Own the Podium was ambitious. From the official Own the Podium site, here's the primary goal of Own the Podium for the 2010 Olympic games.
Place first in the total medal count at the 2010 Olympic Winter Games
Heading into these Olympic games, we heard often from the Own the Podium people. Our goal was to finish first. Canadians started to believe the hype and collectively, we raised our expectations. Own the Podium over promised, and they will under deliver.
Let's take a look at the current medal standings.
There are four nations ahead of us, and two of them, United States and Germany, are more than doubling us. Even though Canada will have several great medal opportunities this week, we will not own the podium. We will miss our lofty goal, and this has many Canadians down on our efforts this month in Vancouver.
Canada won 24 medals at the 2006 Winter Olympics in Turin, Italy. That was the best we ever did. A wiser goal for VANOC would have been to top that mark, even though that's looking less and less likely with each passing day.
With ten medals, every other article and news story about these games is centered around our failure to finish first in the medal count. This disappointment is the direct result of Own the Podium's fatal error. They over promised and raised expectations to an unrealistic level. And now that we're under delivering, everyone's in a huff.
Don't blame Canada, blame Own the Podium.
