its odds of winning Olympic medal by recruiting a wide array of talent.

A job well done.

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Randy thanks for exposing Power Within Inc.'s poor business ethics, but the more I think about it from a business perspective it sounds like they decided to drop Phelps for financial reasons. I'm sure they made enough money with Phelps as the main draw and now were given the out to drop him without having to pay his large appearance fee, which they could have done earlier but waited until one week from the event. I'm suspecting the addition of Martin Sheen was fairly cheaper then his counterpart and now they've made their money while lowering their costs at the expense of their customers. Definitely not the best business strategy!