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BEIJING, TORONTO — After four barren days without medals in Beijing, Canada's athletes and sports administrators were already pointing accusatory fingers at government for lack of funding and casting jealous eyes toward the sport infrastructures of other countries.
“Why are they so good?” Diving Canada technical director Mitch Geller said Tuesday after the Chinese synchronized diving team easily won a gold medal in the women's competition and the Canadians finished seventh. “They screen tons of kids. They put them all through some very, very good fundamental training. And then the cream rises to the top.”
In Canada, governments and business are offering more money than ever, but the country's sport spending lags behind that of China, Russia and other modern countries.
Earlier this week, boxer Adam Trupish of Windsor, Ont., lamented, after being beaten badly, that Sport Canada had decreased its financial commitments to his sport. Funding for the national boxing federation has fallen to $450,000 from $800,000 over the past 20 years. He said there was no planning to help him get ready for the Olympics after he had an injury, and he hadn't travelled or even had a fight arranged for him since October.
Adam Van Koeverden carries his country's flag during the opening ceremony for the 2008 Beijing Summer Olympics. (Getty Images)
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Badminton player Anna Rice of Vancouver, who plays professionally in Denmark, said Canada has a long way to go to compete successfully against China's elite.
“Like any sport, it takes money to create opportunities, and more and more countries are streamlining funds to where the medals are. I think that's sad,” Ms. Rice said after being eliminated by her Chinese opponent on Monday.
Whitewater kayaker David Ford, a five-time Olympian, lamented that lack of funds forced him to miss competitions and spend $80,000 of his own money.
While boxing, badminton and whitewater kayaking may be considered fringe sports in Canada, the Canadians and Chinese once competed on an equal level in diving.
The question now is whether the more traditional sports such as swimming, track and field, gymnastics and swimming will also come up empty, leaving unattainable the Canadian Olympic Committee's targeted 16th place finish – or 16 medals. Canadian athletes are falling short of the podium in lavish facilities and in the company of China's well-funded, well-coached and well-prepared team.
Some reports peg Olympic-related spending at $40-billion for the hosts, whereas four years ago, Richard Pound of the International Olympic Committee urged Canadian governments to spend a relatively modest $50-million annually on Olympic sport. Winter and summer sports combined are receiving a little over $40-million.
The federal government committed money in 2005 for a five-year, $110-million program called Own the Podium to boost medal chances at the Vancouver 2010 Games.
Former Alpine Canada president Ken Read said that since 2005, Sport Canada has given about $11-million annually to winter sports, but that is matched by corporate and provincial funding through Own the Podium.
For the Summer Olympic sports, a parallel program called Road to Excellence was set up in 2006, and swim icon Alex Baumann returned from Australia to be its leader. Until this spring's federal budget, however, no money had been committed for programs and helping bring summer athletes to the podium level. A larger number of summer sports split a smaller pie – about $12-million annually until the government kicked in another $8-million this year.
Mr. Read, who restored ballast to Alpine Canada's coffers before resigning recently, said the funding allowed the organization to hire the best coaches – in some cases, having more than a 1-to-1 athlete-to-coach ratio – more medical staff, and better training equipment.
“You still have to work within a budget, but there's a been a subtle mind shift in the last two or three years where the athletics leadership says, ‘Okay, what do we need to do, rather than what can we afford to do,'” Mr. Read said.
The increased funding also allows the team to finance more training camps and competitions.
“The individual cost born by the athlete either has been dramatically diminished, or it's gone,” Mr. Read said.
Loren Chiu, a former national weightlifting champion, said a lack of funding hurt the men's weightlifting's chances of sending a full team to the 2007 World Championship, which in turn hurt their chances of qualifying for the Beijing Olympics.
As an amateur athlete from 2000 until early this year, Mr. Chiu completed both his master's and doctoral thesis at U.S. colleges, relying on about $3,000 from government funding to compete.
“It's hard doing a full-time job … and training full time,” said Mr. Chiu, now a professor at the University of Alberta's faculty of physical education. “In this situation, being a student, it gave me the flexibility to have time to train.”
He said increased government funding for both winter and summer sports should come eight to 12 years before an Olympics.
“They're putting money into these programs at a very late stage,” Mr. Chiu said.
Canadian divers will soon be learning from a county they once competed against on an equal footing. Diving Canada is putting together an exchange that would expose Canada's young divers to the Chinese training regimen. Mr. Geller said Tuesday that Chinese divers go through extensive training and must be world champion calibre simply to make their national team.
“We, for sure, though, can be looking at pre-adolescent training on a much more intense level,” Mr. Geller said.
“A lot of times in Canada, you say ‘Well, they are still young yet. They have a long career.' But you have to instill all the skills, all the flexibility, all the movement patterns, before they get through adolescence. The clock is ticking, and we have to understand that in Canada.”
With a report from Matthew Sekeres in Beijing
