Long Track Speed Skater Denny Morrison blasted the very program aimed at helping him and other Canadian athletes perform well in the 2010 Winter Olympic Games in Vancouver. Morrison, who finished ninth in the 1,500 meter race Saturday night, says the $113-million ‘Own the Podium’ program is partly to blame because it prevented him from training with the world’s best skaters.<\/p>\n
American Shani Davis finished with the silver medal. Davis also won a gold in the 1,000 meter long track event. \u00a0Under ‘Own the Podium,’ only Canadian athletes could train in the Olympic venues leading up to the Games except where the I.O.C. required practice time be afforded to other countries. Morrison, who came into the Olympics favored to win two medals and is going home empty-handed, previously trained extensively with Davis, who has won gold and silver. Morrison says that practice time with the world’s best lifted his performance and having it cut off hurt him this week.<\/p>\n
His coach says “bunk.” Marcel Lacroix dismissed the excuse, pointing out that Morrison set a world record and took silver and bronze in last year’s world championships under the current training program.<\/p>\n
But as the Olympics enter the final week, there is considerable discussion among Canadians about the slow start. At this writing Canada has 8 medals and has fallen into fifth place in the medal quest just behind South Korea which had a big Saturday night on the short track.\u00a0The U.S. is exceeding expectations with 24 medals including 7 golds. Germany is a distant second with 14 medals.<\/p>\n
The Canadian Olympic Committee expected the host country to earn between 28 and 34 medals, still mathematically possible but getting more unlikely by the hour.<\/p>\n
One Canadian sports columnist wrote that ‘Own the Podium’ is a good program with a terrible name. The plan to boost funding for coaching and training in an effort to give athletes the best shot at performing well is done in several countries. But the name, some feel, sends the message to the athlete that if they don’t medal, they’ve failed.<\/p>\n
That sentiment was on full display after Canadian Melissa Hollingsworth, the gold medal favorite in women’s skeleton, bounced off the walls during her final run and finished 5th. Afterwards she tearfully told reporters that she felt like she let her entire country down by not medaling.<\/p>\n
While some Canadian athletes are obviously feeling the pressure to perform, some competitors have taken their shots. Speed skater Apolo Ohno, who has won a silver and bronze so far, recently poked fun at the Canadian Olympic Committee saying he had no problem with Canada owning the podium, so long as the U.S. could rent it for the month of February. So far that seems to be happening.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Long Track Speed Skater Denny Morrison blasted the very program aimed at helping him and other Canadian athletes perform well in the 2010 Winter Olympic Games in Vancouver. Morrison, who finished ninth in the 1,500 meter race Saturday night, says the $113-million ‘Own the Podium’ program is partly to blame because it prevented him from […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5092,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-347024","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/347024","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5092"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=347024"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/347024\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=347024"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=347024"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=347024"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}