—promising. It will never be what it once was. With the Americanization of professional sport, several of our professional sport clubs are being threatened, and it will be very hard to save some of them.
The positive effect of this is that our sports reports, of which there are many—one need only read a morning paper to be convinced of that—may give more attention to amateur sport in future.
As for sports broadcasts, some radio stations have five hours of phone-ins every day. Perhaps they would give more time to covering amateur sports. This would focus more attention on the unprecedented success stories.
I recently attended a boxing match. What goes on there can very easily happen in amateur sport. It is a very good illustration of how things are. A fighter's career can be over in a matter of seconds. An athlete may have spent his whole youth training, but a few moments of vulnerability can stop him from attaining his desired goal.
That said, there are other values to sport: team work, aiming for success, pushing one's limits, which can impact on our daily lives. Athletes devote a great deal of effort and energy to their passion, and the values stay with them for their entire lives, as they do with those of us who participated in various sports when we were young.
Do we give them enough support? I think not. A goodly number of our athletes lack financial support. Of course the best of them, that tiny minority of athletes who manage to win medals in amateur sport, or an international or Olympic medal, manage to gain sponsorship from a company like McDonald's. Yet few have sufficient sponsor support to be able to increase training time and perform at the level they would like.
The government also has a great deal of trouble monitoring Canadian amateur sport associations because its financial contribution is insufficient. The more room left for other financial partners—and partnerships are not a bad thing—the more the government plays a minor role and the less it can impose its views on choices and strategy decisions.