Cash Injection Beefs Up Pressure on Olympians
Clara Hughes wheeled around the ice last month on her maiden voyage at the Olympic Speed Skating Oval, in Richmond. B.C.
On her fifth lap, the five-time Olympic medallist tripped over her own feet, catapulting face-first into the ice.
A spectacular beginning, it was not.
“I pretty much did a swan dive,” Hughes said Tuesday at a function in honour of Canada’s elite winter athletes at Canada Olympic Park. “It happens all the time as an athlete. You fall down. You get back up again.”
Hughes, 36, plans to get back up again and add another medal – or medals – to her collection thanks, in part, to record funding from the Canadian taxpayer.
The money comes through Own the Podium, a five-year program paid for by the federal and provincial governments along with the Vancouver Organizing Committee.
The $120-million pot includes an unexpected $10-million injection from the Canadian Olympic Committee and the Canadian Paralympic Committee.
“This is such an exciting time for athletes in Canada – especially winter athletes,” Hughes said Tuesday in a break from training for the upcoming World Cup season. “Our support level we have is fantastic. Unprecedented.”
So too are the medal expectations of a country hungry for glory 16 months from now in Vancouver and Whistler.
Twenty years ago, Canadians captured a total of five medals in Calgary: two silver and three bronze. Canada has never claimed a gold medal at home.
The money is there now. Will the results follow?
“There are a lot of missions that need to be accomplished,” said Peter Judge, CEO of the Canadian Freestyle Ski Association.
“I don’t think many people can comprehend the level of intensity there’s going to be.
“Now we’re through Beijing, there’s going to be a tsunami of attention. I don’t think Vancouver truly realizes what’s coming and how big this really is.”
On the winter sports circuit, Canada captured 184 World Cup medals in the 2007-08 season – good for second place overall.
Germany placed first with 230 medals.
At the 2006 Turin Olympics, Germany finished atop the medal table with 29 medals, 11 of them gold. Canada placed third in the medal count with 24 trips to the podium.
Only seven of those were gold.
“We have the support and the resources behind us now,” said skeleton racer Mellisa Hollingsworth, who wants to upgrade her bronze medal from Turin to gold. “So the road is a little easier now.”
As a legitimate medal hopeful, Hollingsworth realizes she can no longer toil in anonymity at her craft, which involves hurling herself headfirst down a canyon of ice.
After all, Canada is watching. And expecting.
“It’s definitely not going to change who I am,” she said. “I’m a country girl. I find, as things get busier, I try even harder to get back to the simple things.”
Simple things like riding and tending to her horses. But that won’t be possible in the short-run with Hollingsworth bound for training at the Olympic track in Whistler.
The time has arrived to claim home-ice advantage for 2010.
“We’re trying to get in as many runs as possible so we can make it familiar,” said Hollingsworth, who lives in Airdrie, Alta. “We’re going to try and get five or six runs in during a session. So we’ll probably spend a lot of time sleeping in the next 10 days.
“It’s almost like a time change. Your body is a little bit warped with that kind of stress on your body. The first week, we’ll come out with pretty sore necks, because we haven’t adapted to the G-force. There’s a lot of pressure on that track.”
Bobsleigh pilot Helen Upperton, of Calgary, has a plan to steer around the pressure, both on and off the track, in her quest to medal in Whistler.
“Pressure comes if you don’t feel ready,” said Upperton, who finished fourth in Turin. “I think if you do everything you can to stand at the start line and know you did everything you could, then you can just go down the track, have fun and see what happens in the end.”
Just like Hughes did in Turin, roaring into the lead 200 metres from the finish line to capture gold in the 5,000 metres.
With five Olympic medals on her resume – two from cycling, three from speed skating – Hughes has some sage advice to Olympic newcomers overwhelmed by thought of competing at home.
“Look at it as an opportunity,” she said. “To be an Olympian at the Olympics in your own country? That is the chance of a lifetime.
“I don’t see it as pressure. I see it as chance. And it’s a chance I get to take.”
