From the Partners in Pursuit of Excellence to Own the Podium. An Ideological Slip in Canadian Olympic Sport

In 1979, Canada’s federal government published a national policy on amateur sport. The policy document was ambiguously titled: Partners in the Pursuit of Excellence. In 2005, the federal government committed $55 million to an externally managed program titled Own the Podium. Unlike the policy document from 1979, there is nothing ambiguous about Own the Podium. It makes a definitive statement about Canada’s priority on winning at the Olympic Games. Where did this confidence and clarity of vision come from? What is the broader social implication of such a shift? This paper examines the shift from the Pursuit of Excellence to Own the Podium. These are catch phrases that not only reflect the different social and cultural expectations for sport in the 1980s and the first decade of the new millennium respectively, but they also function as constitutive (or generative) utterances that enact real funding schemes, administrative structures and ultimately experiences in the field of sport production. This paper originated from a meta-analysis of governmental, sport administrative and journalistic discourse from 1961 through 2008. Initial analysis revealed that the Pursuit of Excellence was not tied exclusively to the federal government’s sport discourse. Indeed, as a figurative iteration (or idiom) the pursuit of excellence was pervasive in government policy and position papers throughout the 1980s and early 1990s and characterized a national interest in positive change measured against standards of success based on previous results. In the realm of sport, excellence was gauged primarily on continued improvement at the Olympic Games. Performing “better than before” (or Best Ever) was a measure of excellence and equally reflected the idea of its ongoing pursuit. With Vancouver’s successful bid to host the 2010 Olympic Winter Games, sport success is conceived, financed and managed very differently. Excellence is defined in terms of one time single outcome as opposed to the process of ongoing improvement. This has a profound impact on the long-term ideological substance of Canadian sport discourse and its constitutive powers. This paper argues that the shift from the Pursuit of Excellence to, Own the Podium is a product of changing power relations in the field of Canadian sport production. Specifically, analysis pin-points the radically different relationship that has emerged between the federal government and the Canadian Olympic Committee (COC) since 1979. During this period, the authority and legitimacy of the COC has increased in the broad field of Canadian sport production. This is due in no small part to the financial autonomy that the COC achieved following the 1988 Olympic Winter Games in Calgary and subsequent decades of intense corporate marketing.