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A Rough Road Canada’s war

Canada’s Olympic athletes are facing an unprecedented amount of national pressure to pull medals in Vancouver thanks to International Olympic Committee (IOC) president Jacques Rogge.

Back in 2004, Rogge visited with Canadian sports officials and voiced his concerns about the state of sport in our country, which had just been granted the 2010 Games.

“He pointed out that Canadian sport was under-funded at the world level,” said Ken Read, head of Alpine Alberta, who was at the meeting. “And it was important to the IOC that Canada have a successful home team.”

Rogge was delicately referring to a dubious fact that still sits on the edge of the Canadian consciousness. Despite hosting twice (Montreal in 1976 and Calgary in 1988), Canada has yet to win a gold medal on home soil.

If Rogge was the impetus, humiliation was the motivation for creating Own The Podium (OTP). It’s a $110-million program jointly funded by government and corporations that’s designed to elevate Canada’s chances in this oh-so-important showing on the world stage.

With the Canadian Olympic Committee publicly stating its goal is to win more medals in Vancouver than any other country, the Canadian sports machine set to work.

And so began the Top Secret program. It was a five-year, $8-million technological arms race which is unprecedented in Canadian sports history. Fifty-five projects were completed in 17 different universities and institutions across Canada.

But all this technology – constructed in a clandestine way with a feverish wish for gold – comes with a dark side. Sports analysts blame the recent injuries plaguing the alpine teams on new ski technology which is beginning to out-distance human physiology.

“The skis are getting better, knees and ligaments aren’t,” said Team Canada’s Manuel Osborne-Paradis. “Our equipment is evolving faster than our human bodies.”

So now that Canada has recruited itself a cadre of scientists, does this really assure us of anything?

It has already cost Canada’s athletes. Three female and two male skiers had to bow out of the Olympics in late December, and three members of the Canadian ski team have sustained training injuries and were forced to scale back their preparation for the Games.

Canada’s athletes deserve the best facilities and training their country can offer them. But if the programs are directed towards a nationalistic hunger for medal-glory rather than the actual betterment of individuals, Canada is poised to lose more than it gains.

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