Canada’s sport funding under microscope
Review of Ottawa’s approach to financing athletes ‘just good business’
Affectionately known as the hobo of the Canadian Olympic team, Jason Myslicki crashed on couches, hitchhiked to ski hills and pulled weeds to help pay for his lodging on the World Cup circuit.
Competing in the little-known discipline of Nordic combined — ski jumping mixed with cross-country skiing — Myslicki received virtually no government assistance under Canada’s targeted funding model for Olympic and Paralympic sport.
He retired after placing 41st at the 2010 Vancouver Games, about $30,000 in debt.
“It’s tough, because I know we don’t have the resources to fund every sport,” Myslicki said Thursday.
“I just see so many flaws in the targeted system. I’ve seen people win at the Olympics who had almost no money. And I’ve seen people at the Olympics who went and trained in exotic places and did all this crazy stuff and then didn’t perform on game day.”
Canada’s targeted approach to sport funding — with the most money going to athletes perceived to have the best chance at winning medals — is under close examination in Ottawa.
On Tuesday, Sport Canada issued a call for proposals to write a report assessing the federal government’s game plan for funding Olympians and Paralympians.
Based on recommendations from Own the Podium, $64 million is allocated by the government each year to athletes and teams viewed as having the best chances at clinching Olympic and Paralympic medals.
The review is expected to determine the degree to which the approach has achieved — or is likely to achieve — success and “assess the intended and unintended impacts of the targeted excellence approach.”
In other words, does the targeted funding result in more Olympic medals? Does it create undue hardship for those in fringe sports like Nordic combined?
“We believe that some of the unintended consequences around the current model — including disenfranchisement, early retirement and team culture fragmentation — can be solved with the inclusion of the athlete voice within the decision-making structures throughout sport and, of course, in the upcoming federal review,” Ashley Labrie, executive director of Athletes Can, wrote in an email. “There are several sports on the cusp of targeted funding where athletes are expressing a level of stress associated with the risk of losing their funding — that nagging thought ‘Will I be OK this season or is our funding going to get pulled?’ ”
The not-for-profit Own the Podium was created in 2005 to help Canada top the medal chart at the 2010 Vancouver Games.
Under the targeted approach, Canada won a record 14 gold medals.
Heading into the Rio Summer Games, the strategy is the same with rowing set to receive $4.19 million this season, compared to $300,000 for boxing.
Another $4.12 million is pegged for athletics.
Government reviews of programs are nothing out of the ordinary, according to Anne Merklinger, chief executive of Own the Podium, who said she welcomes the coming Sport Canada report.
“As an organization, we’re always looking at ways we can improve,” she said. “What are areas that are working really well? What are areas we can strengthen?
“That’s just good business.”