Imagine

Imagine for a second. You are the newly appointed Chief Executive Officer of Own the Podium Canada (Seriously - Own the Podium is presently looking for a CEO to fill this role). Your job is to increase Canada's medal haul at the 2012 Olympic Games so that we finish in the top twelve in the overall medal count. You have millions of dollars at your disposal and have exactly four years to complete this daunting task. What would you do?

What would I do? I would look at Canada's culture and examine sports that are the very heart of the Canadian pshyche. I would divert monies to sports that are medal rich at a given Olympiad; implying they have a large number of medals at their disposal. And I would divert monies to sports that have proven success at one period of time, that may have fallen on hard times in the past couple of years on account of government cutbacks. I would look at putting money into boxing and men's wrestling.

In the 1990's these two sports won a total of 5 Olympic medals, but for one reason or another in the past 10 years have had their funding slashed on account of cutbacks. Furthermore, Own the Podium sees little opportunity for future Olympic medals (Heatstroke disagrees but we digress) in these disciplines.

Back to reality. In 2008 Own the Podium felt that the best way to increase Canada's medal count at future Olympiads was to funnel monies to sports that had a record Olympiad and at best could match their medal count in 2012. Heatstroke won't name the sports specifically, but does note that sports that receive the largest piece of the funding pie will be hard pressed to match - let alone beat their medal haul in 2008.

Will it work? Let the 2012 Olympic Games be the true test.