A Major Recalculation

Good news: I have a reader — one who is not, for a change, a member of my family, or somebody I've shared a house with.

Bad news: said reader has pointed out that my last two posts (part 1, part 2) contain a gigantic factual error.

The federal government has committed $55M to the Own the Podium program over five years, not each year for the next five years. So all of my assessments are off by, oh, say a factor of five. I guess I can't just let that slide by. I am tempted, this being an electronic medium, to go back and correct the posts and pretend this never happened, but I have decided to let the posts stand and post this as a correction.

Requiring a correction in part 1: $11M per year is a significant amount, but not the qualitative change that $55M would have been. It's about 25% more than Sport Canada gave to all winter sport NSFs in 2002-2003.

Requiring a correction in part 2: if we assume that the balance between summer and winter sports is going to be maintained at its historical 2.5-to-1 ratio, then a summer version of Own the Podium would be in the ballpark of $27M per year. That's a lot, but not out of the question given $140M per year in total funding.