Buying the Podium

Dan Gardner points out the absurdity of claiming any national pride based on programs like Own the Podium which really only prove that it's possible for a country to buy its way to Olympic medals:

"(The) best predictor of success in winning medals is the absolute amount of funding allocated to higher performance sports," writes Peter Donnelly, director of the Centre for Sport Policy Studies at the University of Toronto.

Spend more money and, other things being equal, you will get more medals. It's that simple. Analysts and officials know this. They even make dollars-per-medal calculations.
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Canada's "Own the Podium" program is unique neither in its goals nor its ruthlessness. All that set it apart is its foolish name -- which promised the impossible and thus created the impression that anything aside from a first place finish in Vancouver amounted to failure...

Stand back and look at Olympic funding around the world and it's obvious that nations are locked in an arms race. Each seeks to beat the other by boosting funding but they find it is harder and harder to pull ahead by spending more. Worse, "it costs more and more money even to stay in the same place in the medal tables," notes Peter Donnelly.

Now, does any of this sound like a fair athletic contest? Not really. It's a funding competition. The "winners" are those countries most willing to take money from health care and jobs and other national priorities and spend it on the Olympics.

Canada could win this competition, if that's what Canadians want. We're a rich country. We could outspend the Chinese. For a while.

But would that be something to be proud of? No. It would be foolish. And shameful.