[Newsbot]

Title: Canada passes medal count from 2004 Games
Category: Sports
Posted By: Hyack
Date: 2008-08-19 14:30:38
Canadian

[bootlegga]

Looks like Saturn 656 was wrong...

[PluggyRug]

Go Canada!!

[Brenda]

[crystalsm]

Sweeet. More than I'd thought we'd get. I don't mind being proven wrong in the case.

[mtbr]

that's great however I remember someone saying Canada is not a summer sport nation wait until 2010 I wonder who that was looks like he/she has changed their opinion .

[bootlegga]

mtbr wrote:

that's great however I remember someone saying Canada is not a summer sport nation wait until 2010 I wonder who that was looks like he/she has changed their opinion .

I stand by that statement...Canada ISN'T a summer sport nation. Traditionally, there is more interest in (viewership) and we perform far better at Winter Olympics, whether you go by medal totals or number of gold medals.

I also told all the naysayers to wait until it was over until they started griping and now events have proven them wrong. To add to that, I said that if we want to get a ton of medals like Australia, we need to spend a lot more on their funding. Australia spends FOUR times what we do on the summer sports. Is it any wonder they have more medals? Same goes for China, Russia, and the US, who use the Olympics as bragging rights, and so fund their Olympic programs far more than we ever have.

Conversely, we fund our Winter program far more than Australia (and have a real winter to boot), so our athletes do much better at the Winter games than the Aussies.

[saturn_656]

bootlegga wrote:

Looks like Saturn 656 was wrong...

Fair enough, they surpassed what I expected.

But my expectations were not high to begin with...

Australia is the success story of this Olympics IMO. A country smaller than Canada in all measures yet is number five in the world looking at medal count.

[travior]

Smaller than Canada but with less snow

[travior]

I've been pulling for the US, Canada, Austrailia and anyone else competing against China. Not necessarially in that order, however.

[ShepherdsDog]

That ball game against Taiwan was pretty pathetic.

[Freakinoldguy]

BZ Canada.

Just imagine how much better we'd do if we actually funded our athletes?

[Doughboy]

If you look at every other G8 nation they don't use the "we're a winter sport / we're a summer sport" excuse. Pretty much all perform well in both and most are comparable in climate to Canada. But I don't want to debate that anymore. I've had enough of it.

Anyways, if we can get 20 medals or close I'll be extremely happy with the games.

With the new CBC sports channel coming out, with lots of Canadian amateur sport content, hopefully our athletes will get their due attention and funding leading into 2012 for an even bigger haul.