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Searching for gold

Using technology to find the Olympic heroes of 2010 and beyond

According to the research, it takes 10 years or approximately 10,000 hours of dedicated training to produce an Olympic athlete.

When you consider that the average age for Olympic competitors is 27, with an age range that stretches from about 16 years old to the mid-30s, a hero of the 2010 Winter Olympics could be anywhere between seven years old and 24 right about now.

Some of these athletes will have committed themselves to a sport or two already, and many are already in the sport system at some level, usually with a school or club team or possibly with a high performance program. Few among them will have any idea of their potential – 2010 is still a long way off.

And then there are the younger kids, in elementary and middle schools, who still have no idea what they are capable of achieving. They try a few sports in gym class, and after school head to whatever sports they’ve signed up to play – usually the same sports their older siblings, friends and parents have chosen.

While they may play a lot of different sports growing cup, a typical child’s exposure to some of the specialized Olympic sports is often limited to what they see on television every four years. The reality is that thousands, maybe even tens of thousands of children in Canada with the potential to become professional or Olympic athletes won’t even have an opportunity to try the different sports that they might be most proficient in.

At least that’s the state of Canadian sport development as it stands right now – things could be a lot different in six months once Sport Search gets off the ground.

Sport Search is part of the LegaciesNow program which was developed by the provincial government and Vancouver Whistler 2010 Bid Corporation to "provide promising young B.C. athletes with world class programs and services so that they may train with the best, compete with the best, and simply become the best."

LegaciesNow was created with the idea that "Whether you win or lose, a bid should leave a system stronger," says Charles Parkinson, Director of Sport for the 2010 Bid Corporation. "The bid shouldn’t take resources out and leave everybody with an empty feeling. It should enhance your entire sport system in the province, and it’s through programs like Sport Search that that can happen.

"This is a really tangible way that a bid can be felt everywhere, in Houston, B.C. or in Fort St. John, or in Castlegar, or in Nanaimo – if a bid is for Vancouver and Whistler, a lot of people would ask ‘how does this impact us?’ Well this is a prime example of how a bid can be a catalyst to help the system throughout the province, and ultimately throughout Canada."

The province has already provided the 2010 bid corporation with $2.5 million to fund the LegaciesNow program, and funding could easily double if and when the bid is accepted by the International Olympic Committee (IOC) and corporate supporters come on board.

Finding the sports that are looking for you

In addition to his role with the 2010 Bid Corporation, Parkinson is the Director of Sport and Community Development for B.C. He was a member of the national volleyball team for four years in the 1980s, and is still involved with sports as a player and parent.

He recently entered into negotiations with Australia to purchase the Sport Search software, a program which he feels has the potential to revolutionize and re-energize sports in B.C. and in Canada.

Sport Search software matches kids with sports based on physical, physiological, and mental tests. If the match is good and a kid gets hooked on the sport, he or she just might be a future candidate for Team Canada.

"This is about the kids of today who we hope will be the Olympians of 2010 and beyond," says Parkinson. "When you think about it, we’re nine years out – it’s not beyond the realm of possibility that a kid could take up a sport today and be an Olympian in 2010. But they don’t know that because they don’t even know what they might be good at.

"Sport Search gives them an opportunity to get a match in terms of what they might like to do with a possible list of sports they might be good at."

The basic concept behind Sport Search is that elite athletes in any sport have common mental, physiological and physical characteristics.

For example, a test of National Hockey League goalies determined that while goalies can come in all shapes and sizes, in common they have reaction times that are up to twice as fast as an average persons. Testing also discovered that basketball players don’t just jump higher, they jump faster with the aid of well-developed "quick twitch" muscles. Cyclists have larger hearts, swimmers have stronger lungs, and figure skaters and gymnasts have exceptional balance stemming from a system of highly developed nerves in their inner ears.

According to Scientific American , some of that ability is genetic, and some of it is learned or earned through a lifetime of repetition – starting when we’re young and our bodies are still developing.

While it’s a combination of things that makes an athlete great – and theoretically anyone can become great if they work hard enough – without the right basic natural and acquired attributes, most athletes will plateau in terms of ability somewhere short of the Olympic standard.

"Basically, there are certain tests you can use as predictors for athletic performance," says Parkinson. "It might be a shuttle run, it might be a catching exercise, it might be some other kind of motor testing, and often the test results can be used as predictors of abilities. There are different predictors for different sports."

Sport Search gives kids a chance to find out which sports they might be good at, and an opportunity to try the sports indicated by their test results.

"It’s essentially an interactive program where a kid at say the elementary or middle school level would plug in some general data – answer some questions that the computer would ask," says Parkinson.

"Then the child would also take a few physical tests. For example, there could be a catching test, a shuttle run or a short sprint. That information would also be fed into the computer.

"You do this testing, you ask some questions, and then maybe you plug in some data about the children themselves. It might be arm length, it might be the circumference of their wrist, their height at a particular age, their weight, a few things like that. The computer, based on the research that’s been done, analyzes that information and in the end it spits out a sheet of paper that basically says: ‘Congratulations, based on this information, here are three or four sports that you might want to try because you might have a disposition for these sports."

Once they have been tested, the kids will watch videos on the different sports that were selected to see if they might have an interest in trying those sports. If they have no interest whatsoever, the child is free to walk away. But if there is a spark of interest, Parkinson says the athletic system has to be ready to give that child an introduction to the sport that keeps them coming back.

"Obviously the next portion of that is that once we’ve gotten them excited about it and they think they might want to try it, they have an opportunity through the program to try that sport in their community," he says.

If the child has a positive first experience with that sport, they may continue on with the sport using whatever channels are available within their community. This includes athletic clubs, community recreation programs, and physical education programs.

"We have to ensure that all three levels are lined up. If a school doesn’t have a cross-country ski program for example, that gap could maybe be filled by either or a local cross-country club or by a community-based or municipal recreation program," Parkinson says. There is already a fair amount of duplication in some communities that, with a bit of organization, could be adapted to a progression.

"It’s not an impossible task. What we’re trying to build within the system at large is the most efficient system possible, so if we eliminate duplication, if we integrate the various delivery systems – whether it’s at club, school, or community level – so they are building on each other, the kids will progress."

Some sports already have a system of progression in place that allows kids to advance to provincial and national levels based on ability. Minor hockey associations are proficient at recognizing and fostering talent at an early age. Alpine and freestyle skiing also have strong systems in place, but could use help in recruitment. Other Winter Olympic sports such as bobsled, cross-country skiing, ski jumping and Nordic-combined are substantially less developed in Canada.

The same branch of sports science that determined that it takes 10,000 hours to produce an Olympic athlete also has a theory that the more athletes who take up a sport at an entry level in a country, the greater the potential that country has of producing a world champion.

"Give the kids that positive first experience, and what you are doing is expanding the base," says Parkinson. "Hopefully in all sports we will have a broader base, and the broader the base the higher the peak. You measure that against all the other countries in the world, and if your peak is higher then you obviously have the best athletes and generally speaking you should win."

Because competition exists at all levels of sport – and because competition inevitably increases the basic level of ability as the kids push and learn from one another – more kids entering a sport at the base level will eventually increase the level of competition.

More kids will advance to the next level of the sport, and the level of competition will increase once again as the best push one another to become even better. This process continues at every stage of an athlete’s development until there are a handful of athletes who can say they are the best in the country. Because new athletes are continually being introduced into the system, elite athletes will have to continue to improve in order to keep their position on top.

A classic example of this pyramid theory in action is the Austrian alpine ski team, which has virtually owned the World Cup circuit in recent years. Last winter, five out of the top 10 and 11 out of the top 20 men in the overall World Cup standings were Austrian, including first, second and fourth. In the final women’s World Cup standings, the Austrian Team put three athletes in the top 10.

Austria has a higher peak than other skiing nations because of a strong, progressive system that starts athletes early and provides a competitive environment.

In a pre-Olympic interview with SkiNet in January 1998 – after the Austrians had won 20 of 28 World Cup races leading up to the Olympics – skier Andreas Schifferer said: "There is so much competition within our team, you have to give 100 per cent in training all the time. Last year I competed at the World Championships, and the highlight was our qualifying race."

Hermann "The Hermannator" Maier, the overall World Cup champion for the past two years even joked: "Maybe we’ll play cards the night before to see who gets to go (to the Olympics)."

Using Sport Search to identify strong candidates early should increase both the quantity and quality of entry level athletes for all sports, and could conceivably result in a level of success like the Austrian ski team.

"It’s over a long period of time, it’s not going to happen in five minutes," says Parkinson. "You have to remember that on average it’s 10 years or 10,000 hours to build a base level international athlete in sport."

Sport Search is not a shortcut, "but an opportunity to look at a greater number of kids. Hopefully what that will mean is there will be more kids at each level of the system, challenging one another more and more and increasing the whole level of the sport."

The 2010 Bid Corporation could acquire the software from Australia as early as June, once a price is agreed upon. In early negotiations, the price was anywhere from $25,000 to $50,000. While that figure has probably increased, it’s a reasonable cost when you consider all of the research that went into developing the program.

The software will then have to be "Canadian-ized" in terms of content, updated, and adapted to include sports featured in the Winter Olympics. It will also be put into a Web-based form in order to make it more readily available to students through the school system. Parkinson hopes to host Sport Search on PL Net, an education network that links schools and libraries throughout the province.

If everything goes well, Parkinson hopes to make the program available in a few test schools in late September, to coincide with the official launch of the bid and the 2010 Bid Corporation’s application to the IOC. Although the test areas haven’t been confirmed, Parkinson believes that the program will at least be available in the principal bid towns of Whistler and Vancouver.

By this time next year, Parkinson believes that Sport Search will be available to kids across the rest of B.C. and Canada.

The program will be voluntary. "Like many things in the curriculum right now it’s a learning resource, a learning tool. What we would have to do is design it so it is dynamic and interesting enough for teachers to want to use it," says Parkinson, who would like to involve Canadian athletes in the launch to increase the profile of Sport Search and the level of interest of students.

The Australian paradigm

The National Talent Identification and Development Program, or Talent Search – the same program that the 2010 Bid Corporation plans to introduce as Sport Search – was funded and developed by the Australian Institute of Sport as part of its own successful bid to host the 2000 Summer Olympics.

The inspiration was Dr. Allen Hahn, who compiled data back in 1988 to help him locate and fast-track rowers on their way to the Olympics. Atlanta Games gold medalist Megan Still was a product of the program.

Other coaches in cycling and canoeing took notice, and with Hahn’s assistance they created their own programs to identify the characteristics that are associated with elite performance.

When Sydney won the right to host the Games in 1994, the government backed the Talent Search proposal with half a million dollars in seed money. Australia did not have a significant presence in many Olympic sports at the time, and was determined to identify talent and fast-track athletes to the 2000 Olympic Games.

Kids aged 14 to 16 years were tested, which meant that athletes would be 20 to 22 by 2000. There were three phases to the program: school screening, sport-specific testing, and talent development.

The school screening consisted of a battery of eight physical and physiological tests taken during gym class. The results were compared nationally, and in some cases students were selected to participate in phase two testing.

Phase two tested the accuracy of the phase one tests, and included sport-specific laboratory tests.

Students who passed phase two were invited to join a talented athlete program organized by either a state or national sporting organization – these organizations had to come up with their own funding. In phase three, candidates were given the basic training, and time to focus on learning their sports. They would compete against other phase three groups and each other, and over a matter of time, the strongest athletes were identified.

It went better than anyone could have imagined. More than half of the Team Australia athletes in the 2000 Games were identified using this program.

Australia finished fourth in the 2000 Olympics with 58 medals (16 gold, 25 silver and 17 bronze), behind the U.S. (97 medals), Russia (88 medals) and China (59 medals). With a population of just 19 million, Australia posted one of the highest medals per capita ratios in the recent history of the Games – 3.05 medals for every million people.

By way of comparison, Canada finished 24 th on the medal tally with 14 medals (three gold, three silver and eight bronze). With a population of 30 million, we finished with fewer medals than less populous Ethiopia, Bulgaria, Kazakhstan, Greece, Sweden, Norway, and Cuba. Our medals-to-population ratio was 0.46 for every million people.

Considering the fact that Canada was in the top 10 in Atlanta in 1996, with 22 medals, the Sydney Games results generated considerable criticism of Canada’s performance. Many people pointed out the results came after a decade of funding cuts.

In the aftermath, CBC Sports, CBC Newsworld, La Presse and the Toronto Star polled Canadians to find out how they thought sports could be improved.

Seventy-three per cent of respondents said Canada’s success at the Olympics was either very important or somewhat important; 60 per cent said Canada should spend more on funding amateur sport; 71 per cent said fitness and amateur sport should have its own ministry; 75 per cent supported the idea of using revenues from a sports lottery to fund training for our Olympic athletes.

The bottom line, however is that Australia’s budget for sports is four times larger than is Canada’s, despite the fact that the sports industry is a significant contributor to employment and the gross domestic product of Canada. According to the 1998 Mills Report (Sports in Canada: Everybody’s Business, authored by Member of Parliament Dennis Mills), sports contribute 1.1 per cent or almost $9 billion to the national economy every year, and employ more than 260,000 people. These figures include professional sports, sport gambling, sport facilities and retail. If you also included sport-related tourism, such as skiing and golf, sport could easily be one of our top performing industries.

The World Travel and Tourism Council pegged the value of Canada’s tourism industry at US$36 billion annually to our national economy, and B.C. accounts for a large percentage of that total. About 40 per cent, or $14 billion of international tourism is related to sports.

Yet for all this benefit, Sport Canada’s total budget is about $65 million a year and total federal sport contributions are around $85 million. Provinces do contribute to sports, but they are increasingly limited by the rising costs of health care and education. Quebec and B.C. lead the country in per capita contributions, but many have argued that a strong national sport program needs strong federal funding.

Following the Ottawa sports summit earlier this year, Prime Minister Jean Chretien increased funding to amateur sports by $10 million annually and committed to spending $400 million over the next four years. Most critics agreed that it’s a good start, but believe that Canada has lost too much ground at every level of athletics – even Denis Coderre, the Canadian minister responsible for amateur sport, said that the needs are far greater than the funding.

Doctor’s have also waded into the debate in favour of increased funding to sports and fitness programs, believing that better overall health among Canadians will substantially reduce the burden that obesity, weak hearts, and general poor health places on our health care systems.

All kids can benefit from Sport Search

The failure to connect many Canadians with sports in a meaningful, hands-on way is one of the key problems with the current sports system – at the 2001 National Summit on Sports in Ottawa in April, five of the 14 major challenges identified were Participation, Accessibility, School Sport and Physical Education, Support for Athlete Development, and Coaching.

Olympics aside, according to the summit’s discussion paper: "Sport is more than a cultural trade-mark for Canada – it represents the aspirations of many Canadians in terms of participation, volunteer activity, entertainment and leisure, pride, health, community well-being and youth development."

At the same time, the general health of Canadians both young and old is at its all-time worst. Since 1978, obesity among men has increased from seven to 12 per cent, obesity among women has increased from nine to 14 per cent, and one out of every three people is overweight.

Among children aged seven to 12, the rate of obesity has exploded in the past decade, from 15 per cent to 23 per cent. According to the Canadian Medical Association, roughly one in four children is obese and almost half are overweight. Although kids who play sports are less likely to try drugs, become pregnant, or drop out, and generally outperform other students in academics, the level of participation in school sports has dropped by 11 per cent in the last decade, to just 35 per cent.

Part of the problem is the disappearance of physical education programs within schools. Phys-Ed is optional after Grade 9 in most places in Canada, and according to the Canadian Association for Health, Physical Education, Recreation and Dance, most children do not receive enough physical education per week. They also found that in most jurisdictions, the number of Phys-Ed teachers has been reduced.

By way of comparison, in Australia and in many European countries Phys-Ed is mandatory throughout high school.

Parkinson believes that Sport Search could go a long way in helping Canadians to connect with and make life-long commitments to sports.

"This is not elite at all," he says. "These are grass roots children in every community. It gets them off their rear end and away from the Nintendo. It gets them outside or into the gym… and puts them into a different setting where they’re actually getting some physical activity that hopefully they selected and they will enjoy. The important thing to provide then is the opportunity to move through a system that allows them to develop if they wish."

Although parents can’t always be trusted to keep a child’s best interests in mind when considering what sports to fund and support, Parkinson says families are already under pressure when making those decisions.

And while the majority of our athletes come from families that are well-off and can afford the equipment, camps, and coaching that it takes to become a champion, he doesn’t believe families will feel any pressure to support their kids’ involvement in sports identified by Sport Search.

"In the end families make decisions about what sports the kids ought to play, by taking everything else that’s going on into account," says Parkinson. "There’s always a cost involved, whether it’s some equipment or registration, and that’s a reality with a system that is generally coached and run by volunteers. All (Sport Search) says is here are three or four sports – and they might already be doing two of them – that you might like to try.

"You’re dealing with kids anywhere from 9 to about 12. Because you like something or show aptitude, it doesn’t mean you have to stop everything else and devote your life to that one activity. When you’re young, you should be enjoying a smorgasbord of sports. We just put a few more sports on the table."

To date, there has been no negative feedback from the Australian Talent Search program. "In fact, most of it is fairly positive in terms of the net results and the net benefit to the system."

2010 Legacies and beyond

On July 13, 2001, the International Olympic Committee will announce the winner of the 2008 Olympic Summer Games. Toronto is a serious contender in this battle of the heavyweights, with Paris and Beijing putting up the stiffest competition.

If Toronto wins, the Vancouver Whistler 2010 Bid Committee will have to give serious thought as to whether entering a bid for the 2010 Winter Olympics is a viable option – while there is no rule against this in the handbook, the IOC has rarely awarded back-to-back Olympics to a single country. The 2010 Bid Corporation may decide to hold off to 2014 or to scrap the bid entirely.

If Toronto is not chosen for 2008, then the 2010 Bid Corporation will formally announce to the world its intention to bid for the 2010 Olympic Winter Games and Paralympic Games. This fall the Canadian Olympic Association will submit a nomination for Vancouver Whistler to the International Olympic Committee, and by summer of 2002 the IOC will announce its shortlist of candidate cities. Candidate cities will submit their bid books to the IOC by January of 2003, and a winner will be announced the following July at the IOC annual general meeting.

Whatever happens – whether the bid goes ahead, whether it is delayed, or whether it isn’t chosen by the IOC – the bid corporation is determined to create a lasting athletic legacy for British Columbian and Canadian athletics through LegaciesNow.

That means that Sport Search, bid or no bid, is coming to Canada.

"Whether it’s the Tourism B.C. World Host program, whether it’s Sport Search or the Pacific Sport Group support," Parkinson says, "the goal of LegaciesNow is to reach out and make sure that we touch communities around B.C. and that they feel the impact of the bid and that it’s not just about high performance kids and kids at the Olympic level, it’s about our children and it’s about developing the system and making it stronger."

Other reading:

• Building Canada Through Sport: Towards a Canadian Sport Policy: discussion document for the National Summit on Sports –

http://cbc.ca/sports/summit/discussoin_paper.pdf

• The Mills Report (1998) –  http://www.parl.gc.ca/InfocomDoc/36/1/cher/Studies/Reports/sinsrp05-e.htm

• Talent Search at the Australian Institute of Sport –

www.ausport.gov.au/ais/talent/

• The Vancouver Whistler 2010 Bid Corporation homepage and LegaciesNow –

www.winter2010.com


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