CBC: Manitoba athletes to watch for at 2020 Tokyo Olympics
Dean Kriellaars, an associate professor at the University of Manitoba’s Rady Faculty of Health Sciences, said it’s great that Canada has surpassed Sports Illustrated‘s prediction of 14 medals, but our national pride shouldn’t be based on our performance at the Olympics.
“I love high-performance sport. At the end of the day, I’m very interested in the results and how well we’re doing. But to me, it’s an interesting event where money drives the outcome,” Kriellaars said.
”China has 1.3 billion people and it’s ranked third. The Americans are basically doubling up China, in terms of the medal count, and they have a quarter of the population. So it’s not how many people you have, it’s really how much money you have to make the medals.”
Many countries have started to target funding and resources to sports that have more medal opportunities, he added.
“That has pretty serious implications for some of the smaller sports that might not be as prominent in getting medals,” said Kriellaars.