The philosophy of excellence: Olympic performances, class power and the Canadian state^†

Abstract

In the build-up to the 2010 Winter Olympic and Paralympic Games in Vancouver, Canadians debated the appropriateness of Own the Podium (OTP), a programme created by the Canadian Olympic Committee, the Canadian Paralympic Committee, the Vancouver Organizing Committee and the federal and provincial governments to prepare Canadian athletes for the Games, with special grants for intensified training, ‘top secret’ research and privileged access to Games facilities. Critics asked, is it consistent with the intercultural spirit of the Olympic Movement for the host country to put so much emphasis on its own athletes winning? The doubts were quickly forgotten when the Games opened and Canadian athletes performed better than ever before, winning a record 14 gold medals and 26 medals overall, and 72 top eight finishes, the most of any nation.

Although it was often portrayed as completely brand new, OTP built upon two previous efforts to give Canadian athletes a boost for home-country games – Game Plan, established for the 1976 Olympics in Montreal, and Best Ever, for the 1988 Olympic Winter Games in Calgary. The architect and driving force of OTP, former Olympic gold medallist and veteran sports leader Roger Jackson, had been deeply involved in both Game Plan and Best Ever. Those earlier programmes, too, had spurred debates about the purposes and priorities of Olympic sport, and the relationship of the Canadian Olympic Movement to the state.

This article was written prior to the 1988 Winter Olympics in Calgary. In it, I analysed the political, economic and ideological context for the development of athlete assistance programmes in Canada, arguing that they should be continued but augmented to give athletes greater economic and educational benefits, and restructured to give them more control over the direction of their lives. I also argued that the state should do much more to fund broadly based opportunities for sport and physical activity. At that time, I was the volunteer chair of the Olympic Academy of Canada, an annual workshop designed to address the most difficult issues facing the Olympic Movement in Canada. I had been appointed to that position by Roger Jackson, the then president of the Canadian Olympic Association.

Notes

^†Originally published in Philosophy of Sport and Physical Activity, ed. Pasquale J. Galasso, 11–31. Toronto: Canadian Scholars' Press, 1988.

^1. , ‘Team Selection Guidelines and Procedures’; ‘Selection of Canadian Athletes’. In those events where less than 32 entries were expected, a ranking equivalent for the ‘top half’ of the anticipated entry was required. For example, because only 24 entries were expected in the women's discus and shot, Canadians in those events had to earn a ranking of 12th in the world to be considered. The policy also allowed for the ‘selection of a very limited number of rapidly improving young newcomers in some events where other Canadians already rank very high internationally. Such selections will be made only in cases where Olympic exposure is deemed … beneficial to that athlete's own future Olympic performance and not detrimental to overall team morale’.

^2. ‘Butler Rebuffed in Olympic Court Bid’, Calgary Herald, July 18, 1984; Brooks, ‘Wrestler Wins on Mat’.

^3. Prior to the 1984 Winter Games, Federal Sports Minister Jacques Olivier threatened financial cutbacks if the COA did not broaden its selection criteria (King, ‘Review of Grant Planned’), but the COA's additions to the Los Angeles team in the wake of the Soviet-led boycott effectively closed the rift. For the 1988 Games, the COA has sought to answer some of the athletes' and Sport Canada's criticism by adding several exceptions to the ‘top 16/top half’ standard. For the Winter Games in Calgary, for example, ‘within reason, the COA will endeavour to select athletes in every sport’ (emphasis in original). See ‘Canadian Olympic Association Team Selection Policy 1985–1988’, Olympinfo, 1986.

^4.Sport Canada, ‘Guide to the Athlete Assistance Program’.

^5.Broom and Baka, Canadian Governments and Sport; Macintosh, Bedecki, and Franks, Sport and Politics in Canada.

^6.Fitness and Amateur Sport, Sport Canada Contributions Program, 19.

^7.Sport Canada, ‘NSO/Carded Athlete Agreement’.

^8.Fitness and Amateur Sport, Annual Report 1985–6, 42.

^9. This phrase was first coined by British and Australian journalists at the 1978 Commonwealth Games in Edmonton; see Blatchford, ‘No Apologies’.

^10.West, ‘Fitness, Sport and the Federal Government’, 29.

^11. Canada, House of Commons Debates, 20 January 1937, 114–26.

^12.Bothwell, Crummond, and English, Canada Since 1945. For an analysis of new federal programs in culture, see Endres, ‘Art and Accumulation’.

^13.Whitaker, ‘Images of the State’, 43; Marchak, Ideological Perspectives on Canada.

^14.Metcalfe, ‘Organized Sport and Social Stratification’; Gruneau, Class, Sports and Social Development, 91–135.

^15. For example, Gidney and Millar, ‘From Voluntarism to State Schooling’.

^16.Kidd, ‘We Must Maintain a Proper Balance’.

^17.Macintosh, ‘Bill C-131 Revisited’; Hallett, ‘Federal Involvement in the Development’.

^18.Moniere, Ideologies in Quebec.

^19. These tensions are best discussed by Laxer and Laxer, Liberal Idea of Canada; see also Lumsden, Close the 49th Parallel.

^20.Trudeau, Federalism and the French Canadians.

^21.Panitch, ‘Corporatism in Canada’.

^22. , Report of the Task Force; Proposed Sports Policy.

^23.Ross, Improving Canada's Olympic Performance. See especially the COA submissions to the 1971 National Conference on Olympic Development and the COA-commissioned study.

^24.Marchak, Ideological Perspectives on Canada, 160–3. Another fraction of the Canadian middle class has sought managerial positions with the multinational conglomerates.

^25. Interview with Lou Lefaive, March 13, 1982.

^26.Carroll, ‘National Advisory Council’.

^27.Beamish, ‘Socioeconomic and Demographic Characteristics’; Hollands and Gruneau, ‘Social Class and Voluntary Activity’.

^28. ‘Sport Woos Business Dollars’, Sport Ontario News 8, no. 2, March 1979.

^29.Canadian Olympic Association, Quadrennial Report 1980–84, 219. The Trust gets about 20% of its revenue in the form of government grants. In the 1980–1984 quadrennial, they amounted to US$2.3 million.

^30.Hall and Richardson, Fair Ball; Sport Canada, ‘Women in Sport and Fitness Leadership’.

^31. For example, Kidd, ‘Brief to the Task Force’.

^32. This transformation is ably documented in Beamish and Borowy, ‘Canada's High Performance Athletes’.

^33.Fitness and Amateur Sport, Annual Report 1983–4, 19.

^34.Brooks, ‘Athletic Excellence’.

^35.Whitson, ‘Sociology, Psychology and Canadian Sport’; Kidd, ‘Athletes' Rights, the Coach’.

^36.Canadian Olympic Association, Quadrennial Report 1980–84, 177–82.

^37. Ibid, 14.

^38.Toronto Ontario Olympic Council, Toronto as Host.

^39.Fisher, ‘Jelinek Out to Tap’.

^40. Interview with Jan Borowy, March 18, 1986. In a 1985 Sport Canada survey, 46% of carded athletes reported being away for 50 days a year or more and 20% reported absences of 135 days or more; Macintosh and Albinson, ‘Evaluation of the Athlete’.

^41.Kidd and Eberts, Athletes' Rights in Canada, 73–6; Sack and Kidd, ‘Amateur Athlete as Employee’; Kidd, ‘Elite Athlete’.

^42. The term is borrowed from Robert Tressall's classic working-class novel Ragged Troussered Philanthropists.

^43. Quoted in Weston, ‘Discovering the Flipside of Success’.

^44. Quoted in D. Thompson, interview by Catherine Olsen, ‘Sports Privatization’, Sunday Morning, CBC Radio, February 8, 1987.

^45. Interview with Dan Thompson, July 17, 1981.

^46.Christie, ‘Jelinek Orders Coach's Return’; Fulmore, ‘National Coach Rehired’.

^47.Sport Canada, ‘Athletes’ Representation on Boards of Directors’. In his 1970 White Paper, A Proposed Sports Policy for Canadians, Munro proposed a much greater involvement of athletes ‘in the operation and policy-making structures of their organizations, at every level – boards of directors, executives, executive committees, advisory staff, everywhere from which the power in the organization emanates’ (14). While virtually every other proposal in this paper was quickly implemented, the call for athlete involvement in decision-making has been largely forgotten.

^48. See Athletes' Resource Group, ‘Proposals for a COA’, for the alternatives some athletes put forward when the Athletes' Advisory Council refused to contest the COA's new policy on performance-enhancing drugs.

^49.Gruneau, ‘Class or Mass’; Eynon and Kitchener, ‘Socioeconomic Analysis of Parents’; Rogers and Salmoni, ‘National Alpine Ski Team’.

^50.Mills, Sociological Imagination, 37.

^51.Harvey, Social Justice and the City, 18.

^52.Hamilton, ‘Learning the Olympic Spirit’.

^53.Hoch, Rip Off the Big Game; Brohm, Sport: APrison; Hoberman, Sport and Political Ideology. Each of these authors makes similar points about the ideological role of sport in the socialist countries.

^54.Gruneau, ‘Commercialism and the Modern Olympics’.

^55.West, ‘Running Great Remains Outspoken’.

^56.Crean, Who's Afraid of Canadian Culture?; Independent Artists Union, ‘Social and Economic Status of the Artist’.

^57.Gilbert, ‘Canada's Olympians Hinting’; Gilbert, ‘Our Olympic Athletes Broke’; Gilbert, ‘COA Votes $1.4 Million’; Kidd, ‘1976 Cultural Olympics’.

^58. See, for example, Olympic Academy of Canada, ‘Towards a Definition of Olympism’. It should be pointed out that all the COA and government officials mentioned in this paper regularly participate and contribute to the discussions at this annual event.