National Post

What boosts Olympic wins

FUNDING KEY TO MEDAL COUNT

- Scott Stinson

Shortly before these Olympics began, I sat down with Anne Merklinger, the head of Own the Podium, the organizati­on that would either get a lot of credit, or wear the blame, for Team Canada’s performanc­e.

Are you nervous?, I asked. You must be nervous. All that work done, and at this point there is absolutely nothing you can do. I would be nervous. So nervous.

“Confident,” she said, confidentl­y. They had put a lot of work, and a lot of money, into helping put Canada’s 200-odd athletes into a good position to succeed, and specifical­ly in position to win medals. They expected Pyeongchan­g to be Team Canada’s best-ever Olympics.

It became that a couple of days ago.

When Canada passed the 26-med- al mark on Friday morning, it was the latest vindicatio­n of the country’s high-performanc­e program, one that has allowed it to punch well above its weight at the greatest spectacle in sports. Canada’s targeted- excellence approach to funding, which directs the bulk of money — beyond government’s core funding of amateur sport — to discipline­s that are considered to have short- term Olympic medal potential, delivered piles of hardware in Korea, just like it did in Vancouver and Sochi ( and to a lesser extent in London and Rio). The rich-get-richer model saw well- funded sports like freestyle skiing, speedskati­ng and snowboard win the biggest medal totals, while discipline­s that were largely shut-out of Own the Podium’s top-up funding were largely shut out of podium finishes.

Only in luge, with two medals, did a sport lower on the funding table exceed expectatio­ns and only in curling, with just one, did one of the more well-monied sports noticeably underperfo­rm.

Considerin­g that the targeted- funding model has been criticized for being too ruthless, and that Ottawa even brought in an outside consultant to assess whether i nvestments in highperfor­mance sport were in need of a new approach, the results here are most likely to bring responses of steadyas- she- goes. There is an old saying, which has roots in English football: the table doesn’t lie. If Canada broke its record for medals at an Olympics, it must be doing something right. Or a lot of things right.

But the funny thing about standings, in an Olympics or any sport, is that they can lie rather a lot.

And after three weeks watching these Olympics sports up close, the idea of making funding decisions based on who wins a medal seems a least a little crazy. Freestyle skiing, for example, won four medals for Canada: gold for Mikael Kingsbury in moguls, silver for Julie Dufour- Lapointe in moguls, gold for Cassie Sharpe in halfpipe and bronze for Alex Beaulieu- Marchand in ski slopestyle.

That’s a noticeable dropoff from the seven that the team won in Sochi, which could be framed as a disappoint­ment. But MarcAntoin­e Gagnon was in a bronze medal spot until the very last skier in moguls, and Andi Naude looked like a medal lock until she slipped on her final run. Canada had skiers at fifth and sixth in men’s halfpipe and had other close calls in men’s and women’s ski slopestyle.

On the snowboard side, the team won four medals, but it could easily have been six, or two. These are judged sports, and the competitor­s don’t just have to land their tricks with little room for error, they are at the mercy of what other riders might do. And in ski cross, the team bumped its medal haul from two in Sochi to three in Pyeongchan­g, but one only had to watch about five minutes of that sport — Mario Kart on skis — to know that the winners would not necessaril­y be the strongest skiers.

How can you assess the Olympic performanc­e of a certain team, when so much of the outcome is heavily dependent on chance?

Norway, as it happens, has been one of the other big stories of these games. Despite a population of just 5.2 million, it has dominated the medal table, which has caused many a reporter to try to understand its secrets. The story most often told is that Norway doesn’t worry about excellence.

It wants to support sports at the grassroots, and emphasize fun and participat­ion, and eventually the best athletes will be easily identifiab­le. There are certainly other factors, not least of which is that Norway is particular­ly strong in crosscount­ry skiing and biathlon events that have many medal possibilit­ies, but if nothing else that country’s experience shows that there is more than one path to Olympic dominance.

The question for Canada i s, does the success here mean that everything around the national teams should continue on t he same course? Or does the big medal total also obscure some fixable problems? Did the rest of the world close the curling gap when Canada’s best teams were beating each other up at Olympic trials?

Did Hocke y Canada’s streak of Olympic success with t he women’s t eam cause it to prize experience­d veterans over younger, faster players who might have shown more life in the overtime of a gold-medal game?

Some American reporters were at the Canadian Olympic Committee’s closi ng press conference on Saturday to ask, essentiall­y, how the United States could do better at the Olympics. That is sea-change stuff: the mighty American athletic machine, looking northward for ways to do amateur athletics better.

But that’s not to say that Canada couldn’t still ask those questions, of itself.

 ?? MADDIE MEYER / GETTY IMAGES ?? Team Canada in the Parade of Athletes during the closing ceremony Sunday of the Pyeongchan­g 2018 Winter Olympic Games in South Korea.
MADDIE MEYER / GETTY IMAGES Team Canada in the Parade of Athletes during the closing ceremony Sunday of the Pyeongchan­g 2018 Winter Olympic Games in South Korea.
 ?? PAUL CHIASSON / THE CANADIAN PRESS ?? Canadian athletes rejoice during the closing ceremonies of the 2018 Winter Games on Sunday in South Korea.
PAUL CHIASSON / THE CANADIAN PRESS Canadian athletes rejoice during the closing ceremonies of the 2018 Winter Games on Sunday in South Korea.
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