Summer McIntosh, of Toronto, celebrates with her gold medal won in the 200m women's individual medley final during the 2024 Summer Olympic Games, in Nanterre, France, on Aug. 3.Christinne Muschi/The Canadian Press
Canada’s success at the Paris Olympics – winning 27 medals, nine of them gold – is rooted in ambitions established two decades ago.
In the mid-2000s, Canada had become a reliable top-five country at the Winter Olympics, but as sports officials worked to ready for Vancouver 2010, the failures at the Calgary Winter Games in 1988 and the Montreal Summer Games in 1976 still loomed. Zero golds, in a weak showing at both Olympics.
The ambitiously named Own The Podium aimed to remedy that. The confident branding changed the country’s mindset. Setting a goal is essential, in all endeavours, and the aim was excellence. The strategy focused about a third of Canada’s federal sports spending on athletes who had specific potential to win a medal, providing elite-level support in all aspects of sports science.
It worked. Canada won 14 golds in Vancouver, the most by a winter host country. Canada’s 26 medals ranked third.
Own The Podium’s early success redefined how Canada competes. From Vancouver through to the coming 2026 Winter Olympics in Milan, Own The Podium has co-ordinated core spending of roughly $850-million, about $20-million a year for winter and $30-million annually for summer.
Success leads to more success. The Paris Olympics marked Canada’s best showing at a Summer Games, excluding the boycotted 1984 Los Angeles Olympics. The Paris high-water mark of 27 medals comes three years after the previous high-water mark, 24 medals in Tokyo. And that came five years after Rio de Janeiro, where Canada’s 22 medals tied the previous non-boycotted Games best, Atlanta 1996.
In the Winter Olympics, Canada has been in the top four each time out from 2002 onward.
Outside of competition, however, the dark side of high-end athletics has been exposed in recent years, starting with mismanagement and poor oversight at national sports organizations. Hockey Canada’s attempts to hide sexual assault lead the bleak parade but there’s also the Canada Soccer cheating scandal in Paris and last year’s committee hearings on Parliament Hill where athletes spoke of abuses and the fear of reporting wrongdoers. A commission looking at the future of sport has started, and sports organizations by next year must overhaul their governance, including more athletes on boards of directors.
The focus on “targeted excellence” remains Canada’s cornerstone Olympics strategy. A federal review in 2016-17 reaffirmed the plan. Around that time, Own The Podium also expanded its ambit to think about not only the next Olympics but the one thereafter.
Swimming is a prime example. Ten years ago, swimmers into the top 150 globally received funding even if they were older and not getting better. Swimming Canada shifted its thinking to top-end potential. Penny Oleksiak and Maggie Mac Neil were both 14 when they were identified as future contenders. More recently, Summer McIntosh was 13 when she started training with the national team in 2020.
Strategy, focus and money have transformed swimming. From 1988 to 2012, Canada won 12 medals at seven Games. At Rio and Tokyo, Canada won a combined 12 – and eight more in Paris, led by Ms. McIntosh’s three golds and one silver.
Money doesn’t always make the difference. The women’s rugby sevens team, which won bronze in Rio, was well-funded by Own The Podium until Tokyo. Afterward, the team started rebuilding, and Own The Podium slashed funding. Yet the young squad upended favoured rivals in Paris to win silver. New funding will likely pile in ahead of Los Angeles 2028. Meanwhile, the men’s basketball team had everything ideally aligned for Paris – talent, experience, money – yet lost to France in the quarter-finals because of a bad day shooting.
There were should-have-beens, yes, but there was also the opposite: Canada’s old men sprinters. The 4x100-metre relay team, led by Andre De Grasse, had won bronze in 2016 and silver in 2021. Now in their late 20s and early 30s, they barely made the final in Paris. Their surprise come-from-behind gold in one of the premier events at the Olympics – along with the wonderful Radio-Canada call of the race – was a singular moment in Paris.
Seven out of 10 Canadians tuned in to watch the Paris Olympics. It’s always fun to savour success in sports but it’s also a lesson. When Canada sets a big goal, and pursues it with an aim for excellence, good things happen.