Why Canada Has Not Won Any Olympic Medals
You could tell something was amiss when, during the opening ceremonies, the rest of the world was gloriously dressed to show off their national heritages and Canada entered wearing cheap bargain-bin-looking 1970s track suits that were probably manufactured in China and bought for about a buck each.
Canada's 2008 Olympic team is a national disgrace. Why? September 24th, 1988. That's why. When sprinter Ben Johnson set a new world record of 9.79 seconds in the Men's 100m in Seoul, the celebrations in Canada were akin to that ordinarily reserved for major ice hockey victories, all to the sound of the late great Don Whitman's brilliant call of the victory. Two days later the country was an ugly mixture of shock and disgust as Johnson was stripped of his Gold after testing positive for the anabolic steroid Stanizolol.
Ben Johnson, over the years, went from one absurd failing endeavour to another, never being taken seriously, eventually, literally, moving into his Mom's basement. Worse, he had a terrible habit of running off at the mouth, venting idiotic nonsense to anyone who would listen. After testing positive a second time (in 1993), a Federal cabinet minister publicly declared him a "sickening disgrace to the nation" and invited him to get out of Canada and "move back to Jamaica". Clearly and, as it would turn out, significantly, unmitigated hatred of Johnson ran deep on Parliament Hill.
The year following Ben's being stripped of Gold, 1989, the Canadian federal government created "The Commission of Inquiry Into the Use of Drugs and Banned Practices Intended to Increase Athletic Performance", the scope and size of which was comparable to the Iran-Contra hearings; televised live in its entirety over hundreds of hours. Inquiry head Court Chief Justice Charles Dubin concluded that the problems were rampant, ingrained and in need of a major clean-up.
Given that Canadian politicians move at an Arctic glacial pace, the Federal response took a long time to arrive. But when it did, it was severe and damning. Worse, it lacked any foresight or sympathy for Canada's amateur athletes, the overwhelming majority of whom had never touched a banned substance in their lives. Part One of the solution was the introduction of widespread and improved testing, which made perfect sense, and included Canada "taking the lead" in the World-wide fight against doping in sports; positioning itself as (or at least pretending to be) the leading nation in sports cleanliness. Part Two of the solution was immediately devastating to Canadian athletics and has continued to wreak havoc in increasingly ugly ways with each passing year.
It takes, on average, ten years for an athlete to reach the world stage. Typically an athlete will begin participating in their chosen discipline in their early teens and, if they are lucky, might get the opportunity to participate in an Olympics by the time they reach their early-to-mid twenties. This timeline is central to my argument and what follows baffles me in the sense that it is not being discussed. Part Two of the Federal strategy was to penalize the athletes through a series of funding cuts; no small amount of which was born out of bitterness and anger at the humiliation Ben Johnson caused the nation. The acrimony has not since receded an inch. Canada's elite athletes who had been in the national programs remained largely unaffected by this, already having established themselves and secured the necessary funding to get them through the 1992 and/or 1996 games. Bear in mind that Canada won a total of 10 medals at '88 Seoul, at '92 Barcelona they took home 18, at Atlanta in '96 they took home 22 which placed them 11th among nations in total medals. But the athletes who were winning those medals began their funding cycles generally no later than 1988-92. Then the Feds' reaction to Johnson kicked in; financial support to sport went from $66.7 million in 1987 to $51.1 million in 1997. By 2001 it was cut a further 15% and by 2004 by another 13%. As it stands today we are approaching one-third of the 1987 figure, damning the country's athletic programs for decades to come. More cuts are coming. This all left very little money on the table for athletes who unfortunately now found themselves competing with a greater number of other athletes due to the spark in interest generated by successes in Barcelona and Atlanta; less money, more athletes wanting and needing some; higher cost of living and equipment.
Canada slipped to 14 medals at Sydney '00, down to 12 at Athens '04 and is presently stalled at 0 so far in Beijing. Yet the chief executive officer of the Canadian Olympic Committee had the audacity to suggest that Canada was aiming to finish as high as 14th in the world medal-wise. He'd have done better to predict finishing 14 places below Tajikistan and Azerbaijan. With each passing Olympiad the funded athletes grew fewer, aged and retired. Of course, the athletes currently competing in Beijing have got there on a shoe-string. Consider the case of Whitewater Kayaker David Ford who spent $80,000 out of his own pocket, wiping himself out, because the Government cut off his funding. Despite finishing fourth in Athens, he was told that "his sport lacked cultural significance in Canada" (as opposed to, say, Table Tennis, Badminton or Synchronized Diving), that he was too old and the Canadian government didn't "feel" that he'd be as good as he was at Athens. Consider also the case of Martin Gilbert, cyclist, whose bike was irreparably broken during recent a practice session. Gilbert contacted all three Canadian manufacturers, all but begging them for a bike so he could represent his country in China, yet all refused; one company offered to sell one at cost - still amounting to several thousand dollars which Gilbert didn't have. The Feds, effectively, didn't return his calls. Fortunately the Malaysian team has offered to loan him a back-up. My how things have changed. There was a time we used to lend things to Malaysia (like billions of dollars, for example). Now, hat in hand, we have to ask others for something as simple as a bicycle. Meanwhile the British team are driving bikes designed by Formula One racing team McLaren.
Wherever you are, Ben Johnson, I hope you're sitting in front of a television watching every moment of this colossal failure. And I hope you have brain cells enough to recognize how much of it rests on your worthless steroid-forged shoulders. Until you came along, the results of no lone athlete's actions had ever come remotely close to devastating an entire nation's amateur athletic program. Way to go.
The US just ripped its North, Central, and South American bretheren limb from limb the last few weeks, securing its spot in Beijing. It did so with a balanced team that actually featured shooters, ball-handlers, and some concept of the need for defense. So, everything is locked in for a return to to the top of the international bragging rights pile next year, right?
The London 2012 organising committee