Canada’s Sochi athletes face big medal task
Program aims to win more than anyone else at Games — better than third place in 2010
It’s hard to think of Canada’s effort at the 2010 Winter Olympic as a failure but — aside from winning a record 14 gold medals while galvanizing the country from Comox to Come by Chance — the Maple Leaf did fall short in its stated goal for the Vancouver Games.
Heading into 2010, the intent was to lead all countries in the medal table and we finished third. This is our shame. Yet, somehow, we’ve managed to live with it.
We set a goal. We went after it. And we haven’t slacked off.
— Ken Read
“I’m always asked did you dream (2010) would have the impact it did,” says Ken Read, the outgoing director of winter sports for Own The Podium. “I say, ‘We didn’t realize we were going to go from blank (the number of gold medals won in Montreal in 1976), to blank (the number won in Calgary in ‘88), to 14.
“The real goal was to win the medal count. The 14 gold medals was a nice, unintentional consequence.”
No, as far as unintentional consequences go, that one was pretty good. But, with the calendar about to turn on another quadrennial, the people at Own The Podium and the Canadian Olympic Committee are now in the unenviable position of trying to live up to legacy created by 2010.
OTP is again gunning for top spot on the medal table in Sochi and, again, has devoted the necessary resources to the sports federations and athletes to make that goal realistic.
The difference this time? The rest of the country isn’t quite as engaged as it was in the run-up to 2010. That doesn’t mean we don’t want similar results. It does mean the fanfare and hoopla aren’t nearly the same as the countdown starts for the Russian Games.
“Our goal is to contend for No. 1 in total medals,” Read says. “We don’t want to stick a red flag in front of anyone and say our goal is No. 1. But not a lot has changed. We’re clearly stating we want to be players.
“We set a goal. We went after it. And we haven’t slacked off. If anything we’ve seen a sharpening of focus and a continual raising of the bar.”
Read, the former downhill skier and charter member of the Crazy Canucks, has picked an interesting time to step down from OTP. He was around when the organization was formed in ‘04 to ready the Canadian team for 2010, sat on the steering committee for Turin in ‘06, then assumed the controls for winter sports after Vancouver and Canada’s starring turn as the host country.
He’s also done most of the heavy lifting for 2014 and, with the big pieces in place, you can make the case Canada is better positioned heading into Russia than it was for Vancouver. Funding, for starters, is up. Canada also ranks first in both gold medals and medals won in the World Championships from 2011 to 2013. In World Cup events held this year, Canada is third behind Germany and the States in total medals.
All that, of course, guarantees nothing. But there is a depth among the 13 winter sports which suggests the Canucks will be at or near the top again in Sochi. This time around there will be a lot of the familiar faces from Vancouver — Kaillie Humphries in bobsled, speedskater Christine Nesbitt, Charles Hamelin in short track — along with a new generation of breakout stars — Alex Gough in luge, Mikael Kingsbury in moguls, cross-country skiers Alex Harvey and Devon Kershaw.
And there’s hockey. There will be some interest in the hockey teams sent to Sochi.
“The last four years, we’ve tried to maintain the support and the focus we had going into Vancouver,” says Read. “The sports are responding incredibly well.
“The concept of OTP is to be No. 1 and I firmly believe it’s the kind of thing that’s allowing our nation to succeed in sport. It’s funny. The (University of Alberta) did an evaluation and found 80 per cent of Canadians think OTP is a good thing. There’s not a lot of things in Canada where 80 per cent of the population think something is good.”
And it was good in Vancouver. If it’s as good in Sochi, they might be on to something.