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.