Own the Podium

Own the Podium, introduced in 2005, was designed to get Canada's winter athletes on the Olympic and Paralympic podium more often than had ever been seen before. This would be achieved by prioritizing sport funding based on a sport's potential for success; those sports with a high opportunity of success would be given additional resoucres at the expense of other sports. The initiative at the time was seen as radical for a country whose system for funding amateur sports was seen as largely egalitarian.





In Vancouver, Canada's Winter Olympic and Paralympic Athletes are projected to win more medals than ever before, and for some this level of success is attributed to the Own the Podium program itself. Detractors say that the benefits and failures of the program won't be known until the 2014 and more likely the 2018 Winter Games.





Regardless of whether you agree or disagree with Own the Podium initiative, after reading a splendid article - The Games of our Lives by Jon Wertheim of Sports Illustrated -
http://sportsillustrated.cnn.com/vault/article/magazine/MAG1163721/index.htm - should the Own the Podium program be applied to Paralympic Sport. This blogger says no.





Not to suggest that our Paralympians don't deserve the same opportunity to succeed as our able body athletes; they do. However, after reading the aforementioned article it is apparent that the Paralympics are more than just winning medals and medal counts and as such the athletes deserve a sport funding program their very own. Our Paralympians deserve a sports program that recognizes the challenges they face just to reach the starting line as opposed to a funding program that examines an athletes placing at the finish line.



Disagree.....read the article.