I'll have what they are having

Athletics Canada recently released its selection guidelines for athletes wishing to participate at the 2012 Olympics. While the news release garnered little by way of publicity, the release itself has Heatstroke wanting to know if Athletics Canada is in touch with reality when they state the following.

"Athletics Canada's objectives for the 2012 Olympic Games include improving on the country ranking, number of overall medals, top 8 and top 12 finishes from recent Olympic Games and World Championships. "Our results at the 2008 Olympic Games (in Beijing) were a clear improvement over Sydney and Athens, we're looking at building on this success and we expect more in London,"

At the 2008 Olympics, in the sport of Track & Field, Canada finished with 1 top 3 finish. 5 top 8 finishes and 8 top 12 finishes to finish 16th overall in IAAF's overall ranking. Heading into the 2012 Olympics Canada finished with one top three finish at the 2011 World Championships (Dylan Armstrong) and after that did have a single athlete finish in the top 8 of their respective event and had only 1 other athlete (Jessica Zelinka) crack the top 10. Having witnessed these results while observing the optimism within Athletics Canada I think I will have what those in Athletics Canada are having.

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Patrick Chan was awarded Canada's Male athlete of the Year for 2011, making Chan the fourth skater in Canadian history to be given this award. However, Heatstroke wonders as to why the award was not given to Dylan Armstrong. True, Chan won the world championship in 2011, while Armstrong finished second. However, Armstrong was the first Canadian to have ever one a medal at a world championship in a throw event, he won the Diamond League Title in 2011 and did it in a sport that has a much larger field of competition that does figure skating.

Armstrong is Heatstroke's male athlete of the Year for 2011.