Kokul’s World

To all you Canadians out there, you understand my pain, right? Cheering for our athletes just to see them fall short of a medal and even be eliminated in the first or second round of their sport. It is something I’ve seen time and time again.

After watching them lose several times to other countries like the USA and Australia, I can only come to one conclusion, we need to overhaul our system for supporting athlete. Unlike those in USA, Australia and many other countries in the world, the government of Canada does little to support our athletes.Nations like USA provide financial support so their athletes can fully focus on training to win. Australia builds state of the art facilities to support their athletes in their quest for gold.

And it shows! Australia and the USA is a powerhouse in swimming, and the USA is an athletic powerhouse overall in both the summer and winter Olympics. China, also a massive powerhouse also goes to great lengths to help their athletes prepare for the games, although some might question their practices. Canadian athletes, with lack of support from Canada, perform poorly. However, I must congratulate our athletes for one thing - despite having to work to support their training, and despite having minimal support from our government, they still manage to train hard and put on a good show at the Olympics, even if they don’t get to the finals or get a medal.

The fact mentioned above alone should be reason enough for our government to start investing in our athletes. If Team Canada can put on such a strong showing with minimal support from the Canadian government, imagine how well they can perform if our government decided that it was worth supporting our athletes! We could potentially become quite competitive even in the faces of powerhouses such as the USA and China.

Just take a look at the various ads that air on Canadian networks like CBC Television when the Olympics are on. We many companies who advertise the fact that they will donate much-needed money to support our athletes if we buy their products. The interviews with athletes on Team Visa alone, where they are grateful for getting Visa’s help should be enough evidence that our athletes really need our help.

Us, Canadians, expect our athletes to bring back medals. However, we don’t do enough to support them. We don’t petition our government to support them or try to bring it onto their political agendas. If we can convince our government that this is something worth investing in, we will have done our part to support our athletes. After all, it is a valuable investment. International sporting events such as the Olympics allow Canada to overlook differences between ourselves and other nations, and to forge stronger relationships with them.