Lyndon LaRouche wrote:
For the purposes of clarity, can Um Yeah or somebody explain the incentives again? Why is AC doing it this way?
What is the incentive (and from who/where) that results in this restrictive methodology? Resources to other sports? If they send atheletes who do not perform, they lose funding?
It has already been mentioned that they are not given a "budget" of so many athletes.
I likely don't have this quite right, so someone else is free to elaborate, but it's not a matter of a 'budget' for the Olympics themselves.
Sport Canada funds all kinds of amateur sports in Canada, swimming, triathlon, athletics, skiing, synchronized diving, etc.
They have to come up with some way to decide how much money to give to each sport, all of whom can make pretty much the same case that their athletes work so hard, are good roll models and can make Canadians joyful by winning medals.
So if you are Sport Canada and the Feds give you say, $100 million annually, how do you decide whether to increase the $4 million you give to Athletics Canada (thereby taking away the same amount from someone else) or reward another more 'productive' sport that happens to win more Olympic medals?
A system whereby measuring Olympic or World Championship medals or top eight or top half of the field is a natural consequence of trying to equate different sporting demands. It may not be the best or the most fair, but it is an easily understood model.
I think it's safe to say everyone reading this will agree that a top twelve 1500m performance is probably a 'better' achievement than winning bronze in solo synchronized dirt biking, but how do you quantify that if you are Sport Canada and you've got one party saying 'give us X dollars and we'll get some guy in the final' and another party saying 'no, give us that X dollars and we'll get an Olympic medal'?
Answering that question, and not just preaching to the choir, is what the sport needs to do.