Paris 2024 is a Summer Olympics for the record books for Canada, which saw the second-highest number of medals earned and numerous national and world records broken in multiple sports.
Some experts say this success comes from not only the talent of Canada’s athletes but also the funding helping to get them podium-ready.
“The more money that the Canadian government spends, the more medals Canadian athletes win,” Peter Donnelly, founding director of the Centre for Sport Policy Studies at the University of Toronto, told Global News in an interview.
Donnelly points to recently published research in May by the centre that tracked data from Sport Canada and from UK Sport and showed an increase in medal count with more funding.
The study notes that a total amount of about $265 million between 1989 and 1992 led to a combined 25 medals in the 1992 Summer and Winter Games, while $901 million between 2017 and 2020 led to 53 total medals in the 2018 Winter and 2021 Summer Olympics.
Taxpayers are the biggest source of that funding, with federal government figures published last month showing about $266 million annually is put into high-performance sports funding.
Just this year, the federal government announced a $55-million infusion into the sport system, with the largest investment into the Athletes Assistance Program. Top athletes were receiving $1,765 per month — $1,060 for a development-level athlete — to pay their bills and cover training and competition costs their national sports organization couldn’t.
But will that continue — and what happens if the funding falls?
“I do worry about the future. I worry about performance in Milano-Cortina (the 2026 Winter Olympics) and certainly for L.A. ’28,” David Shoemaker, chief executive officer for the Canadian Olympic Committee, told reporters on Sunday.
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Earlier this year, the COC and Canadian Paralympic Committee asked for $104 million to be put into the system for national sport organizations in this year’s budget, which was not granted.
Shoemaker cautioned a lack of funding could hinder athletes.
“There hasn’t been an increase in the core funding for the 62 federally funded national sports organizations in 19 years, and so they are having to do so much more with so much less, including the demands upon them to create a safe and barrier-free and healthy sports system that we all want so badly,” he said.
Anne Merklinger, CEO of Own The Podium — a non-profit that prioritizes investments for national sport organizations to help deliver more medals — told Global News the COC and Canadian Paralympic Committee have committed to focusing on the well-being of athletes, which has helped lead to the success.
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“(They) are world leaders in terms of creating a games environment where the athletes who are selected to both of those teams can go to the Games, be free of distraction and really focus on their performance and their well-being,” she said.
She added that funding has helped support athletes in medal contention with things like coaches, daily training environments, sports medicine and other resources needed to “achieve their athletic goals.”
Canadian athletes broke numerous records in this most recent Olympics.
Swimmer Summer McIntosh broke two Olympic records in the pool, Phil (Wizard) Kim became the first breakdancing gold medallist, Alysha Newman set a Canadian record as she became Canada’s first medallist in women’s pole vault and Ethan Katzberg broke the country’s 120-year medal drought in men’s hammer throw, just to name a few.
Donnelly said in addition to funding, the records may be in part to “just having the right people in the right place at the right time,” adding it could happen in any country but despite a smaller population compared with the size of the country, “when it happens, it really happens.”
“I think if there’s a training camp that just has the right coach and the right cohorts of individuals who are there at the same time, you’re going to see success,” he said.
However, Donnelly warned that while funding is a must-have for Olympic success as Canada has stayed in 11 to 12th place in the past three Games — 2020, 2022 and 2024 — it could bring questions from the public on whether money from taxpayers should continue to be put into high-performance sport.
“I think with the level of funding that we do receive as a country, we’re definitely punching above our weight,” Merklinger said.
“I think the concern is without an increased funding for the national sport organizations going forward, things will become increasingly difficult for them to be able to implement the plans to the degree that they need to for their athletes to achieve success.”
— with files from The Canadian Press
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