Well I won't guarantee you coaching or contacts will win, but maybe that is why Lloyd Percival's athletes did not. They were second rate druggies, doped by Percival. We could put together a winning ski team or canoeing team. The talent is there. But you don't take second rate talent and ignore first rate. Not all our people were second rate, but a hell of a lot of first rate talent got ignored. Without money, coaching, equipment, encouragement, being told about and driven to key events - no matter how good you are, you won't make it. My father went to the Olympics on his own money until he got to Germany. The Germans were aghast that Canadians had to pay their own way to compete. Some North American champions could not make it because they did not have the cash. (Bill White of the Black Hawks and Leafs was a case in point.) By 1968 Nancy Greene could make it, as she had private patronage. Without that she would have not been a medal winner. Government money was not there. Lucille Wheeler and Anne Heggveit had to put up their own hard earned to get Olympic bound and win. There was no Sport Canada, and anyway they would have been ignored as they made their bones overseas in non-American racing. Later our best people were kicked off teams when the coach decided he did not like them. Our best had to be more talented than the Europeans as they were true amateurs. They had to make money on their own, and train in vacuum of good competition, coaching, techniques and available venues or with lack of possession of world class equipment. The Russians got their track and field techniques by observing the Americans in the 1920's. The filmed Canadian canoeists in Berlin in 1936 for a week and developed the winning Russian canoeing style they use to this day.
Where the hell have we been? Norway has good skiiers because some people at the turn of the century built amateur racing clubs and encouraged skiing. In the 19th centurey, nobody in Norway or Sweden skiied. It is time we got on the bus. A good base participation system and race-off system is how you build good athletes and a fit, productive, happy society. We could do it in the high schools, but we won't. We somehow see fit as an evil.
You cannot do sports top down by goverment edict. Sports are what they are from a participating athletes point of view. They are not built from some suit's idea of government glory. This sad fact is all to well demonstrated by Canada's hollow, drum beating by government airheads about Canadian sports at Olympic times. It's plain from our armchair professional-watching attitude that Canadians do not understand sport. It is only by competing win or lose that you will gain an understanding of it and appreciate it.
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