Canada’s Olympic bobsleigh team is racing against a funding shortfall

CALGARY — Compared to some other countries at this year’s Winter Olympics, Canada’s national bobsleigh program is grappling with a widening funding gap that athletes and officials have raised the alarm over.For the 2024-25 season, Bobsleigh Canada Skeleton (BCS) received roughly $943,772 in federal organizational support, plus $852,658 in athlete “carding” funds — in total, roughly $1.8 million in core support.However, recent cuts have forced the program to trim budgets and shift even more of the financial burden onto Canadian athletes.According to the CBC, BCS lost more than $1 million in funding ahead of the current bobsled season.Team fees have now ballooned to $25,000 per athlete just to suit up for training and competition.That’s before travel, coaching, ice time, and equipment costs are included.For many bobsledders, that means working full-time jobs, draining personal savings, taking on debt, or leaning on family support and private sponsors simply to stay competitive.The challenges facing BCS reflect broader financial strain across Canada’s national sport organizations, many of which have operated at deficits for years..GOLD MEDAL BOINKING: Olympic Village has run out of 10,000 condoms in 3 days.If that wasn’t all, Canadian athletes at Milano-Cortina 2026 are racing in sleds originally built in 2018 and purchased second-hand from Germany.Veteran brakeman Mike O’Higgins compared the disparity in equipment to auto racing in an interview with the CBC.“You can have a great driver in a Honda Civic,” O’Higgins said.“And the person in the Porsche is going to have to make some pretty serious mistakes.”In recent years, Germany’s dominance in the sport has been widely attributed to the country’s massive investment in engineering, materials science, and sport technology.The German Olympic Sports Confederation receives more than $420 million annually in federal support for elite sports across all disciplines.Corporate partnerships with brands such as Adidas, Allianz, and BMW have also helped keep its program at the cutting edge.When sleds become outdated by German standards, they are often sold to rival nations — such as Canada.Great Britain is also another country that funds its program more than its Canadian counterpart.UK Sport allocated roughly CDN$5.2 million specifically to bobsleigh for the Milan-Cortina Olympics through its medal-targeted World Class Programme.While Canadian bobsledders have won at least one Olympic medal at every Winter Games since 2006, including two bronze medals in 2022, results this season have not been promising and show a program in transition..BLOG: Winter Olympics Opening Ceremony — the cauldrons are lit! Let the Games begin.No Canadian sled has finished higher than sixth in a World Cup event so far, with the lone podium coming from Cynthia Appiah’s monobob silver in Winterberg, Germany, in January.Jesse Lumsden, a two-time world championship medallist who now serves as BCS’s high-performance director, says the program’s ambitions remain to finish on the podium.“At this point, we’re just below that. As a program, we’re going in to win medals. We don’t want to be going in just to participate. That’s not who we are as an organization,” he said.“How do we get back to where we were as a sliding nation, hunting for medals, week in, week out?”In late January, the Canadian Olympic Committee (COC) announced a $500 million commitment from corporate partners as part of its Team Canada 2035 initiative, which is aimed at rocketing Canada into the top five in total Olympic medals by 2035.However, COC CEO David Shoemaker has said the strategy “cannot solve the immense funding gap that still exists in the sports system,” but added the initiative will direct funds to “areas where athletes will feel their impact the most.”

Canada’s Olympic bobsleigh team is racing against a funding shortfall

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