Olympic bobsledder Cynthia Appiah is thousands of dollars in debt for her bobsled racers and trips to competitions.
Her Canadian teammate Melissa Lotholz recently sought free accommodation at a church while competing in Lake Placid, New York.
Olympic rowing champion Andrea Proske says she is still paying her debts and that her mother planted an extra garden to grow fruits and vegetables to meet her caloric needs when Proske was training and competing on a tight budget.
With the Paris 2024 Olympic and Paralympic Games on the horizon, Canada’s athletes are calling for a $6.3 million increase to the Athlete Assistance Program (AAP), which is informally known as carding money. in the federal government’s April 16 budget.
A monthly check of $1,765 ($1,060 for a developmental level athlete) is for living expenses and competition costs that are not covered by your sport’s governing body.
“Carding is my main source of income,” Appiah said. “It’s pretty much the only thing I know that will be sustainable for an entire year, both in and out of competition.”
More than 1,900 athletes in 90 sports are eligible for the AAP, which offers other financial supports such as tuition and child care.
Athletes saw their AAP increase in 2017 by $265 per month, or 18 percent, in the first increase since 2004.
The latest request, which would represent an 18.8 percent increase, is separate from a joint demand by the Canadian Olympic and Paralympic committees for a $104 million injection into the sports system.
However, one goes hand in hand with the other, as athletes cover costs that their national federations cannot cover. Appiah is paying riders $10,000 for his sled and still has $6,000 on his credit card from traveling to the World Cups in Latvia and Austria last year.
The 33-year-old lives with her sister in Toronto “because I can’t afford to live alone in a city like Toronto.”
When Appiah heads to Team Bob’s training center in Calgary, he says he’s “couch surfing” and driving a 2007 car with rusty wheel arches and 360,000 kilometers on it.
The AAP, worth $21,000 a year, is the main source of income in many athletes’ financial lines which may also include provincial grants, prize money or sponsorships.
Appiah says income from Ontario’s Quest For Gold program, her status as an RBC Olympian and sponsorships that come and go year after year allow her to earn around $28,000 a year.
“A lot of people I’ve had this conversation with in terms of funding seem to have this idea that Canadian Olympic athletes live in the lap of luxury. There is an illusion that we have high-value sponsors,” Appiah said.
“Andre De Grasse, Christine Sinclair, those are the few who have those million-dollar contracts.”
Teammate Lotholz wants to regain her World Cup status after taking a year off to complete her studies at the University of Alberta.
That meant competing on the North American Cup circuit last winter and “paying out of pocket for pretty much everything except training,” he said.
The two-time Olympian says she stayed for free at a Lake Placid church while competing in her final event of the season. Lotholz accepts the athletes’ additional request to index the AAP to the inflation rate.
“Literally, every penny helps. It certainly makes a difference,” said the 31-year-old from Barrhead, Alta. “I also really appreciate that in this application they also ask for it to be variable so that it increases with inflation.”
But there is no indication that there will be an AAP increase in the federal budget.
“While Budget 2023 announced a reorientation of government spending, in its continued commitment to athletes, this government has strategically reallocated resources within the Sports Support Program to ensure that direct funding to athletes through the Sports Assistance Program “Athlete is not affected,” said a statement from the office of Canadian Sports Minister Carla Qualtrough.
Proske was a member of the women’s eight that captured Olympic rowing gold in Tokyo. The 37-year-old from Langley, BC, is now vice president of AthletesCan, an association that represents national athletes.
“In women’s rowing, especially as a top-level gold medalist, I put myself and my husband in debt by trying to be in the middle of the podium with the maple leaf on my chest,” Proske said.
“We are not professional athletes. We are amateur athletes. Many of our sports don’t mix very well with sponsorships. Using rowing as an example, I can’t sell any sponsorship space on my boat, I can’t put a logo on my visor, I’m limited in how many logos I have.”
Athletes know how to make a buck, Proske said, but there is a breaking point.
“We don’t always have control over where we train. Many of these training centers are in very expensive cities,” she stated. “It’s also very expensive to be an athlete versus a normal human being. He consumed 4,000 calories a day. “Many of the men ate 10,000 calories a day.”
Canada has a network of seven sports institutes. CSI Pacific campuses are in Vancouver, Victoria and Whistler, BC
CSI Ontario is headquartered at the Pan Am Sports Center in Toronto. CSI Calgary serves many winter sports athletes.
Vancouver averages $2,181 a month for a two-bedroom apartment, Victoria $1,839, Toronto $1,961 and Calgary $1,695, according to the Canadian Mortgage and Housing Corporation’s January 2024 rent report.
In the ski resort town of Whistler, which has Canada’s only bobsled, bobsled and skeleton track since Calgary closed, a one-bedroom apartment costs more than $3,000 a month.
The scarcity of resources contributes to making the sports system less safe, Appiah said.
“In that conversation about safe sport, a lot of times athletes will put themselves in vulnerable positions because it’s the only option they have, and finances play a big role in that,” he said. “The AAP is, for most people, their only source of income, so decisions are made that no sane person would make.
“If we had that 18 percent increase and then tied it to inflation, we could live like normal human beings for the most part.”
This report by The Canadian Press was first published March 27, 2024.