GRACE UNCENSORED

olympics fever

last night i heard a brief mention about the funding for the olympics, how the canadians spent more money on them in the years leading up to their hosting, and how that resulted in a whole lot of medals.  i couldn’t remember the specifics about it, so i found an interesting article about it this morning.

so even though the canadians did spend a lot, they haven’t been spending the tons of money that other countries (who win lots of medals) have been spending for a long time.

i personally think it’s a good thing to spend money on athletics, but i think it would be nice if people had more interest in the arts, and wanted to throw a little money towards it.  but i guess the core deal with the vast majority of people always has been and always will be all about athletic competition, not going to see a play or visit a museum.  just the way it is.

here’s the article.  have a good monday..

Canada’s Olympic athletes are doing very well in the ongoing Winter Olympics in Vancouver, and it’s no coincidence. Money may not be able to buy you a gold metal, but it can certainly help, and Canada has been pouring funding into its athletic programs in the years leading up to the Vancouver games.

Even the names of programs designed to help Canada overtake its rivals in the race for Olympic medals read like spy-agency dossiers: OTP, B2ten, Top Secret.

There’s no doubting it was a national priority.

All Olympic powers have comparable programs. Canada wasn’t in their class, in terms of ambition or resources, before Vancouver won the bidding for the 2010 Games — and its subsequent endeavors are evidence of the lengths nations now go in pursuit of gold.

Exhibit A is moguls skier Alexandre Bilodeau, who Sunday became the first Canadian to win gold on home territory after a shutout in two previous Canada-hosted Olympics. He’s a direct beneficiary of three of the key Canadian initiatives:

• Own The Podium, a multiyear investment [1] of more than $110 million in government and corporate funding to help Canada win the most medals in Vancouver, with the bulk of the money [2] steered toward the top medal contenders. By comparison, the U.S. Olympic Committee said its 2007-2010 investment [1] for these games was $58.2 million.
• Top Secret, a component of Own the Podium that allocated about $8 million to high-technology and science-related projects. For Bilodeau, this included sessions in a Montreal lab improving his relaxation skills through a process called bioneuro-feedback.
• B2ten, a private organization, funded by a small group of wealthy donors, that has provided $3 million over the past five years to a select group of elite Olympians, including Bilodeau and 17 others who are competing at these games. Their aim was to invest [1] with business-style efficiency, getting money [2] straight to promising athletes without diversions for administrative costs.

B2ten’s program director is Dominick Gauthier, who also coaches Bilodeau and moguls silver medalist Jenn Heil. The program provided the two skiers and the other selected Olympians with new equipment if they needed it and access to a specialized support staff – including athletic therapists and sports psychologists – that wasn’t available to non-B2ten athletes.

“It’s absolutely a difference-maker,” Gauthier said of the extra support — which for the most part went to athletes just on the edge of medal prospects such as bobsledder Lyndon Rush and speedskater Denny Morrison.

“We were looking for people a tiny bit behind … where our dollars would make a big difference,” Gauthier said.

B2ten’s donors have included Stephen Bronfman, grandson of the founder of the Seagram Co. liquor empire, and Barry Heck, a Calgary merchant banker, but most remain anonymous in the spirit of a program that has obtained charitable status and involves no sponsorships or endorsements.

“The others are happy to be in the background,” Gauthier said. “They want to support our country.”

B2ten’s independence from the official Canadian sports hierarchy has caused occasional “issues,” according to Roger Jackson, chairman of Own The Podium. He cited instances where B2ten athletes have not participated in certain national team activities.

Overall, however, Jackson praised B2ten.

“It’s minuscule in funding but has a very big impact for the athletes concerned,” he said. “As we go forward, we’ll sit down with the and discuss even more collaboration.”

Thus far, Canada is “right on schedule” with its medal expectations, said Jackson, who’s been stressing that Week 2 — with the finals of hockey and curling — will almost certainly bring more medals than Week 1.

Whatever the results, he said, Own The Podium already has had an impact by convincing Canadian fans that their national team would be strong.

The Top Secret component of Own The Podium funded more than 50 projects, studying the scientific fundamentals of curling, developing a new binding system for the snowboard team, and using GPS technology to help Alpine coaches analyze different sections of a race course.

For Bilodeau, Top Secret’s benefits included many hours spent in a Montreal lab hooked up with sensors so the freestyle team’s psychologist could monitor responses to various stimuli. The aim was to learn how to develop a calm, focused state of mind that would maximize performance.

Chris Rudge, CEO of the Canadian Olympic Committee, said Own the Podium has “provided a level of coaching and science and technical support that we’ve never had before.”

He also cited another initiative by his committee — an Olympic preparation program that counsels athletes on “distraction management” and dealings with the media.

“We’ve put in more money [2] than we ever have, but we’re still not where other countries are,” Rudge said Wednesday. “I hope these games — if we achieve the goals we set — help those who invested in us feel they did a good thing and want to do more of the same.”

Mike English, the U.S. Olympic Committee’s director of sport performance, said the U.S. and other top Olympic nations have had programs comparable with Canada’s in place for many years, but keep evolving them. For example, English helped develop Eye on Performance, an advanced system of cameras and recorders that gives athletes nearly instantaneous feedback about their training.

English noted that Olympic host countries — such as Canada this year – traditionally increase athlete-support spending to boost the chances for home-field victories.

“The sense I get, for the Canadians it’s probably a new approach — they’re just getting into it,” English said. “They’ve spent a lot more money [2] than us the last four years, and they certainly have made some substantial progress. Hats off to them.”