By Katy Heath-Eves
Unless Canada finds a way of supporting its cardless amateur athletes, the bottom will fall out of sport.
Becoming an Olympian requires a substantial investment of time – a decade or more of 40-hour weeks for training and competition.
Too often, money is the reason athletes drop out of sport, or become part of a growing phenomenon called the athlete drain, or brawn drain.
Kathy Butler, Canada’s top 5,000-metre runner, left Canada last year to run for Great Britain after having to pay her own way to the world cross-country championships in Ireland.
And there are hundreds of Canadian athletes who head to the U.S. for university scholarships.
In mid-March, Sport Canada – the organization that funds almost 1,300 athletes in 47 sports – received a 60 per cent increase in funding.
Top level athletes will receive $1,100 a month tax-free – a $290-a-month increase, while B- and C-carded athletes will see their monthly stipend almost double to about $500.
But the athletes who aren’t carded won’t profit from these changes. And these athletes are Canada’s next generation of Olympians.
If most uncarded athletes are like Centretown runner Scott MacDonald, and train more than 40 hours a week, have a part-time job, and live with their parents or are scrounging monthly to meet rent, how can this country produce athletes on par with those from decently-funded countries like Australia, Britain and Germany?
Devil’s advocates would say if the athletes can’t make the cut, they don’t deserve funding. Well, MacDonald would be carded if he could only shave six seconds off his 1,500-metre time, and maybe he could make the time if he could afford to train with top coaches.
Canada is not prioritizing its amateur athletes, and will suffer the loss of medals over the next couple of Olympics.
Studies like the Mills report, presented by the sub-committee on the study of sport in Canada to the federal government in December 1998, are decent ways of getting people to take notice of amateur sport. The study concluded that sport contributes to Canada’s cultural sphere, and the country could reap major social benefits with little investment.
If we left elite-athlete funding to the feds, and appealed to the private sector for amateur funding, we could boost our athletics programs to global status – and manage to keep our athletes in Canada too.