A few months before the Olympic games in Torino, Italy, the Canadian Olympic organizers promised that in the Vancouver games in 2010, Canada would be number one in the medal count. The program was named "Own The Podium" and is costing over $10 000 000. That's a lot of money to fund sports and coaching. But hey, they were close to achieving their goal of 25 medals this year, only off by one (thank you men's hockey), and in true Canadian fashion, had more fourth place finishes in the 2006 Olympics than any other country did. So, maybe that extra ten million will give them that last little shot to get them onto the podium.
The program is being funded by the Vancouver Olympic committee, the B.C. provincial government and the Canadian government. Although it's a huge amount of extra money to be pumping into sports, they have all but 10% of it already paid off, with four years to go.
But, if there's one thing we can learn from the Canadian men's hockey team, is that you can never buy gold.
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