Canadian Olympic Team: Striving for Gold
...e opening of new events in the games. Yet, we seem to be getting worse in the Olympic games instead of doing better. As the new events are being introduced we fail to do well in these new ones and the old events that we had previously done decently in our performance is slipping. At the games in Sarajevo in 1980 Canada won, "2 gold, 1 sliver and 1 bronze," 5 which was not very many medals, but in comparison to the other countries Canada came 8th in the total standings. Those games we the last time Canada penetrated the top ten countries. It was not a fabulous success for Canada and not its greatest achievement, but it helps show that there is the possibility for Canada to improve the performance in the Olympic games. That year, however, was not a particularly good year for any single country. The medals were spread across many countries and no one seemed to dominate the games that year. So it was not exactly an impressive accomplishment for breaking the top ten that year. As much as we would like to be considered a country with many athletic achievements, like the great Canadian hockey team and dominating Canadian curling players, we just are not seen that way in the eyes of other nations. Our low standings in the Olympic games does bring our athletic achievements into the light of other nations. We need to show the world that Canada is a nation with excellent athletes and to do this we need to increase our efforts towards the Olympic Games and to win more medals. the 2002 summer Olympics in Sydney we were overtaken in the standings by small countries such as Belarus, Poland, and Cuba. None of the countries have a huge extensive budget for their teams or a massive population. These countries do better than Canada because they put their effort into the athletes that they know can contend in. By sending only their more capable athletes to the games they are able to spend more time and money on a team with decent chances of winning. These small countries have to put forth their best athletes and because they are financial unable to send a competitor too all events they must chose only the top athletes to represent the country. In the case of Canada because we have a small population and a limited budget, depending on which countries to compare it to, we should be doing the same as these smaller countries. We need to evaluate how we select our Canadian representatives for the Olympic games and our basic strategies to winning the Olympic Games. Canada's population right now is approximately 32 million people and we are expanding our country at a medium rate compared to other countries in similar developmental stages as us. Canada has a lot of room to expand there cities and can continue to grow. Right now the some of countries that have continually done well in the Olympics are: U.S.A., Russia and China. U.S.A. has a population of approximately 294 million. U.S.A. has 263 million more people than Canada who can try out for their Olympic team. The United States is increasing its population at the same rate Canada is right now and will continue to be ahead as long as no drastic changes occur to their country. Russia right now is estimated at having 143 million people living there which is 112 million more than Canada. Russia is currently decreasing in population which may result in their Olympic team becoming poorer. Russia's large population allows them to use shear numbers to do well in the Olympic games. China also is a country with a large amount of people and their larger population gives then more to chose form when making their Olympic team. China's current population approximation is 1.2 billion people which is 1267 million more than Canada. China has been in the top ten Olympic teams for years and has been in the top five many of those times. China's massive population shows how a country can win medals just by having so many people. Canada does, once again, does not have this nice option and so it is harder to get the talented athletes. Canada has to go through a different route than it is currently using in order to gain Olympic titles. Canada's small population can easily be seen as such a disadvantage. Our small amount of people makes it so we can't chose from hundreds of millions of people to find those that are prodigies at a particular sport and send them to compete. So how is it that there are some countries with a small amount of people are able to do well at the Olympics. Countries such as Australia and the Netherlands whose population is similar to ours do much better than us in the games. It is certainly not the amount of money that is put in. There are far poorer countries such as Belarus with a GDP of $10 million(US dollars) 3 who are consistently doing better than Canada. Canada whose GDP is $958 billion(US dollars) 3 should be able finance much better training for their athletes and do better than Belarus, but we consistently fall behind them most years . So what is it that allows them to gain better standings in the games than Canada. The answer is not a complete or simple one. There can only be adjustments to our current Olympic efforts that will increase our performance. A very simple and logical change that could be introduced into Team Canada would be that they could become cautious about who we are sending to the Olympic Games. Countries that do not have the huge populations like U.S.A. and China have to chose their athletes carefully and by only sending those with decent chances of winning are allowed to go. Right now Canada offers the chance to go to the Olympic to all of the top athletes in all the events at the Oly...