Own the Podium doesn't actually write the cheques. We just recommend where the financial investment should go. We're the technical advisers. Lots of people think we write the cheques. Ninety-five per cent of the funding comes from the Government of Canada, with the rest from important partners like the Canadian Olympic Committee and the Canadian Paralympic Committee.
Ryan Cochrane won a tremendous medal in the men's 1,500-metre swimming event in London. Four years ago we sat down with the swimming people and they told us what Ryan needed in his daily training to contest for a gold medal in London. He needed to continue with his great coach, Randy Bennett, who is one of the best in the world. We didn't want to lose Randy, and we've just signed him to another four-year contract. First and foremost, we talked about the importance of coaches.
We also needed to make sure that Ryan had access to a swimming pool to train in a way comparable with what the rest of the world was doing. We needed to make sure that he had the best strength and conditioning equipment, and that he could go to every competition that would help him advance. We offered him the best physiologists, sport massage therapists, strength and conditioning experts, physiotherapists, athletic therapists, and sport psychologists. He needed everything to be world class, day in and day out in his daily training environment. In addition, Ryan needed a group of seven or eight other swimmers to push him every training day. We work with the sports to identify what all this will cost. We made sure that we, with all of our partners, were able to deliver that for Ryan, and it worked.
We do that with every single targeted sport, making sure that every athlete who's identified gets what he or she needs. This is not always just for four years; for some sports we have the resources to look eight years ahead.
That's an example of what Own the Podium does on behalf of our funding partners.