SOMETIMES, OUR BEST IS NOT ENOUGH
By Chris Cochrane, ccochrane@herald.ca

TheChronicleHerald.ca
Thu. Aug 14 – 6:10 AM
Canada

A GLANCE at the Beijing Olympics medal standings shows results that
are obviously frustrating to our athletes, the Canadian Olympic
Association and the millions of fans here at home.

After Wednesday’s competition in China, the Canadian team was without a
medal. Even Armenia and Kazakhstan had a couple of medals. Kyrgyzstan,
Togo and Uzbekistan each won a medal. Heck, even Tajikistan —
I’ll admit I thought Tajikistan was a region, not a country — has
a stinking medal.

But nothing for Canada so far.

Our Olympic brain trust was hoping for a medal haul in the
mid-teens. Undoubtedly, medals will eventually come our way. Yet this
has been, even by modest Canadian standards, a terrible start.

Instead of talking about medals, most Canadian stories coming out of
Beijing are about disappointing results. Many of them have to do with
frustrated athletes who believe they weren’t given proper funding or
other means of support to reach their potential at these Olympics.

That talk started early when Adam Trupish, the lone member of the
Canadian boxing team, was blasted out of the Olympics in his first
bout and quickly took his own verbal swipes at the Canadian Olympic
Association. Trupish blamed a lack of financing and support for the
woeful state of our boxing team, once one of the biggest contributors
to Canada’s summer medal haul.

Veteran Canadian kayaker David Ford was kept from a medal only by
what appeared to be a controversial deduction. Like Trupish, he wasn’t
happy with the way Canada operates its Olympic business. Under the new
Canadian Olympic funding system, 41-year-old Ford lost his funding for
training. Here’s how a Canadian Press story relayed his situation:
"Ford was given three reasons for the funding cut: He was too old,
his performances over the past two years weren’t good enough and his
sport wasn’t culturally significant enough in Canada.

"I made the final and I finished sixth at an Olympics — that’s not
bad but it wasn’t why I came," Ford, the world champ in 1998 and ranked
22nd entering the Olympics, said in The Canadian Press story. "Losing
funding and things like that, I missed the last training camp here
as a result and everyone ahead of me didn’t, so you’ve got those
questions in the back of your head. ‘Did I do everything I needed to
do to be prepared here?’ I did what I could with the resources I had."

Fencing medal hopeful Sherraine Schalm may eventually be best
remembered for her colourful description of how it felt to lose at
the Olympics, but she voiced similar complaints about the lack of
funding and coaching help she received in preparation for the Olympics.

Sometimes, our best simply may not be good enough. For example, a Sun
Media story from Beijing noted that despite the lack of medals coming
from the pool, where there were such high expectations for Canadian
swimmers, the members of our swimming team had recorded 24 personal
bests and established 17 new Canadian records. What that says is that
our swimmers are performing better than they ever have before, but
it’s simply not good enough at an Olympic Games where other nations
obviously are willing to prepare their athletes better.

The new Road to Excellence program, which will see millions of dollars
invested, is supposed to improve life for Canadian summer athletes
and make our teams more competitive for the next Olympics, the 2012
London Summer Olympics. Until then, I guess we’ll have to accept
complaints from disappointed fans and the frustrations of our elite
athletes as understandable facts of life in a country that simply
hasn’t supported our Olympians at the same level as other nations.

It’s obvious that Canada will now be hard pressed to reach a medal
count in the mid-teens. But all is not lost. With a strong second
week maybe we can catch, or pass, powerhouse Tajikistan.