Podium disowned, but hope persists
Last Updated: Tuesday, February 23, 2010 | 6:55 AM ET
By Brandon Hicks, CBC Sports
Of the 10 medals Canada has won so far, five have been gold. (David Hecker/AFP/Getty Images)So that's it.
The culmination of five years of funding and training under the ambitious Own the Podium program is upon us and, after 11 tough days at the Vancouver Winter Games, the Canadian Olympic Committee has admitted its goal of winning the most medals is out of reach.
"We'd be living in a fool's paradise if we said we were going to catch the Americans and win," CEO Chris Rudge said Monday.
"We're not throwing in the towel. You never do that when you are in the middle of a fight, but it's difficult. They are way out ahead at this point and it would be unrealistic to state that we are going to catch them."
At this point, it looks as if Canada might not even match the medal haul of 24 it had back in Torino 2006.
After Monday's events, Canada had 10 medals to its credit. That puts the host country in fifth spot, behind Russia (11), Norway (14), Germany (21) and the United States (25).
It's definitely not where the COC and the Canadian athletes wanted to be at this stage of the competition.
The ambitious $117-million, five-year program was always a bit of a long shot to reach its medal-count goal at the Games.
But with Canadian athletes succeeding at unprecedented levels on the various World Cup circuits before the Olympics began, many began to believe that the goal of winning the Games was possible.
Good results tempered
For whatever reason, it seems like every positive Canadian result at these Games so far has been tempered by several more defeats.
A few examples: Canada's powerhouse speedskating team has three medals total after eight events — two of those won by a single athlete, Kristina Groves. The Canadian alpine team looks likely to be shut out of the Games after hoping for three podium finishes.
The short-track speedskating team has just one medal with four events to go — it was hoping for six.
By far the most heartbreaking miss was in women's skeleton, where Canadian favourite Mellisa Hollingsworth had a disastrous final run that took her off the podium. Four days later, she's still devastated.
The kicker for the COC came on Sunday, where a possible multiple-medal day in the women's speedskating 1,500 metres and men's skicross churned out only one silver.
"It was a potential multiple-medal day where we didn't get multiple medals," Rudge said. "We've had a number of those and those are disappointing. Those are the ones that pop up the total."
So what now? The future for Own the Podium is murkier than ever after the Vancouver Games are complete.
Everything was focused on these home Olympics and it's fair to say a lot of people, the federal government included, were expecting results — especially since $66 million of OTP funding came from taxpayers.
Still a shot
But for all the doom and gloom surrounding Rudge's proclamation, there's still a shot that Canada could be on top of the world at the end of the Olympics. And it all comes down to one word:
Gold.
Check the standings again. Thanks to the scintillating victory from ice dancers Tessa Virtue and Scott Moir on Monday, half of Canada's 10 medals have been awarded at the top of the podium. That's five gold, four silver and one bronze.
If the current standings were adjusted by gold medals won, Canada would sit in fourth, one win away from leap-frogging Norway and three away from supplanting the Americans and Germans (both have seven and hold the silver-medal tiebreaker).
And here's the kicker: Canada still has legitimate shots at winning gold in 10 coming events.
Yep, you read that right. Ten. They are:
- Women's skicross (Ashleigh McIvor)
- Speedskating - women's 5,000 metres (Clara Hughes)
- Speedskating women's team pursuit
- Men's hockey (have faith)
- Women's hockey
- Men's curling
- Women's curling
- Men's aerials (three Canadians in the finals)
- Men's short-track speedskating 500 metres (Charles Hamelin)
- Men's parallel snowboard giant slalom (Jasey-Jay Anderson)
And that's not counting the men's and women's teams in the unpredictable world of short-track speedskating, or the men's long- track speedskating team pursuit, the surprising men's cross-country ski team, which has one last relay, and the men's and women's bobsled teams.
It's still a long way to go, and many of the nations at the top of the medal table also have a bunch of gold-medal threats of their own.
But with some nerves of steel, old-fashioned grit and a more than a bit of that good luck Canadians have been waiting the entire Games for, Vancouver (and the rest of Canada) could be partying straight through to the summer.
No, it looks like we won't own the podium at the Vancouver Olympics. But we still have a shot at owning the most important step on that podium.
And that just might make the difference between a commendation or an epitaph for the program hoping to win it all.
