Vancouver Olympics

[Fresh Start]

Own the Podium has definitely succeeded. We're third in the world behind two nations we had no prospect of betting anyway in overall medals accumlated, a mere 11 behind the top-ranked nation. And we still have our climactic hockey finals against the USA to look forward to. Why all the self-deprecation and inferiority complex? 13 gold medals is very impressive for any one country and makes all the hype surrounding the Vancouver Games truly have paid off for most Canadians. Literally, this has been the most-talked about sporting event in Canada for the past several years and it would've been somewhat of a letdown had our athletes not been determined to be patriotic and give it their all. Heck, one athlete had just lost her mother to cancer only days before she had to compete and yet she won bronze. That's the remarkable Canadian spirit at work and something I absolutely refuse to crap on.

 

[GraphicMatt]

Joannie Rochette's mother died of a sudden heart attack, not cancer. (Where DO you get your news from?)

This last week has been a great one to watch. It's too bad we couldn't have had this kind of success in the opening days as that would have staved off that bout of negativity we had for a bit.

 

[MetroMan]

Just a technical correction: Joannie Rochette's mom died unexpectedly of a heart attack, not cancer. This makes it all the more of a shocking blow for Rochette who nonetheless went on to perform and win a medal.

Matching Germany's medal count to move into second is a virtual impossibility as Canadians are only competing for 4 medals tomorrow, 3 of them in the same event (Cross Countrying Skiiing, Men's hockey). Canadians would have to capture Gold, Silver and Bronze in the Cross Country Skiing event and beat Team USA in men's Hockey to match Germany's 29 medals. I suspect the order of total medals and Gold's will remain unchanged. Canada is already guaranteed to stay #1 in Gold medal count and third overall.

 

[adma]

I suppose it's worth noting that Canada has two medalling Winter Olympians who are black--bobsledders Lascelles Brown and Shelley-Ann Brown; dunno how that compares to the overall medalling racial profile out there. (If hockey counts, I suppose that Iginla would make it three.)

 

[nfitz]

I suppose it's worth noting that Canada has two medalling Winter Olympians who are black--bobsledders Lascelles Brown and Shelley-Ann Brown; dunno how that compares to the overall medalling racial profile out there.

Well Blacks are about 2.5% of the population, so given that they both won medals this year, statistically we'd need 78 other medal winners to be equal ... not sure how people are in are each of the hockey teams, but it's probably not far off; at the same time though, given that Asians are about 11% of the population, of those 78 people, statistically 9 should be Asian ... I really haven't been playing attention; how many of the Canadian medal winners are Asian this year?

It goes without saying that the further back you look, the more unequitable it was.

 

[Fresh Start]

^ I can only think of Patrick Chan in figure skating as representing that community off the top of my head, however he only placed 5th.

Joannie Rochette's mother died of a sudden heart attack, not cancer. (Where DO you get your news from?)

This last week has been a great one to watch. It's too bad we couldn't have had this kind of success in the opening days as that would have staved off that bout of negativity we had for a bit.

Just a typo, no worries. The point is that she overcame great adversity to win a bronze medal. She could've declined to compete to take some time out to grieve, and I doubt anyone would've faulted her. But no, she did what her mother would've wanted for her and that's why its an amazing, inspirational story. I like too that we started off slow, but have now risen to dominance in the games. For the past week we've been trailing behind Norway but now have surpassed them. It's a high honour considering Canada was never renown for high medal acumulation in any past Games.

 

[scarberiankhatru]

haha I was hoping my over-exaggeration would be obvious, so no problem.

I was also thinking about the gold vs. medals argument a bit more... I think the obvious point that one can make is to take it to an extreme:
Who wins the Olympics in the following scenario?
Team A: 30 gold, 0 silver, 0 bronze
Team B: 0 gold, 0 silver, 31 bronze.

Technically team B has more medals, but clearly the team with more golds had a far better olympics. Yes, Own the Podium's goal was to win the most medals, but I can't see how anyone wouldn't take most golds over most medals (especially if it's a record number of golds). Another analogy, would you rather win 1 Stanley Cup or Super Bowl or whatever championship over the span of 10 years with no other success or lose in the finals every year for 10 straight years? If you pick the latter, you're basically okay with being the Buffalo Bills. Yes it's a bit of spin, but I think it's a pretty legitimate argument even if the one opponent in this thread says "NO! ONLY MOST MEDALS MATTER! I DON'T CARE WHAT THEY"RE MADE OF!"

It's not my argument, it's the official COC argument and the explicit motivation behind where funding went. I'm sorry if you and others either don't understand what Own the Podium is or are unable to distinguish between a spending program that didn't meet its ambitious goals and the wild success of a different stripe by the actual athletes.

You forgot about Team C, though: 0 gold, 0 silver, 0 bronze, 32 fourth places, each fourth missing the podium by 0.01 seconds and each a personal best. If Team C's country's goal had been podium performance, it might tweak the structure and direction of its funding programs. It might want to put more or less pressure on athletes, to spend more or less money, to aim higher or lower, to concentrate funding or spread it out amongst thousands of athletes, etc. The whole point is to keep improving.

 

[jn_12]

No, I understand Own the Podium entirely. But I don't think it's black and white. You seem to think it's either a success or a failure, whereas there are varying shades of gray. If you look back a page, I make light of how if we're going to be black and white then we might as well tell Jen Heil, and the womens curlers that they're failures since they explicitly said they were there to win golds and they came up short. I think 26 medals plus a potential record in golds, with Klassen not being on form, is pretty good. If the goal was 35 medals, I think we fall 4 short (whether or not you care to acknowledge just how much of a factor Klassen could have been) and that's pretty good I think.

 

[scarberiankhatru]

No, I understand Own the Podium entirely. But I don't think it's black and white. You seem to think it's either a success or a failure, whereas there are varying shades of gray. If you look back a page, I make light of how if we're going to be black and white then we might as well tell Jen Heil, and the womens curlers that they're failures since they explicitly said they were there to win golds and they came up short. I think 26 medals plus a potential record in golds, with Klassen not being on form, is pretty good. If the goal was 35 medals, I think we fall 4 short (whether or not you care to acknowledge just how much of a factor Klassen could have been) and that's pretty good I think.

Then you don't understand what Own the Podium is because Own the Podium considers Jenn Heil and the curlers a success, and rightfully so. They won medals. Own the Podium doesn't care what colour the medals are, even if the athletes are a bit disappointed with silver.

Gold and 10th place are often 1 point or 1 second apart and athletes can end up in a different order on any given day...for every medal Klassen could have won, someone else could have lost a medal. Someone could get bumped in a race and fall, or the fog could roll in. You can't base your elite sports funding program around hoping your athletes get bronze instead of 4th on a particular day, or assumptions that past success can predict Olympic success, especially when you can't separate the results of the funding boost to certain athletes from the effect of these athletes competing at home. If Chris Rudge's suggestion of eviscertaing and performing an autopsy on the program is a shade of grey, I wonder what his version of black would be.

26 medals is fantastic...in time, no one will care that we didn't Own the Podium because we'll shift the goalposts and disown the program's chest-thumping ambition. We went from a goal of fostering fairly generic excellence to a goal of beating the Americans in the medal race...hopefully, our goals will shift back to some sort of happy compromise.

 

[jn_12]

You clearly misunderstood my analogy. It seems others understood it, so I'm not sure if I need to explain it or not.

As for Chris Rudge, I think any program like this would do an autopsy after the event was over to see what worked and what didn't, even if Canada won 40 medals. It's simply the responsible thing that anyone does after an event, project or strategy is completed. Even if I'm an athlete who just won gold, I'd be looking at my performance to see where I could have done better because I would always be looking to improve. That's not an admission of failure whatsoever.

 

[adma]

Well Blacks are about 2.5% of the population, so given that they both won medals this year, statistically we'd need 78 other medal winners to be equal ... not sure how people are in are each of the hockey teams, but it's probably not far off; at the same time though, given that Asians are about 11% of the population, of those 78 people, statistically 9 should be Asian ... I really haven't been playing attention; how many of the Canadian medal winners are Asian this year?

It goes without saying that the further back you look, the more unequitable it was.

My comment was more about the exoticism of black Winter Olympians--period. (Thus, in part, the whole Jamaican-bobsledder mystique.)

 

[scarberiankhatru]

You clearly misunderstood my analogy. It seems others understood it, so I'm not sure if I need to explain it or not.

As for Chris Rudge, I think any program like this would do an autopsy after the event was over to see what worked and what didn't, even if Canada won 40 medals. It's simply the responsible thing that anyone does after an event, project or strategy is completed. Even if I'm an athlete who just won gold, I'd be looking at my performance to see where I could have done better because I would always be looking to improve. That's not an admission of failure whatsoever.

What you aren't understanding is that there's a big difference between the success of a funding program and the success of the athletes. If the government launches a program to cut hospital waiting times by 10% and it doesn't happen, you don't turn around and say the doctors failed, you say the program failed, because it did.

Shift the goalposts all you want, but the program failed to do what it set out to do even while our athletes were doing fantastically well. It's your argument that says a program fail = an athlete fail. That's obviously not my argument.

 

[ITcomputer]

I think extreme physical activity comes at the cost of mental activity. If we promote more developed bodies, we also have the possibililty to end up with less developed minds. Just look at the homophobia that is rampant among sports peoples, not only professional athletes but also fans. Undeveloped minds.
.

I have never read such hogwash, by your definition Doady, you must be at constant extreme physical activity 24/7

 

[ganjavih]

After that hockey game, and the 14 gold medals, I have to say... we do own the podium! Woo hoo!

 

[Observer Walt]

... Shift the goalposts all you want, but the program failed to do what it set out to do even while our athletes were doing fantastically well. It's your argument that says a program fail = an athlete fail. That's obviously not my argument.

I'm afraid I completely fail to understand this argument. The program didn't fail. It possibly could have had a better name, and I hope they will come up with a better one soon.

Canada did extremely well. We ended first in gold medals, and third overall. For a country of our population, how is that failure?

As for reassessing the program, and looking for possible improvements, of course that will happen. It happens after any campaign in business, successful or not.