Registered: Feb 2005
Location: Manitoba
Posts: 480

cough cough Brad Jacobs.

These guys put in the time and work for years, getting beaten up and destroyed on the tour, at a huge financial loss - exacerbated by the tough travel time and costs out of Sault Ste. Marie.

They made the huge sacrifices because they loved the game and wanted to get better. So they worked their asses off for years.

And then they became Brier champions.

A few years ago, yeah, Jacobs would have had NO CHANCE of winning the Brier.

They saw the huge challenges ahead, and didn't give up.

So you can go on and use that "horribly unfair government funding!" excuse all you like.

Jacobs and his team didn't. They went and practiced instead.

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And good on them for doing so. But they shouldn't have had to face teams with government funding on top of massive sponsorship.

Does the federal government give money to the Maple Leafs?The Blue Jays? Mike Weir?

Even pro organizations recognize the danger of letting the wealthy teams run unchecked. That's why there are salary caps. To create a competitive, level playing field as possible.

The same should be done with funding. If you have over a certain dollar of sponsorship, you don't get funding.

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Registered: Feb 2005
Location: Manitoba
Posts: 480

No, the federal government does not give direct funding to the athletes you listed, as they are not amateur athletes.

Here's a list of all the amateur athletes funded by Sport Canada as of March 1, 2014, and the amounts they were given. Because we live in an open democratic society, anybody can see this information. http://www.pch.gc.ca/DAMAssetPub/DA...8640420_eng.pdf

Our government has decided that it benefits our nation to have strong athletes that can compete at an international level. Sport Canada funding helps these athletes supplement their income so they afford to take a little more time off work and spend that time training to become among the best in the world. If you disagree, you can petition the government, but it's useless to blame the athletes.

And don't pretend that the government doesn't also help professional sporting organizations - new stadiums/arenas/infrastructure are almost always built out a mixture of public and private funds.

Curlers do not play for professional organizations and cannot support themselves by curling alone, at least in this country.

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quote:

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Originally posted by doubletakeout


Our government has decided that it benefits our nation to have strong athletes that can compete at an international level. Sport Canada funding helps these athletes supplement their income so they afford to take a little more time off work and spend that time training to become among the best in the world. If you disagree, you can petition the government, but it's useless to blame the athletes.

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Registered: Apr 2014
Location: Kingston, ON
Posts: 210

Why is everyone arguing over teams getting better and training harder to be competitive, do we not want to advance the sport and show that it really does take a lot of work to make it. We already put up with people at the Olympics calling it not a real sport and anyone could win. Granted curling is not a major sport like hockey or baseball, football, basketball, but the brier and the wct is the pro level of curling, even though the money still sucks. Maybe they should create a development tour so younger teams out of juniors can compete on a fair level like the golf or tennis development tour or the AHL, minor leagues. As for the brier it's supposed to be the top championship so what's the issue with having the top teams. If curling ever wants to become a major sport than it needs to continue to move forward. Look at what happened when most of the top players boycotted to play the grand slam events, Ferby dominated and others still had little chance. Was the Stanley cup not originally meant for the top hockey club in Canada, you have to keep moving on to make it last.

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