Has Canada found formula for success?
Deeper pool of funding has raised expectations heading into Summer Games
EDMONTON— Canada’s biggest track and field medal hopes for the Rio Olympics step onto Foote Field this weekend and, quite literally, they’ll be all over the place.
There are sprinters, middle-distance runners and jumpers of all kinds, as well as multi-event athletes for whom getting to Rio isn’t their end goal because they expect to hear the national anthem played there.
That’s not the way it was heading into the London Games four summers ago. But these athletes have high expectations for themselves and, increasingly, so do the Canadian fans who are getting used to the idea Canada can be good at this.
The official goal for Rio is to win two or three medals, but talk to anyone involved and it’s clear they are expecting to deliver at least double that. That would be punching way above the nation’s weight in summer sport.
There’s no reason to think Canada hasn’t always had athletes who could deliver these kinds of hopes, so why are they all so optimistic now?
Part of it comes down to the sport body finally creating a better system to fund and support its athletes, this according to head coach Peter Eriksson.
Now, they financially support the best athletes wherever they choose to train and make it easier for them to get to the Olympics, not harder.
It seems simple, obvious even, but in an amateur sport environment where there’s never enough money and in a country that’s too big and too cold to easily excel in summer sport, Athletics Canada tried a number of formulas before this one.
Of the three big changes made since London, two have received widespread support from athletes and one, which introduces an element of discretion in naming the Olympic team, has left many wary.
Before the 2012 Olympics, Athletics Canada targeted event groups where medals seemed possible, such as throws or sprints and hurdles, and tried to force athletes to train at one of the five specialized centres, whether they wanted to be there or not.
But no athlete training at one of the centres won a medal in London. But Derek Drouin, a high jumper who trained in Indiana, well outside this careful constructed system, did.
“Not only was it extremely unpopular with athletes, it wasn’t working,” said Athletics Canada chief executive Rob Guy.
So they closed three centres, freeing up $1.5 million that now goes directly to athletes and their person- al coaches and turned the ones in Victoria and Toronto into open-door hubs that provide all elite athletes with access to training facilities and support services.
“Before, very few athletes got assistance, now there’s a deeper pool of funding for camps, competition trips, physio, training,” Inaki Gomez, an athlete representative on the board, said.
And everything has been bolstered dramatically by the fact there’s a lot more money to go around, with everincreasing funds coming from Own the Podium, including $4 million this year. That funding body, which supports medal-targeted athletes, dates back to 2005 and has played an important factor in the success track and field athletes are now seeing.
Some 60 athletes are expected to be named to the Rio team on Monday — the largest ever — and part of that is because Canada is using the Olympic qualifying standard and no longer imposing it’s own higher bar for athletes in track and field.
But the question of which athletes will be named to the team isn’t as simple as it used to be. The top two athletes across the line are automatic picks, but the third is now discretionary.
Erikkson says this is simply another way to ensure Canada sends its best possible team to Rio. If Andre De Grasse false starts in the 100 me- tres, for example, without this rule the world champion bronze medallist would be left off the team.
“I don’t want to use it as a given — we should select the one that comes one, two and three if they have the (Rio) standard and showed competitive readiness,” Erikkson said. “We just changed it to have a buffer for the big stars, if something happened.”
Retired hurdler Perdita Felicien, who was just inducted into the Athletics Canada Hall of Fame, sums up the views of many athletes current and past.
“I’m leery of that,” she said. “I understand why they’ve done it . . . but I think it can get political and start a war.”