Is that like 30th best in the world?

Don't worry, the lack of snow and ice has probably had a negative effect on the results.

30th best - very doubtful.

Probably somewhere around 60-100 range I'd say.

I would've qualified except for fuckin' up the ligaments and cartiledge in the ankle. Twice :(

Hey if we play Hockey.. i'm sure we'll get something there... if we get nothing then you can say its a tragedy.

its the uniforms ...

its all about population, if 1/1000 people are awesome atheletes , china will naturally have more awesome atheletes.

From a "population-adjusted" medals table done after the 2004 Olympics, it turns out that of the 75 nations whose athletes made a podium in Athens, China was No. 68 on the efficiency list.

Canada beat both china and the usa in terms of medals per person

Latest Fails:

Swimming 4x200 relay team: Fail
Men's synchronized diving: Fail

hell im not even from canada and I'm ashamed for them.

I am ashamed that our system does nothing to support amateur athletes, and does everything to please the mullet wearing morons!

I am ashamed that 'ockey is all that the others Canadians think of.

I am ashamed that people do nothing to support athletes yet expect them (athletes) to produce result which will please them.

I am ashamed that Australia adopted a system which we (Canada) devised/created and abandoned. I am even more ashamed knowing the model is working for them!

P.S. Synchronized diving maybe an art, but it ain't a sport!

Interesting tidbit of info I heard while watching the female gymnastics last night.

In China they hand pick athletes when they are very young and basically tell them the path that they are going to follow, I don't think there is a whole lot of choice involved which kind of cheapens their success.

Either way Canada still has nothing.

totally shocked indeed!

As did the US :warning

What I find interesting is that even without the deep grassroots support for most of these sports in Canada our athletes often still manage to finish in 4th, 5th, 6th place in the world. One can only imagine how we'd do with better funding.

To me it's more about creating a culture of excellence. Our Olympic team has a "purple ribbon" attitude, that just participating is worth something. The lack of funding is obvious, but as stated earlier I think it's all about political will and leadership - if those two things are in place, funding will follow naturally. Just throwing money at the problem will not accomplish anything.

We currently have two olympic programs

- The road to excellence (summer olympics)
- Own the podium (focused on 2010)

Road to excellence is a spectacular failure - it's just lip service - since results matter, and there are no excellent results.

when is the winter olympics again?

I don't see why it matters. Look at the olympic sports, there is a reason countries such as Canada don't do well in them. None of these sports draw national interest with the exception of these 2 weeks every four year. Few kids grow up wanting to be an olympic skeet shooter or fencer. Your best athletes play hockey, lacrosse, and sometimes basketball or baseball.

Same goes for the U.S. in some areas. Sure the U.S. gets a lot of medals, but it's no sign of our national athletic ability. A very small percent of our population takes up swimming. Even less take up some of the other sports popular in the olympics. If olympic sports were treated as predominately as the NBA or NFL, we'd have triple the medals every olympics.

And I don't see why your country should change. Why force certain sports on your culture just for some nationalistic pride that will be forgotten in 48 hours? No one here can tell you how many golds the U.S won 8 years ago. Certain countries like China need the nationalistic crap to get by. It's why they pluck these kids out of schools at a few years old and train them night and day. Even then they can't compete in a lot of areas.

Lets be honest, if the U.S or Canada put more emphasis on these sports, had a public that actually cared about them, we'd have a lot more medals. For China this is their Super Bowl, for us, it's just a couple weeks of sports to tide us over before the NFL season starts.

Its sport, honestly. I like to watch it from time to time, but at the end of the day it means absolutely jack shit. Does anyone really achieve anything by swimming a little faster than anyone has ever before them? The reality is no. Spin it however you want, it's actually a worthless pursuit. Canada is a great country in many other respects, so I wouldn't really give a shit if I were you.

This may have been pointed out already, but I'm not scanning the entire thread:

Our government decided to cut funding to Summer Olympic athletes and focus on Vancouver 2010 with the "Own the Podium" program. The thinking is, right or wrong, that we are a far more competitive winter sport country and the money should go there.

Personally, I think it's an idiotic decision as there is far more attention here and abroad on what happens in the summer games. When we've had big wins in the past it's been a huge story (Ben Johnson, before the drug tests, Donovan Bailey, etc.) and clearly the public would like to see us do better.

On a side note, I'll be attending the Vancouver Olympics barring some unforeseen circumstance. Tickets go on sale in October.

Agreed, and I have not doubt that that is again going to be looked at intensively between now and 2012, as it should be.

to be fair, judgment should be based solely on medals/populations.

So, as an example, let us use the good ole US of eh:
the US has nine times the population of Canada.
By closing ceremonies, USA MUST have more than 9X (9.018..) the totals medals of Canada!

Any less than 9X and they are the same kinda losers as Canada.

Same goes for the rest.

Right now Tajikistan has INFINITELY more medals than Canada. The US won't have any problem winning more than 9x the medals as Canada. Josh Phelps might win 9x more medals than Canada by himself :2 cents:

Read about how the American Olympic athletes get funding
That wouldn't be very hard for Canada to do too.

The Olympics started?

A). Again, in the interest of fairness...
Just because some find it comforting to compare themselves to those with less does not mean it is fair.
Again, in all fairness, I believe Canada should have more medals than countries with a smaller population.

B). Who?


It's actually a very simple concept. Hell. If all the football/soccer ""experts"" can understand it..

I am willing to bet there is a much stronger correlation between winning and money spent then winning and population.

Why isn't India winning all sorts of medals?

That's pretty interesting... I've always wondered.

That is true.

Even though the American athletes probably receive more money, The United States is one of only three countries where Olympic athletes receive no government funding.
http://www.voanews.com/english/archi...TOKEN=82889413

But also,
http://www.chicagotribune.com/sports...,1220316.story

All you have to do is look at Australia for the correlation between population and # of medals to break down. Australia has 2/3 the population of Canada. The difference? Sports culture. :2 cents:

Fail update:

Fencing: http://www.tsn.ca/olympics/story/?id=246170

5th ranked fencer in the world (also emotional train wreck) loses in epic choke fashion.

Also, above where I said Josh Phelps.. obviously I was referring to Michael Phelps (we used to have an outfielder on the Jays named josh phelps).

i am really sad at our performance so far

but track and field is still to come

This is all well and good but fails to recognize the funding these kids get from the US schooling system.

The U.S. system is flawed too. Popular sports like gymnastics and basketball get much more corporate funding than a sport like fencing. As someone mentioned, I'd bet medals can be correlated a bit to overall spending and amount of training. China spends billions on their athletes, while most other countries don't.

If Canada plucked kids out of school at 3 years old and forced them to train for the next 10-15 years for an event with no regard for anything else and under intense funding, they'd win medals like that too.

Lets also not forget that countries like China cheat too about age, which is something that Canada wouldn't do.

can't blame the canadians... it's too cold for working out up there

I kinda like us flying under the radar, I don't need Olympic glory to give me a sense of national pride :)

Winning medals is about having the right person peaking at the right time, or a super-athlete as is the case with Phelps and Lance Armstrong who both clearly have 3 lungs.

I believe Canada is doing much better than we did in 2004, and I'm proud of everyone who gets to compete and represent our country.

Olympic athletes have a tendency to be great ambassadors and diplomats during and after they've competed, and obviously have amazing drive and determination. They're generally grade A people.

Also a great number of them hold down a job and take care of their family AND are good enough to compete amongst the world's best. Good for them!

Besides, the olympics isn't for you, it's for the athletes.

I would be ashamed in general to be canadian

dont worry i'm sure the canadians would be ashamed to have you too :1orglaugh

Most of that is generated privately as well. That's why some schools have much larger football budgets, for example, then others. They are good at raising money.

Are you saying Canadian schools don't have athletic programs?

Also to note, the school programs don't really kick in until about seventh-grade or so. If kids younger than that are being highly athletic and training hard, it's mainly due to parents and other community-based teams, not schools.

I'm talking university which is where a lot of these kids flourish. We have programs too but they are not as competitive and we don't get credit or encouraged really to play sports in university which I think makes a big difference. Football is a different beast because schools actually make money off those teams.

So you are saying that Canadians are not as athletic as the aussies?

Hardly!

The main difference is the care and attention given to amateur athletes. In Canada they are ignored, starved, maintain full-time jobs and are expected to reach the podium every time or else the critics begin chime.
In Aussieland they are better taken care of, much better.


I liken this to our national anthem: nobody can sing from memory, yet all state they are proud Canadians. Our athletes go through the same thing: they are ignored/unknown most of the time.

Another day of failure

I will correct myself on one thing I said earlier, that being that Canadian Olympic athletes aren't incentivised like those of the US, China, etc. That has changed in recent years, and apparently now our athletes are offered $20k for each gold they win.

Also, they do have corporate sponsorship, just not to the degree that US athletes see. One of our swimmers, Hayden I believe, was told he would get a sixty-thousand dollar SUV if he won a medal (any medal) in one of his events, from his sponsor. (he failed though, sadly for him)

We're obviously not doing enough though. But I haven't given up hope as there are still a huge amount of events yet to come.... track, indoor cycling, rowing finals, marathon, etc. Something's got to give. :D

Fail update:

Shot-put http://www.tsn.ca/olympics/story/?id...=topStory_main

in 4th place by 1cm, then fouls on his last attempt. Fail.

Medals per person, how about golds per person? And you cant compare like that agaisnt china, much of their population is in poverty, it would be like saying oh theres a billion people in india they should do good at the olympics, not when 95% of them live in tin huts.

Fact is there are 35million people in canada and you have not won a single medal so far, Togo, Tajikistan, Uzbekistan and a whole load of other countries that are war torn or in an economic mess have even managed that, 85% of canadians are useless FACT.

LOL..... 100% agree!!!!

Brazilians says just the same thing!!!!

It amazes me to see that Brazil is currently better ranked than you guys.

And everybody is complaining about our performance down here, with 4 bonzes so far.

why would we compare golds per person ?
poor people can't run as fast ?

because china spent 100 times more on their atheletes ?

not sure what you are trying to say ?

everyone is quite concerned i'm sure lol. maybe its because we spend our time on things that matter, like education.

good for them ..

gee that makes alot of sense. canada hasn't won a medal thus 85%? of canadians are useless ? ok then :1orglaugh

Just because you say "FACT" at the end doesn't make it reality, it just makes you ignorant at math ( go figure ).

might be because they have 6 times the population , so for every 1 medal canada gets brazil must get 6 in order to match

So we still havent picked up a medal? Holy shit we suck at summer sports:1orglaugh

So 6 times 0, brazil got there work cut out.

100 ashamed Canucks