To adress one of the other posters, I think that our country is just as obsessed with professional sports so that is a negative.
Quite frankly, I think that we have been lucky to be blessed with great talent, who have worked extraordinarily hard and come up big when they had to. From The Puntous twins, to Joanne Ritchie, to Carol Montgomery, to Julieanne White, to Lori Bowden, Lisa Bentley, Heather Fuhr Jill Sevage and Sharon Donnelly, and recently to Peter Reid and Simon Whitfield for the men. Within the sport this group have many inspired others to take it to the next level.
The success of the above has come without much if any govenment support or private support or sponsorship, nor a system to develop talent to world-class levels. Somehow they have managed to make it work. One year before Simon won the gold medal in Sydney, he was literally living out of the back seat of his car in Victoria, BC! This is starting to change as funding from the government is now starting to flow directly into triathlon and former National Team Head Coach Barry Shepely is privately on a mission to recruit into triathlon the best prospects for future success - really good swimmers who can run!
I think that in Canada it is a bit easier to get exposure and coverage in the media - the main-stream newspapers and CBC TV do an ok to in some case outstanding job of covering sports such as triathlon. That's a good thing. Unfortunately, corporate sponsorship in Canada of athletes is very hit or miss. Some like Subaru Canada have put huge reasources into it, but they are the exception. Many Canadian Corporations simply don't seem to care.
Steve Fleck @stevefleck | Blog