Here We Go Again

Looks like your faithful Olympic correspondent spoke a little too soon, wondering the other day about the absence of the 'where the hell are the Canadian medals' debate.
As you can see here, it's in full roar already. And we figure it's only just begun.
The mentality of it all, quite frankly, makes me want to throw up.
We went through all of this in Athens and here we're at it again. Five days into Beijing 2008 and there's still a goose egg beside Canada on the medal count table. All of which, it seems, is the cue for way too many people to jump on the "we suck" bandwagon.
The majority of whom, it must be said, don't give a rat's ass about amateur sports for three years and 50 weeks or so -- and yes, this includes plenty of the media contingent in China at this moment -- but now suddenly, they're freakin' experts on all of this. And leading the charge to pile on our athletes when they fall short of the podium.
Sickening doesn't begin to describe this kind of attitude.
Let's start this blame game by asking this: What did any of you do to help our athletes' cause? Did you contribute $8 (yes, eight measly bucks) to CAN Fund's Beijing challenge? Yeah, it doesn't sound like much, but multiply that by the more than 30 million people who call Canada home and ... well, you do the math.
Eight freakin' dollars.
Tell me again how helping our athletes is such a financial strain on us all.
It was laughable hearing a Canadian Olympic Committee executive say more money is coming into the amateur sport system in the next few months. Fat lot of good that does to help any of our athletes in Beijing (thanks a lot, federal government). It might even be too late to help for London 2012. And that's without knowing how much of it will be siphoned off by the COC and other national sport governing bodies for more needless bureaucracy.
It says here that in the mad dash to Vancouver 2010, we threw our summer sports athletes under the bus (yes, corporate Canada deserves some of the finger of guilt pointed at it, too, in this area). And yet, despite this massive lack of support, we somehow expect to see an endless parade to the medal podium.
Let me know what part of this you're not getting, people.
Whatever success we achieve in Beijing will be in spite of the system, not because of it. Tell me who in their right mind thought it was fair to pull whitewater kayaker David Ford's funding just months before these Games? He finished sixth in his event yesterday without the benefit of a pre-Olympic training camp on the Beijing course, which you know most every one of his top competitors enjoyed. Yeah, that's really standing behind our athletes.
So before you start lobbing bombs at our Beijing gang, think about all of the above.
Better yet, take a look in the mirror. Ask what you did to make a difference.
And why you only care now, when it's really much too late.