Competing in the Winter Olympics this past February cost Melissa Lotholz more than $77,000.
It was money the veteran bobsledder, who has competed on Canada’s national team for more than a decade, raised to give herself the best chance to perform on the biggest international stage.
Two years earlier, Lotholz and a teammate slept on cots in a church loft for free while competing at an event in Lake Placid, N.Y.
“That’s what it took to finish in sixth place at the Olympics,” Lotholz said in an interview with CBC Sports. “In the women’s [bobsleigh], the two countries that medalled, those are the countries that are pouring millions into their program.”
As she weighs her career heading into the next Winter Olympics in 2030, Lotholz is optimistic that a new federal cash injection to national sport organizations will make a difference.
“I think a lot of athletes are kind of weighing that idea of like, OK, at what point can I actually keep on putting off getting a job and working full time and getting an income, because you can’t live the broke athlete lifestyle forever,” Lotholz said.
The announcement, which came in the federal government’s spring economic update on Tuesday, pledged the money over five years. It’s targeted specifically at increasing participation in sport among children and youth, particularly in underrepresented communities, and improving safe sport mechanisms.
It’s not yet clear how much each national sport organization will receive and exactly how that money could affect the day-to-day lives of athletes like Lotholz.
But sometimes making sport safer is also connected to funding it better, the bobsledder said. To find ways to cut corners in the last Olympic cycle, Lotholz found herself making decisions that weren’t always safe.
“It was just some of the hotel choices where you’re like, you should have spent an extra $20 and not stayed in that part of that city,” she said.
A ‘widespread funding crisis’
The government’s announcement came after the Future of Sport in Canada Commission found that Canada’s sport system is broken.
It described a fragmented structure and patchwork of rules that have created an unsafe system where abuse and maltreatment are rampant. It also found a “widespread funding crisis,” often borne directly by athletes, that has made the system unsafe.
The commission’s creation was prompted by stories of harm from athletes across the sport spectrum, who called for change.
The commission made nearly 100 calls to action, ranging from immediate recommendations, such as boosting funding to national sport organizations, to more transformational, structural changes, such as creating a Crown corporation to oversee sport across the country.
Tuesday’s announcement represented the first increase in core funding to national sport organizations in more than two decades.
But it doesn’t come without stipulations. In the spring economic update, the federal government called on national sport organizations to prioritize broadening access to sport and to find new sources of revenue.
“It will not be the case that national sport organizations are funded solely on their ambition to win more Olympic and Paralympic medals,” Olympic gold medalist Adam van Koeverden, who is the country’s secretary of state for sport, said in a CBC Sports interview with Donnovan Bennett on Wednesday.
“We’ll broaden that mandate and the expectation will be that those sports organizations will reach more Canadians in their communities with lower barriers to access for all sports.”
The money will be administered by Sport Canada, which has the power to attach conditions to funding. That includes mandatory adoption of governance standards and the Canadian Safe Sport Program, van Koeverden said.
He also said it’s a signal to the private sector that sport is a good investment. The Future of Sport in Canada Commission called on national sport organizations to find new ways to operate, from leveraging more corporate partnerships, to sharing services with each other and in some cases, amalgamating.
Tuesday’s announcement didn’t reference the significant structural change the commission says is necessary to improve the system, and van Koeverden didn’t provide a specific timeline for when his government will address that recommendation.
“We will be looking at every recommendation that the Future of Sport in Canada Commission put forward,” he said. “As I’ve been saying, there’s nothing for sport without sport involved, so it’ll be a long term consultation process.”
Paying to play
Two years ago in Paris, Eleanor Harvey made history when she earned a bronze medal in women’s individual foil, becoming the first Canadian to earn an Olympic fencing medal.
The women’s foil team receives funding from Own the Podium to train professionally, but the rest of the Canadian fencing national teams rely on athletes to pay their own way, according to Igor Gantsevich, the Canadian Fencing Federation’s high-performance director.
It means athletes paying for trips to World Cup events that cost $4,000 to $5,000 each, and national team coaches earning as little as $900 a month.
“A lot of times I speak to athletes and I’m saying, ‘Hey, why did you miss training?” Gantsevich said. “And the athlete goes, ‘Well, I had to go to work to be able to pay for this flight.’ What am I supposed to say to them? No pun intended, but it’s like a double-edged sword.”
The coach described Tuesday’s announcement as “historic” for sport in Canada, and one he’s been waiting for since his own athletic career.
Like Lotholz, he’s waiting for more detail on how it will impact his organization and athletes. But he’s optimistic.
“If there’s more money for grassroots sport, removing barriers, immediately the pyramid gets wider,” Gantsevich said. “You will have more kids in sports, which is already an incredible thing for an entire country. As a result, when you have a bigger pool of kids, one of them will decide to be a high-performance athlete.”
For van Koeverden, it’s not a choice between spending a money on grassroots sport or high-performance sport. He sees the two as connected.
“In a holistic sport environment, in an ecosystem where we are connected, where our national teams and our national sport organizations are working on the common objective of both having more people enjoy their sport at a local and community level, lowering costs and increasing accessibility and supporting world-class national teams, all of that is possible,” he said.
