Here’s Kissing Home Field Advantage Good-bye at 2010 Olympics

CHRIS SO/TORONTO STAR

Dave Wood wants home-field advantage in 2010.

So this is how home field advantage is going to play out for Canada at the 2010 Vancouver Olympics:

Tim Gayda, vice-president of sport for the Vancouver Organizing Committee (VANOC) , said whenever they are unsure if something is an unfair advantage for Canada – he termed it falling into the “gray zone” – they call the corresponding international federation to see if it’s okay.

Well, if that’s the case, you can kiss a good portion of home field advantage good-bye.

For one thing, almost all the international federations are Eurocentric.

So just imagine when the query comes in from VANOC about whether it’s okay to allow the Canadians a certain thing – say a couple of extra accreditations for ski technicians – what do you think the response from the International Ski Federation is going to be?

Nein!!!.

You can understand the dismay of Canadian cross-country team leader Dave Wood and veteran Sara Renner, who explained their frustrations in a story in today's Star. They’ve seen this play out at other Olympics and how the host country has taken every possible advantage they can get.

Yet what all they seem to be running into is more and more bureaucracy from VANOC at every turn as they seek to benefit from being the host country.

There’s all this talk about Canada trying to Own The Podium, attempting to be the No. 1 medal winning nation at the Games. Every medal is going to count.

The Canadian cross-country team is not a powerhouse – the maximum they could probably hope for two medals; it’s not inconceivable they can be shut out.

So it’s paramount they receive all the help they can get from being the host nation at a Games.

Is it so un-Canadian to expect that?

Gayda himself said in this article in the Seattle Post-Intelligencer last year that: "There is always going to be a home-field advantage in every sport."

There are some who would beg to differ right now.

----

(The original story filed on this issue had to be shortened considerably for today's newspaper because of space considerations – something about the U.S. Open, maybe? Here’s part of the story that didn’t make it into print.)

Tim Gayda, vice president of sport for VANOC, said they are just trying to ensure fair conditions for everyone.

He said it wasn’t feasible to have their ski grinding equipment on site nor would it be fair to only let the Canadians be the only team with a grinder there.

Gayda said the Callaghan Backcountry Lodge was considered off limits originally for security reasons, but the RCMP concluded 10 days ago it was not a security risk. He said it was a “fluke” that the Italians were meeting with people from the private facility the next day. He said the Canadian team could negotiate to use the site, too.

On accreditation, Gayda said that the Canadian Olympic Committee is being provided with extra accreditations and would be deciding how to allocate them.

Gayda said that space is very tight at the competition site and that they have to abide by the rules of the federation in terms of assigning wax cabins, but he was confident in the end they could find extra space for the Canadian team.

He said the cross-country venue is still considered a construction site as they are putting up seating scaffolding, broadcast compounds and wax cabins, but the Olympic trials could be held there if the event wasn’t open to the public.

Gayda said it was critical they provide “an even and fair field of play for everyone.” He said that any request they get from a Canadian team that falls into the “gray zone,” they check with the corresponding international federation to see if it is permitted.

“The last thing we want is a Canadian to win a gold medal and the silver medallist points the finger at VANOC and says we gave an unfair advantage to the Canadians,” he said.

But Renner said traditionally host countries have gone out of their way to help their own teams.

“It’s really frustrating because I know what happens in countries that host Olympic Games and World Cups and the advantage the teams are given without even question,” she said. “It’s just ‘We’re proud of our nordic team. We’re going to give them the very best.’

“So to have it not happen in Canada is disappointing. But at the same time, it’s not a performance deterrent. We’re bigger than that. We’re stronger than that. But it is unfortunate. It’s not the nicest message.”

-----

An error was made in the original blog post today.  It said that Tim Gayda of VANOC said the Canadians "could not" negotiate to use the Callaghan Backcountry Lodge, too. Gayda actually said they could also negotiate with the private facility to get space there, too. That was my mistake in adding the "not." My apologies for the error.

Tough Guy Bobsledders Show Their Feminine Side

There’s no question that men’s bobsleigh tends to attract alpha males, so what gives with the Canadian team producing an all-girl lineup when it comes to offspring?

Driver Lyndon Rush of Saskatoon and wife Krysta welcomed their second daughter, Amelia Lily, into the family recently. His brakeman, Lascelles Brown, has four daughters, while Olympic champion Pierre Lueders has two girls and teammate Ken Kotyk has one.

Rush said that Brown, who’s convinced that his fifth child on the way is also a girl, has a theory on this.

“That really dominant males only have daughters,” said Rush.

His growing family – his oldest daughter, Olivia, turns three in July – is not the only thing that has Rush excited these days. His dream of getting better equipment for the 2010 Games has come through – he made a public pitch after finishing fourth behind Lueders in the pre-Olympic two-man World Cup in Whistler.

With the help of the athlete support group B2Ten, he was able to raise $80,000 to get a new two-man sled and he was able to raise another $100,000 on his own to buy a new four-man sled. He said he got a lot of help from the communities around central Alberta – he lives in Sylvan Lake, near Red Deer – and his hometown of Saskatoon.

“It’s like a dream come true,” he said. “If I would go back a year and somebody told me the equipment that I’m going to be using next year, I would have never believed it. I’m in the best stuff the world. I can’t wait for the season. It’s going to be awesome.”

VANOC Never Wanted Women’s Ski Jumping In 2010 Olympics

There’s a familiar scenario playing out with the Vancouver Organizing Committee (VANOC) on the fight by women’s ski jumpers to get into the 2010 Winter Olympics: They’re trying to let the IOC play the bad guy.

But VANOC never wanted women’s ski jumping to be part of the 2010 sports roster. That was clear from talking to VANOC types when this thing was in its formative stages. Their position seemed to be that the sport wasn’t ready for prime time and they weren’t going to waste the effort fighting for it.

VANOC’s position now that this is in B.C. Supreme Court  is that the International Olympic Committee is in charge of deciding the Olympic sports – and that’s definitely true – but women’s ski jumping would have stood a far better chance of getting in if VANOC had really taken up their cause from the beginning.

You can argue over whether VANOC’s position not to push for women's ski jumping was valid, but it’s hard to watch them act as if they had no role in the process at all. They’d likely have taken a bigger one if they knew this thing was going to drag on so long.

Trying to get the IOC to take the hit is the exact same strategy VANOC employed when they banned the athlete-driven charity Right To Play from the athletes village for the first time since the 1994 Lillehammer Games.

It was a VANOC decision, fueled at the time they said by a desire to protect sponsors like GM Canada, but later when the IOC also cut ties with Right To Play it was positioned by VANOC officials that they were just following the IOC’s lead.

Hard to follow someone’s lead when you make the first move, isn’t it?

A Memo to Mr. Lunn ... Plus a Real Rant

Guess we shouldn’t be surprised that Sports Minister Gary Lunn sounded like a politician yesterday in addressing the funding cutbacks that look like they may impact Canada’s speed skaters in their quest for medals at the 2010 Winter Olympics.

After all, that’s exactly what he is.

It just would have been nice to hear a little more concern in his voice about the speed skater’s plight, a little more sense that he’s totally committed to helping them get the training they need to get the medals we all want in 10 months time.

And we are going to want them, you can count on that. Lunn has told us as much.

"All Canadians are behind our athletes, and we know they will win gold here at home," said Lunn in a press release in February on the one year out date from the 2010 Games.

No bold declarations yesterday with the speed skaters in trouble, though. Instead, there were platitudes from Lunn about how these are tough economic times for everyone – thanks for the news flash, Gary. And, of course, he mentioned the huge outlay the feds have already made to Canadian winter sport through Own The Podium – some $55 million over five years.

That’s what makes it all the more ridiculous that athletes who’ve worked so hard are being left twisting in the wind because the Calgary Olympic Oval is short the $800,000 needed to keep it open for the training period they desperately need heading into the 2010 Games. That’s just bad business to put your huge investment in danger like that.

At least Roger Jackson, who heads up the Own The Podium program created to make Canada the No. 1 medal winning nation at the Games, had the good sense to say that one way or another the problem will be resolved, at least in the short term, to help the skaters get ready for Vancouver.

But Lunn needs to show strong leadership at this time, too.

Brian Rahill, the No. 2 man at Speed Skating Canada, made a point of singling out Lunn at a news conference yesterday, putting his feet to the fire by using words from one of the minister’s own press releases that lauded the speed skaters and their positive effects as role models.

If Lunn really wants to earn the photo-ops he’ll undoubtedly seek during the Vancouver Olympics, he needs to step to the plate.

You don’t think he’ll want those photo ops?

Click right here and you’ll see a recent photo of of Lunn with Cindy Klassen, winner of a record five medals for Canada at the 2006 Turin Olympics.

This is the same Klassen who will likely be hurt more than any athlete if the Oval in Calgary is shut down for the summer as she needs the on-ice training as she rebuilds after surgery to both her knees.

The photo-op was done to help launch a program where Canadian flags that have flown on Parliament Hill will be given to athletes who win medals at the Olympics and Paralympics in Vancouver. Boy, those politicians sure know how to reward all that sweat and toil. Wonder if they’re going to sign the flags, too.

Me On My Soapbox:  It amazes me to see the negativity of so many of the people who post comments on websites related to an issue like this one. They are so quick to dump on the athletes and opine that they "ought to get a real job" and shouldn't expect to be immune from this financial crisis.

They don't think they're immune. Most athletes recognize that high performance sport is a mostly selfish endeavour and consider theirs to be a charmed existence. But every Olympics, most Canadians want to know only one thing from its athletes -- how many medals are you going to win for us?

If I'm an athlete who's busted their butt and done everything possible to put myself in a position to win and then something out of my control happens to put my goals in danger, I'd like to think the people expecting me to bring home gold -- from the public to the government -- would do whatever they could to support me, not dump on me for wanting to be able to prepare the best way possible.

I just don't get some of the comments I read on this website and particuarly on the CBC Sports website, where morons really reign. (So much for the CBC attracting the more erudite. Some posters at least seem to have the guts to use their real names).

There are the same clowns who seem to take perverted glee if Canadian athletes don't perform or some disaster strikes, as it did to Jeremy Wotherspoon in 2002 or Perdita Felicien in 2004.

One can only hope it's a minority viewpoint. Otherwise, we really are a nation of losers.

Are We Being Un-Canadian? Might that be a good thing?

So is Canada going overboard in its attempt to get home advantage for the 2010 Winter Olympics?

Many in the international speed skating community seem to think so, as evidenced by today’s story in the Star about their problems getting access to the ice at the Richmond Olympic Oval in the leadup to this week’s World Single Distances Speed Skating Championships.

This isn’t the first time this touchy issue has surfaced heading towards the 2010 Games. The world governing body of bobsleigh/skeleton, the FIBT, was upset last month when Canadian bobsledders refused to go first down the track in Whistler to show their competitors the way in training before the World Cup test there, as is traditionally done on a new course. The Canadian skeleton team skipped international training week entirely, not wanting to give away anything it had learned on the track.

Bob Storey, a Canadian who heads the FIBT, puts a lot of the blame on foreign coaches leading the Canadian teams and the Canadian officials who he believes are letting them guide these policies.

“I think it’s a mistake of Canadian federations driven by coaches who have short-term interests and perhaps don’t have a larger view of the sport,” said Storey. “When Canada imports coaches not of a Canadian culture, they tend to accept positions that don’t necessarily reflect the Canadian point of view or are good for Canadian competition.”

In the case of speed skating, former Canadian Olympian Kevin Crockett, who now coaches the Chinese team, lay the blame for the lack of access squarely on Canadian long track program director Finn Halvorsen, a Norwegian who joined the team three years ago.

Willi Schneider, a former slider with Germany, coaches the Canadian skeleton team, while American Tuffy Latour is the head coach of the bobsleigh team.

Storey also believes there’s too much “navel gazing” going on in Canadian sport.

“It’s been my experience over many years that Canadians and Americans in winter sport do a great deal of self-analysis and search for answers in their own pockets rather than looking at the bigger picture,” Storey said.

“Rarely do people win by exclusion in any international competition. Unless you have the best come in and compete against you, you’re setting false benchmarks and don’t really know the progress you’re making.”

When it comes to long track speed skating, the Canadians will get a good benchmark of the progress they’re making – or not making – at this week’s worlds. Stay tuned.

Giving Props to the “Elephant Man” and “Mr. Haney”

It’s already a crowded landscape among those vying for attention and funding en route to the 2010 Vancouver Olympics. Thinking outside the box is going to be necessary, but not something often done by Canada’s amateur sports community.

That’s why this corner would like to give a big tip of the ol’ cap to Olympic rowing gold medalist Malcolm Howard and his new "Malcolm's Million" campaign for the Canadian Athletes Now Fund, as well as the "I Love a Luger" campaign of which Chris Dornan of High Perfomance Public Relations is a big part.

Howard is known as a freak of nature among his teammates. Teammate Adam Kreek said of the Victoria native: "He's a genetic mutant. Maybe he was transplanted with elephant lungs when he was a child."

Howard, who is mounting a campaign to win the men’s single sculls gold at the 2010 London Olympics, is showing his huge heart extends beyond the rowing course with his “Malcolm’s Million” campaign to raise money for Canada’s winter athletes. He’s looking for Canadians to donate $10 each towards the athletes competing at the 2010 Winter Olympics.

The funding situation has vastly improved with the Own The Podium campaign, but it still doesn’t come close to giving athletes striving to be the best in the world everything they need, which is why things like the Canadian Athletes Now Fund and B2ten, a group of well-heeled businessmen backing athletes, are a real boon.

Dornan, meanwhile, helped launch this week the hilarious "I Love A Luger" campaign in Calgary with a day of recreational tobogganing for this country’s top lugers.

For those of you who remember the old sitcom Green Acres, Dornan is reminiscent of Mr. Haney, the wily entrepreneur always coming up with inventive ways to promote and sell his wares. Though Haney was a bit of snake oil salesman, Dornan peddles the real deal – Olympic spirit.

Could Canada Get Out-Cheered at its Own Olympics?

VANCOUVER -- Could Canada get out-cheered at its own Olympics?

We know that it’s likely most events for the 2010 Winter Games are going to be sold out, but does that guarantee that Canadian athletes will benefit from the most support? Not necessarily.

Case in point: The largest and most enthusiastic crowd of the week for the Four Continents Figure Skating Championships showed up on Friday night, primarily to see Yu-Na Kim of Korea. It far surpassed the atmosphere on Saturday for Canada’s sublime Patrick Chan.

We're never going to be like Dutch speed skating fans (the headgear on the right is extremely modest by Dutch standards -- these guys and gals would wear your mother's old lampshades to work without batting an eye ... as long as they're orange.)

As Elvin Walker wrote re Four Continents on the website Golden Skate:

It was Joannie Rochette's home crowd in Vancouver, Canada, but it was hard to tell given the number of fans in the house to support Japan's Mao Asada and Korea's Yu-Na Kim.

PJ Kwong, who writes a figure skating blog for CBC online, has dubbed Kim’s fervent followers the “Yu-Na tics.”

For those who remember the 1994 world basketball championships in Toronto, there was the night at Maple Leaf Gardens when Canada played Greece and most of the Danforth turned out to provide way more vocal support for the visitors.

Frankly, that kind of thing would be embarrassing during the 2010 Olympics, but it’s hardly unthinkable, especially with fans from other countries travelling here for the Games. We’ll be fine for hockey, but they’re way more rabid and knowledgable about most of these sports than we are in Canada.

Take the Dutch long track speed skating fans, for instance (Kristina Groves blogs on them here). The Orangeheads, or whatever they are called, are probably some of the best fans in sport. That’s because although they go nuts for their own skaters, they cheer for everybody – as Canadian speed skater Denny Morrison noted, if you win in Heerenveen (speed skating equivalent to Wimbledon) then you’re a God there forever.

The best Winter Games fans ever were in 1994 in Lillehammer, where people had such a deep passion and understanding of all the sports. They supported everyone. They didn’t need an announcer to tell them when someone was on record pace in a speed skating or cross-country race - not that there’s anything wrong with that.

It was a really special Games. In other countries in the past, they’ve staged clinics for citizens to teach them how to behave in certain situations during the Olympics. That mightn’t be a bad idea actually.

====

Kwongisms: CBC online's PJ Kwong is a breath of fresh air on the figure skating beat, knowledgeable and with a great sense of humour, a combination you don’t always get on that scene.

When Canada’s Jeremy Ten and Kazakhstan’s Dennis Ten took to the ice as part of the same practice group in the men’s event at Four Continents, Kwong cracked to CBC’s Scott Russell:

“If you get two Tens in the same flight, does it make a twenty?”

Road to Vancouver: Speed Queens Still Seeking Extra Gear

At the start of every week, we'll try to take a look at trends, who's hot and who's not and some things to watch out for on the Road to Vancouver:

Canada’s “Speed Queens” are still struggling to get on track after what looked like a breakthrough campaign last season.

Emily Brydon of Fernie, B.C., crashed into a gate and cut her leg in a women’s World Cup super-G today in Cortina D’Ampezzo, Italy, while Britt Janyk of Whistler was 12th and Kelly VanderBeek of Kitchener was 20th in a race in which Jessica Lindell-Vikarby won her first ever World Cup.

A team that scored podium finishes on seven of eight weekends of World Cup speed racing last season – Janyk was fourth on the eighth weekend in Whistler – the Canadians are still without a single top-three so far in this final winter campaign before the 2010 Vancouver Games. The best result to date is a fifth by Brydon last weekend in a downhill in Altenmarkt, Austria.

Janyk’s struggles are likely of the most concern to the coaching staff. She finished third last year in the World Cup downhill standings and cracked the top-8 on eight occasions, including her first career win in Aspen and a third in Lake Louise. She felt she could contend for the World Cup downhill title.

This season, Janyk only has one top-10 in six races so far, an eighth-place finish in a super-G in St. Moritz, Switzerland, in December and she’s ranked 14th in the downhill standings. VanderBeek has dropped from fifth last year to 12th so far in the downhill rankings. Brydon leads the Canadians in eighth in the downhill standings.

The good news, though, is there's lots of racing left, including the world championships next month in Val d'Isere, France, but the early returns are certainly cause for concern.

SKY IS FALLING

The dangers of freestyle aerials was readily apparent to the Canadian team this week. Warren Shouldice suffered a concussion in a nasty crash during competition yesterday in Mont Gabriel, while Deidra Dionne hurt her ribs in training in a Saturday morning fall and couldn't compete yesterday. Veronika Bauer of Toronto was sidelined by a concussion sustained in training earlier in the week.

TOUGH SLEDDING

One of the toughest sports for Canada to make a breakthrough heading to Vancouver 2010? It's luge, the only sliding sport where the country hasn't been able to make a big dent. Alex Gough of Calgary posted the lastest in a series of 10th-place finishes, a big step up, but it's still a long, long way to the podium. Veteran Jeff Christie says their training base in Calgary badly needs an update if the team is to be competitive.

EXCELLENT POINTS

Speaking of sliding, Pierre Lueders and David Bissett extended their stay in St. Moritz, Switzerland, after winning back-to-back World Cup two-man races in order to race in a lower Europa Cup to pick up more points. It paid off. They smoked the field and picked up 120 points to move from 12th to ninth and into the all important first seed. An earlier start position is important because the ice deteriorates for later racers, particularly on a track like Lake Placid, where the world championships are held this year.

It's crunch time for Canada's Winter Olympians

AP PHOTO

Smokin' hot Pierre Lueders and David Bissett.

Please try to ignore that Beijing logo hanging over my head. We’re well on our way towards the 2010 Vancouver Olympics and, as Star sports blog chief Spencer and I work on revamping this Olympic blog, please be patient with any technical difficulties.

We’re moving right into crunch time in this final full winter season before the big show in Vancouver. For the men’s downhillers, they face their mortality this week on the feared Hahnenkamm course in Kitzbuehel. The snowboarders are in the midst of the world championships in Korea and world championships are not far away in just about every Olympic discipline. An Olympic test event was held on the cross-country courses in the Callaghan Valley on the weekend, another goes this week in ski jumping and a flurry of four are to be staged next month around the one year out date (Feb. 13).

Since most events tend to be held on the weekends, Mondays are a good day to review who’s hot and who’s not from a Canadian perspective:

Bobsledder Pierre Lueders went from stone cold to smokin’ hot with back-to-back wins in the World Cup two-man event with brakeman David Bissett. In a phone interview the day before his first victory, Lueders exuded calm despite his struggles this season. This is, after all, an athlete with 27 career World Cup wins and Olympic gold and silver medals.

But just like downhiller Erik Guay voiced concerns earlier this season, Lueders is worried that expectations created by the Own The Podium program to put Canada in first place in the medal standings for the 2010 Games is putting undue pressure on athletes:

“Everybody’s watching the medal tally. But I think at the end of the day perhaps no one should have said anything about how many medals we’re going to win instead of just saying we’re going to try to improve on last time. When you start putting medal totals and you start putting running totals of everything, I don’t like it per se. I think that in itself puts more pressure on the athletes than they need.

“What our athletes need in Canada is just support, you know, like ‘Yeah, we’ve given you money and, yes, we’re giving you the services, and whether you’re successful or whether you’re not, we’re behind you, either way.’

“I think sometimes the pressure is created by this negativity of you’re not performing up to expectations now so how can you do it next year? We need to get our heads around that.”

Being realistic on road to 2010 is going to be important. Canada does have a ton of great medal prospects, but there's a tendency in the Canadian media to over-inflate the chances. One World Cup medal does not a contender make.

Someone wrote last week that cross-country skiers Sara Renner, Ivan Babikov and Chandra Crawford will be "touted as medal hopes" by the time the Olympics roll around. But they've yet to win a World Cup medal this season.

A sixth by Renner in Whistler was good, but as she pointed out it was a light field. Crawford has missed whole season so far and the sprint event at the 2010 Olympics is in classic style. Crawford won in Turin when it was skating technique. She’s never been in the top 10 in a classic race.

The medal win by Alex Harvey and George Grey on the weekend was great, but we shouldn’t get too excited until they repeat it against a full field. Medal longshot is a much more accurate term at the moment for these athletes. A medal hope is somebody who's consisently on the podium on the World Cup tour.

Some other encouraging performances from the weekend:

-- Speed skater Denny Morrison of Fort St. John, B.C., had a big-time result, finishing fifth overall at the world sprint championships. The neat thing about it is that Morrison is not a sprinter. He’s more a middle distance guy and is reigning world champion in the 1,500 metres. He was second in the 1,000 metres on the second day, just 11/100ths of a second behind American Shani Davis in the 1,000 on the second day. Jeremy Wotherspoon, of course, is still recovering from his broken arm suffered in the first weekend of racing.

-- Canada had two freestyle skiers, Kyle Nissen and Warren Shouldice, both of Calgary, on the podium in a World Cup in Lake Placid last night. Last year, they only had two men’s skiers on the circuit because of injuries.

--- Michael Janyk of Whistler won the second run at a World Cup slalom in Wengen, Switzerland to finish eighth in the event. The men’s technical team could really use a podium. Thomas Grandi's comeback is proving much more difficult than he imagined.

---Chris Irwin, an executive producer with CBC Sports, checks in to remind us of the incredible selection of events they have available on air and online over the next few weeks. It includes the snowboarding and alpine worlds, the Four Continents Figure Skating in Vancouver and the bobsleigh/skeleton test event in Whistler.

B2ten has potential to make impact in 2010 and beyond

The unique B2ten initiative backed by well-heeled Canadian business executives to help put athletes on the podium (featured in the Star today) is something that the people involved hope to continue past the 2010 Vancouver Games.

“We’re in it to make sure that support continues for amateur sport when the funding gets turned off Feb. 28, 2010,” said Montreal businessman J.D. Miller, one of the founders. “I mean it’s not going to get totally turned off, but it’s going to be at a much lower level than it is now.”

Miller’s right. The funding’s going to take a huge hit from the $120 million invested in five years in winter sport leading to 2010. One of the few hopes of it being sustained at a reasonable level is if corporate Canada sees it as the worthwhile venture -- as the investors in B2ten have -- steps to the plate.

“Imagine if our 100 largest companies in the country gave $100,000 each to amateur sport,” said Miller. “Our system would be flying.”

It’s clear from talking to some of the contributors, principally Claire Angus Caplan of Toronto and Barry Heck of Calgary, that they’ve embraced the ideal beyond the financial investment.

“In professional sport, so much of sport is associated with fame and glory and money,” said Angus Caplan, a mother of four. “It’s amazing for us to be able to introduce to our children the whole idea of amateur sport and the sacrifices that they make.”

There’s also a lot of mentoring of the athletes by the business executives that is expected to last beyond their competitive days.

“I have no doubt when these athletes retire, that some of these B2ten sponsors will step up and really help these people,” said Heck, president of EL Merchant Capital in Calgary. “It is a two-way mentoring. They can mentor us and our kids and our families as to their experiences. We hope to be able to integrate these people into the workforce once their careers are over.”

As today’s article mentions, B2ten helps athletes with goods and services rather than cash. One example not mentioned in the story is that one of the executives lends their Whistler condo to Olympic skeleton silver medalist Jeff Pain so he can stay with his family when he trains or competes there.

Pain, a father of two, said those kinds of things can make a big difference.

 “One of the big things as an amateur athlete in Canada is sometimes I certainly feel like I’m out there on my own, flogging through the wilderness and I get remembered every four years,” said Pain. “Not an uncommon story.

“So having B2ten people or my other sponsors, Totalline Transport, who called me up after the Games and offered their support to me, it says ‘We’ve seen you, we’ve met you, we believe in you and we’re gonna help.’ That’s just a huge help.”

That’s the thing. Even with the increase in support and funding on several fronts for winter sports, many athletes still struggle to make ends meet. That’s why Canadian Olympic star Clara Hughes went public recently with a plea for more corporate support. The issue is also addressed here by Vancouver Province columnist Ed Willes.

So the B2ten investors deserve props for getting involved. Here’s a partial list of the western investors:

· Rodney McCann – President, Aristos Energy (part of the McCann Group); · Larry Moeller – Edco Financial; · Tony Dilawri –Dilawri Group of Companies (Calgary BMW, Bentley, Aston Martin, Calgary Honda and other auto dealerships); · Steve Rice – CEO, Summit Corporation (Eden Textiles and DSL Food Service); · Robert Kulhawy – CEO, Commerx Corporation; · Wade Sparks – President, Riley’s · Patricia and George La Borde;