National team athletes want raise in monthly “carding” money

Olympic bobsledder Cynthia Appiah is thousands of dollars in debt for her sled’s runners and for travel to competition.

Her Canadian teammate Melissa Lotholz recently sought free accommodation in a church while competing in Lake Placid, New York.

Olympic rowing champion Andrea Proske says she’s still paying off debt, and that her mother planted an extra garden to grow fruits and vegetables to meet her caloric needs when Proske trained and raced on a tight budget.

With the 2024 Olympic and Paralympic Games in Paris on the horizon, Canada’s athletes are asking for a $6.3-million raise to the Athletes Assistance Program, which is informally known as “carding” money, in the federal government’s April 16 budget.

A monthly cheque of $1,765 — $1,060 for a development-level athlete — is for living expenses and competition costs their sport’s governing body doesn’t cover.

“Carding is my main source of income,” Appiah said. “It’s pretty much the only thing that I know will be sustainable through a whole year both in and outside of competition.”

More than 1,900 athletes across 90 sports are eligible for AAP, which offers other financial supports such as tuition and child care.

Athletes saw their AAP increase in 2017 by $265 a month, or 18 per cent, in the first raise since 2004.

The latest ask, which would be an increase of 18.8 per cent, is independent of a joint demand by the Canadian Olympic and Paralympic committees for a injection of $104 million into the sport system.

One goes hand in hand with the other, however, as athletes cover costs their national federations can’t. Appiah is paying off $10,000 runners for her sled and still has $6,000 on her credit card from travelling to World Cups in Latvia and Austria last year.

The 33-year-old lives with her sister in Toronto “because I can’t afford to live on my own in a city like Toronto.”

When Appiah heads to the bob team’s training centre in Calgary, she says she “couch surfs” and drives a 2007 car with rusty wheel wells and 360,000 kilometres on it.

The AAP, worth $21,000 annually, is the primary source of income in many athletes’ financial traplines that can also include provincial grants, prize money or sponsorships.

Appiah says income from Ontario’s Quest For Gold program, her status as an RBC Olympian and sponsorships that come and go year to year gets her to about $28,000 annually.

“A lot of people that I’ve had this conversation with in terms of funding, seem to have this idea that Canadian Olympians are very much living in the lap of luxury. There’s this illusion that we get high top-dollar sponsors,” Appiah said.

“Andre De Grasse, Christine Sinclair, those are the few and far between that have those million-dollar contracts.”

Her teammate Lotholz wants her World Cup status back after taking a year off racing to complete her University of Alberta degree.

That’s meant competing on the North American Cup circuit this past winter and “paying out of pocket for pretty much everything minus coaching,” she said.

The two-time Olympian says she stayed for free in a Lake Placid church while competing in her final event of the season. Lotholz embraces athletes’ additional request to index the AAP to the inflation rate.

“Literally every penny helps.”