Nordic Nation: Tom Hall’s Take on Own The Podium

We are nearing the end of the Winter Olympic quadrennial as we run up to the 2018 Games in PyeongChang, South Korea. With that marquee event on the horizon, a few things are certain: athletes will attempt to peak for specific events, nordic sports will garner more mainstream media coverage and funding for national teams will get a bit more scrutiny. With that in mind, in this podcast episode, we have Canada’s Tom Hall as a guest. If you’re into elite canoe and kayak, Hall may be a familiar name: he’s a 2008 bronze medalist from the Beijing Olympics in sprint canoeing and represented Canada internationally for twenty years — he retired from competitive sports in 2012. Today, Hall is a journalist and editor as well as the interim executive director for for a Canadian athlete advocacy organization called AthletesCAN.

Hall’s work has been featured in a Canadian publication called The Walrus. What caught our attention here at FasterSkier was an article Hall penned about Canada’s sports funding program Own The Podium, titled ‘The Wrong Track’. It’s a good read and poses the basic question about how taxpayer money should be spent when it comes to sport. Whatever side of the issue you come down on, Hall’s points are food for thought.

Here’s a breakdown from Own The Podium (OTP), (Link to the full OTP Winter Historical Comparison) that reflects a winter historical comparison of OTP funding for cross-country skiing during the last three Olympic quadrennials.

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Have a podcast idea? Please email nordicnation@fasterskier.com.