Outdoors: Norm O'Reilly's Olympic Diary - Day 14

Saturday, August 14, 2004 - 05:00 AM

Today’s entry comprises two anecdotal stories, one sport related and one administration related. Judging from how ambush marketing was received, I think you’ll find them interesting.

TOPIC 1: International Coaches of Canadian Teams

To set up this discussion, here’s a photo of me in the opening ceremonies ‘waiting-pen’ with some of the Olympic team from Liberia. Note their fabulous outfits and the other Canadian Team member. He’s Ernie Whitt, former catcher for the Toronto Blue Jays and captain of Team Canada’s ball team.

Although Ernie has a strong ties to Canada, lived here for many years, was part of the Toronto Blue Jays World Series’ wins and is well know throughout the country, he is not a Canadian citizen – which leads us to this topic. Perhaps it is not as interesting as ambush marketing, but the fact that non-Canadian coaches are becoming commonplace in sport in Canada is something debated often in sport circles.

The two contradicting factors are the fact that coaching is a vital component to success (i.e. you must have the best) and that a portion of the costs to support amateur sport is paid by taxpayers through public funds. We have Russian cycling coaches, Norwegian cross-country skiing coaches, Romanian gymnastic coaches and Australian swim coaches. There are many more examples. These coaches are not Canadian but they are the best in their sports and come from systems and cultures where their respective sports thrive.

How do you feel about your tax dollars going towards the salaries of these coaches? On the flip-side, there are also many Canadian coaches who are plying their trade in other nations of the world (brain-drain?). There are hundreds of Canadian hockey coaches in international programs, our National Triathlon Coach is also coach to non-Canadian Olympians, and each day here I meet Canadian coaches and doctors who are working with many other teams. So, we are both importing and exporting talent. Whether we are winning or losing this exchange, I can’t comment on but the overall process begs discussion.

TOPIC 2: Key Management

Finally, I wanted to talk about Key Management. The Olympic Village in ATHOC has over 120,000 keys of which nearly 1000 are in the charge of Lorne, Michelle and I here at the admin office. Each athlete or coach staying in the village has 3 keys (one for the building, one for the apartment and one for the room).

ATHOC – due to security reasons – is very reluctant to replace keys or issue new ones. The keys were delivered in boxes, many were missing and many didn’t work. Each key had to be tried in each door at some point. Athletes lose keys. Team Leaders give out the wrong keys. Keys break. We make mistakes. What is my point you ask? Well, as an analogy to event management, key management demonstrates how – under the pressures of time (an event will happen, can’t be postponed) – something seemingly simple becomes incredible complex.

In order to cope, we have implemented a ‘key management system’ (kind of bizarre to say that, isn’t it?!) that involves a database, a tool-box-turned-key-holder and a detailed communications process between each of the 3 of us who are involved in the key game!