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The sports holding back Canada’s Olympic success

andrew bucholtz

One of the major challenges Canada will face in living up to the Canadian Olympic Committee's prediction of a top-12 finish comes from their lack of success in the two Games events that offer the most hardware. Track and field (athletics) and swimming will hand out 47 and 34 gold medals respectively at these Games, the highest and second-highest totals of any Olympic sports. Between the two sports, there are 81 gold medals available, a significant percentage (27.6 per cent) of the 294 gold medals (162 for men, 132 for women) available in the entire Olympics. Yet, although athletics and swimming represent Canada's greatest Summer Olympics successes historically (51 and 40 medals respectively), Canadians have won just one medal in each since 2000; swimmer Ryan Cochrane earned bronze in the men's 1,500-metre freestyle in Beijing in 2008, and Priscilla Lopes-Schliep picked up a bronze in the hurdles in those same Games. Why has the Canadian podium presence dwindled in these sports, and can the trend be reversed?

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What's interesting is that to a degree, swimming and athletics are at opposite ends of the spectrum. Swimming events tend to favour rich countries that have widespread pool access; Nate Silver's New York Times "Medalball" analysis found that swimming has the third-highest GDP per medal winner ($36,329), behind only equestrian events and triathlon. Meanwhile, athletics isn't quite at the other end of the spectrum in that statistic (as rich countries tend to pick up lots of medals in it as well), but it's far easier for poor countries to develop medal winners in it thanks to the limited infrastructure required. Silver's analysis looking at why track and field records haven't fallen in the same way as swimming ones suggests that the open field is a key factor:

As Stephen Jay Gould noted, the more open to competition a sport is, the harder it may be to break records or to post extraordinary statistics. The .400 hitter disappeared in baseball once the color barrier was broken, and black Americans and players from Latin America were allowed to compete in the major leagues. This raised the average level of performance — but also made it harder for any one athlete to stand out quite as much relative to his peers.

In the track and field events, it is more likely that an athlete has already come close to what Gould called the "right wall" of human performance, simply because the human being who possessed the ideal build and work ethic is more likely actually to have competed in the Olympic Games.

So, if the two events with the largest pools of available medals are so different, why haven't Canadians been able to succeed in either lately? Well, both pose some problems for Canada. The wide-open field in athletics means there's a worldwide pool of incredible athletes to compete against, while swimming's narrower field is congested with athletes from wealthy countries like the U.S., China and Australia that have poured funding into their programs. That hasn't stopped Canada from competing in the past in either sport, but the challenges have grown steeper recently; more and more countries are developing elite track and field athletes, while on the swimming side, China's heavily-increased funding and unusual athlete-identification strategies have shifted the balance of power. Another key obstacle has been Canadian funding; as Rob Longley points out, the job of Athletics Canada CEO was a volunteer position until 2009. That's starting to change, however, and the focus is on much more than just the London Games.

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Don't expect to see huge amounts of Canadian medals in either swimming or athletics at these Olympics, though. There are a few medal hopes, including Dylan Armstrong in the shot put, Jessica Zelinka in heptathlon and Cochrane in the 1,500-metre freestyle, but most of the other Canadians involved are expected to finish off the podium. However, that isn't all bad; both Swimming Canada and Athletics Canada have sent a lot of young talent to these Games with an eye to providing some oft-vital experience for Rio in 2016. As Own The Podium CEO Anne Merklinger told Longley, the focus is on developing athletes who can collect hardware in these sports down the road, and that could be crucial to improving the overall Canadian medal count in future Games:

"The intention now is on investing deeper," Merklinger said. "We're working with sports eight years out. What characteristics does an athlete need to have? What do they need to look like? Can we see a gold medal profile?

"It is what you have to do to be competitive and to embrace a culture of excellence and podium performances."

More London Olympics coverage at Yahoo! Canada Sports:
• Photos: Decoding beach volleyball's hand signals
• Tsonga beats Raonic in historic match
• Video: Canada's heavy medal day