I just have to wonder what's going on with the Canadian men at the Olympics in Torino. Right now on this Wednesday evening Canada has 18 medals. The women have won a full 72% or 13 of these. What's with that? If they gave medals for 4th place Canada would be cleaning up! What it comes down to for the men is the lack of will or desire to give that little extra to put them into the medals. In other words I really don't think it's the physical part of their game that's the issue but it's all in the mind.
Reggie Jackson once said “The will to win is worthless if you don't get paid for it.” Some countries pay their athletes for bringing home the bacon. For example the Lithuanian government pay their athletes a special cash bonus of more than $100,000 for each gold medal. Victorious U.S. Athletes will get just $25,000, paid by the U.S. Olympic Committee and the Russian government will pay $50,000 for each Russian gold.
So maybe that's what it takes, a little incentive. Abraham Maslow, the U.S. psychologist noticed while he worked with monkeys that some needs take precedence over others. For example, if you are hungry and thirsty, you will tend to try to take care of the thirst first. He developed his hierarchy of needs. In the hierarchy physiological needs are at the very bottom of the pyramid and must be satisfied before anything else can be considered. These include the basic needs like oxygen, water, protein, salt, etc.
When the physiological needs are largely taken care of, the second layer of needs, those of safety and security, comes into play. These are followed in order by love and belonging needs and esteem needs.
So if our athletes are scrapping by, holding down part time jobs to eat and trying in line up financing support for training and competition, it doesn't leave a lot of time and energy to focus on being the best in the world. At the very least those who demonstrate success should reap some rewards to allow them to focus on their support and do even better.
Come on Canada, we need to support our athletes, not only morally but financially! You can't win races if you're starving. Then you end up in 4th place! Get it?
