Quota report stirs alarm for Canada’s Olympic hopes

The struggles, cutbacks and headaches of trying to make “quota” no longer only apply to the pencil pushers of the world’s cubicle dwelling business people. Now even assumed Olympic-bound athletes are feeling the sting of an organization stretching all of its available time, space and money.

A recent “quota simulator” published by the International Ski Federation (FIS), the governing body of the snow sports on the schedule for next year’s Olympic Games, has created some concern among participating countries, in particular, Olympic host Canada. 

According to the latest simulator, the Canadian alpine ski team will only be allowed to bring 15 racers to compete at the 2010 Olympic Games on their home turf of Vancouver.The struggles, cutbacks and headaches of trying to make “quota” no longer only apply to the pencil pushers of the world’s cubicle dwelling business people. Now even assumed Olympic-bound athletes are feeling the sting of an organization stretching all of its available time, space and money.

A recent “quota simulator” published by the International Ski Federation (FIS), the governing body of the snow sports on the schedule for next year’s Olympic Games, has created some concern among participating countries, in particular, Olympic host Canada. 

According to the latest simulator, the Canadian alpine ski team will only be allowed to bring 15 racers to compete at the 2010 Olympic Games on their home turf of Vancouver.

The Canadians previously hoped to see around 20 skiers compete for medals in front of local fans. The current quota numbers, that will be enforced by the IOC come Jan. 18, 2010, say Canadians will have to hang their hopes on two less racers than they had in the last Olympic Games at Torino in 2006.

Longtime alpine World Cup contender countries Austria and Switzerland are forecast to be allowed a full arsenal of 22 racers to vie for gold, while France, Italy and the U.S. currently claim 18 spots each. Which individual racers will fill the spots will be determined by the various national governing bodies, often based on FIS rankings in January.

“We planned this to put the best home team out there and we put significant resources behind it to create a lot of depth on the team and now that’s taken away from us,” Max Gartner, chief of athletics for Alpine Canada told TheStar.com’s Randy Starkman. “What it means for us in reality is we’re not going to put some of what we call our dark horses in races like slalom, people who have a shot at winning something or at least do really well, be in the top 10 in the Olympics.”

Starkman reported yesterday that the quota cuts hurt the Canadians because “they have mostly specialists rather than all-around skiers so they need a big quota.”

“The new quota formula is based on performance and depth of field. Canada is hurt by the fact that Austria, Switzerland and the U.S. have twice as many skiers per discipline ranked in the top 500 in the world,” reads Starkman’s report.

According to Gartner, team Canada would have worked to develop more all-around racers had they known how few racers they would be allowed. “You don’t build an Olympic program a year out of the Olympics,” Gartner said. “The timing of it really sucks.”

Canadian organizers received the news about a month ago after only hearing “rumblings” of such a change 18 months prior.

The new quota guidelines are reported to be a way for the FIS to ensure that skiers from smaller countries like India, Brazil and Iran have a chance to compete on the sport’s most visible stage. 

“The IOC implemented new qualification systems for all sports as of the 2010 Games for the Winter Sports (already in place for the Summer Games for many years) so that there are definitive numbers of participants for planning and organizational purposes,” said FIS Secretary General Sarah Lewis.

“The qualification systems for each of the FIS disciplines were communicated extensively to the National Ski Associations during 2007 whilst they were evolving, before the IOC confirmed them in December 2007, so they had ample time to devise their strategy to earn their quota spots through their athletes’ placings in the world rankings,” said Lewis. “There is still half a year of competitions for the teams and athletes to earn quota spots through their world rankings.”

Lewis reiterated that unused quotas will be re-allocated, potentially boosting Canada (and other’s) piece of the pie.

Though it is unlikely the FIS will alter the system, the Canadian team is looking into possible adjustments. “The approach we’re taking is looking at host nation status and maybe some additional quota for the betterment of the Games, for television and for the spectators on site that want to see Canadians competing on home soil,” said Alpine Canada president Gary Allan.

USSA’s Vice President of Athletics, Luke Bodensteiner, says his organization has been staying on top of the system since its adoption and doesn’t foresee any problems for America’s medal hopes.  

“FIS did sort of a projection list where they took the results from this year and plugged them into the quota generation system and gave nations an idea of what kind of quota they are on track to get. I think Canada was probably just surprised by what kind of numbers they are seeing as of now,” said Bodensteiner. “This spring’s list is purely an informational, example list.”

“For us I don’t really see much of an impact with the system. We’ll be close to the maximum quota if we don’t fill the whole thing,” said Bodensteiner. “We’re not worried about how that is going to hurt our ability to put our podium potential athletes into the races.”

One of the only hurdles Bodensteiner says the system presents is for the country’s snowboard halfpipe riders. “Those guys don’t typically ride in World Cup competitions, at least our top pros, so we’ve had to increase the emphasis on World Cup and make sure those riders are getting the points they need to generate those quotas,” he said. “We started that process last winter and we’re further ahead of the curve than we thought we’d be after this season, and we are anticipating maxing out those quotas.”

The U.S. nordic teams will have a slightly different look but will be able to produce maximum results says Bodensteiner. “On the nordic side we are seeing that that max team will be quite a bit smaller than it has been in the past. In the past it’s been one big quota for every nation and our quota will go down, but it’s not going to hurt our ability to get our podium contenders into the races,” he says. “The nordic combined quota will be an important one for us to max out, so we can have a back up guy for the team event in case someone gets sick, that’s probably the most important area for us.”

For a full list of current Olympic quota spots click here to go the FIS quota simulator. For your crack at deciphering the official rules click here.