Canadian officials have finally acknowledged that the Own The Podium program, a 100+ million dollar initiative to try and win the overall medal count at the Olympics, has failed. I'm not really surprised, and the reason why is simple.
Other countries have been throwing as much or more money at the medal count a lot longer than Canada.
I've heard reports that the funding Canadian athletes have enjoyed for this Olympics will be cut. This is a typical political knee-jerk reaction to the failure of a quick fix solution. To make Olympic champions, you have to start at the ground up, not by simply throwing money at your current crop of elite athletes. And starting from the ground up takes time, as those young athletes need time to grow into tomorrow's champions.
I'm not disparaging the efforts of our current crop of Olympians; they've trained hard and done their country proud. But I'm really sad to see the cuts coming to sports funding, as it is just going to set back what Own the Podium started, making that 100+ million dollars spent a waste.
More copies of Dark Awakenings for UAD!!!!
5 months ago
We may not have owned the whole things, but we for sure owned the top step of that podium! To say the "Own The Podium" was a failure would be wrong! I hope they don't decide to cut the funding!
ReplyDeleteYeah i agree with my wife! We totally owned the podium! We have the most golds, and to me that makes it a success. They shouldn't have canned the slogan half way through, that was ridiculous.
ReplyDeleteEric
I agree with you guys that we're a success with all of the gold, and improving our medal count, but Own The Podium had come out with a statement saying the initiative had failed. I think it would be a shame to cut the program; if we are even going to win the overall medal count the funding has to continue.
ReplyDelete