Olympic funding needs to focus more on athlete development: report

Medals still matter, but developing Canada's next Olympic and Paralympic athletes needs to be more of a focal point, according to a Sport Canada review released Thursday.

A look at the organization's Targeted Excellence Approach surveyed 1,000-plus athletes, coaches and sport administrators and concluded Canada wants to field competitive teams at the Summer and Winter Olympics and Paralympics while also funding next-generation athletes for their kick at the podium. As Sport Canada said in its release, "Winning medals for Canada will always be important, but it cannot be the only measure of success."

Carla Qualtrough, the Minister of Sport and Persons with Disabilities, said that the goal is to sustain Canada's high-performance success as witnessed at the Vancouver and Sochi Winter Olympics while enabling athletes who are five to eight years away from beating the world's best. To do that, some of those surveyed said it would take "a major rethink" by Canadian sport leaders.

"I know that the review characterizes the need for a major rethink. My takeaway? I personally wouldn't characterize it as that," said Qualtrough. "I think there are things we can learn from and things we can do better. This [current system] has been successful and now we need to embed a strong, targeted sport component into a strong high-performance system in Canada because that's what is going to give us the sustained win we want."

The review indicated there wasn't the right balance between Targeted Excellence and sport development funding. More than 93 per cent of the various sport organizations said the federal government's Sport Support Program funding was too low.

There were also critiques aimed at Own The Podium, the 12-year-old funding arm that was designed to recognize high-performance athletes and help them reach for the top by hiring a more skilled coach or by sending the athlete to a world-class competition to gain experience.

In the report, it says some National Sports Organizations "expressed concerns about the potential for a conflict of interest in OTP's dual roles of funding agency and technical advisor …Some also expressed concern about sharing information on weaknesses with a technical advisor when funding decisions are based on strengths and performance."

Anne Merklinger, Own The Podium's CEO, took those remarks as a way to achieve greater effectiveness.

"Yes, as an organization, that's what our mandate is – to help win medals over the four-to-eight-year horizon. There has been no indication that will change," Merklinger said. "I think the review, certainly from OTP's perspective, helps open the door for opportunities to help more athletes, more coaches, more sports develop a path to the podium. What that looks like? Not sure yet. But I think there are also numerous instances in the report where the government of Canada looks to partners like OTP to find ways together so we can strengthen the high-performance sport system overall."

Targeted Excellence receives an annual fund of $64-million from Sport Canada. That is part of the $200-million invested into Canada's sport system. How that money is spent has a significant bearing on medal performances – and the price of success isn't cheap.

The review says, "In terms of cost per athlete in the Rio de Janeiro quadrennial, data indicates that the average Targeted Excellence funding per Olympic medal by athlete was $1,582,963. In the London quad, it was $1,720,102."

For winter sports, the average amount of Targeted Excellence funding from Sport Canada over each quad per Olympic Games medal was $2-million. As for the funding of Olympic medal winners, the sum for the Sochi quad was $616,522 per athlete. That was an increase over what was targeted for the Vancouver quad, $498,445. The Sport Canada review calculated that "over the Vancouver and Sochi quads, there was a 21 per cent increase in Targeted Excellence funding and a four per cent decrease in the total number of medals won."

"It is increasingly more competitive and it is increasingly more expensive," Qualtrough said of winning an Olympic medal. "As the single-largest investor of amateur sport in this country, we've got to make sure that your tax dollars are being wisely invested, and again, taking a longer-term sustainable approach to this is a better way to show the investment pays off."