SOME ATHLETES WILL PAY TO PLAY

Canada has never sent more athletes abroad for a Commonwealth Games, and has never asked more of them to pay their own way.

Of the record 282 athletes headed to the Gold Coast of Australia for next month’s Games, 93 will be competing for their country on a “pay-to-play” basis, according to Brian MacPherson, CEO of Commonwealth Games Canada (CGC).

The $3,000 fee covers airfare, the team clothing kit and some administrative expenses. MacPherson said CGC picks up another estimated $1,200 in costs related to each athlete during the Games, which run from April 4 to 15. Seventy countries and territories will send an estimated 6,600 athletes to the Games.

Those Canadian athletes being charged the fee are ranked outside the top five in the Commonwealth, but inside the top eight in their respective events. MacPherson said CGC is paying the entire bill for all 190 athletes ranked in the top five, while national sports organizations are paying the fee for about 99 per cent of pay-to-play athletes.

“A couple of sports like weightlifting have had to transfer that to the backs of the athletes. But that’s just a few. Most are paid by the NSOs.”

The 93 pay-to-play athletes break down as follows: 31 from men’s and women’s field hockey, 16 from men’s rugby sevens, 11 from athletics, 10 from swimming, four each from boxing and table tennis, three each from wrestling, gymnastics, diving and shooting, two each from triathlon and badminton and one from cycling.

MacPherson said the pay-to-play fee system was necessitated by severe budget cuts beginning in 2010-11, which have affected all CGC programming. The fee was initially charged only to so-called NextGen athletes, younger competitors who showed potential to win medals at future Games. There were 47 pay-toplay athletes at Glasgow, Scotland in 2014.

“We went from $2.5 million per year to run all our programs — understanding the team program is just one of them — to $750,000,” said MacPherson. “We’re lean and mean. We have curtailed a lot of the back office or back end things that athletes don’t see.

“Just to give you perspective, the 2010 Commonwealth Games budget for that Canadian team to go to India, was about $2.5 million. Our budget for the team at these Games is $1.7 million.”

The CGC’s primary funding sources were three departments of the federal government. The CGC lost $800,000 from the Canadian International Development Agency, about $300,000 from the Heritage department and $400,000 of the $800,000 that had been coming from Sport Canada annually.

“And that’s where we have been since,” said MacPherson, who joined CGC in 2011, right after the cuts were made. “With those cuts, we were collateral damage. It wasn’t anything that CGC did or didn’t do, we were just collateral damage. So we have had to make cuts throughout our programs, including the team program. We have tried to make the cuts on the team program to be in areas that do not impact the athletes and coaches.”

But they are no longer able to shield everyone from their financial reality.