BEIJING - Canadian team officials are preaching patience but for many back home it's hard to understand how tiny Togo, with just four athletes, won bronze while Canada's army of 331 was shut out the first seven days of the Olympic Games.
In truth, there were only three solid medal possibilities for Canada the first week.
All were at the pool: Alexandre Despatie and Arturo Miranda in synchronized diving, the men's freestyle relay team and Brent Hayden in the 100-metre freestyle. The divers and the relay team were both fifth and Hayden didn't make the final. Other athletes were longshots.
What was missing for Canada this time was the out-of-the blue winner such as Lori Ann Muenzer racing to gold in track cycling four years ago or Simon Whitfield winning the triathlon on the second day of the Games in 2000.
Upcoming, Canada has medal potential in diving, kayaking, mountain biking, taekwondo, trampoline and triathlon. Medals should come. But the bigger picture is bleaker.
The world has not stood still in sports. And Canada jogged while other countries sprinted, with the bottom falling out of Canada's sport funding in the late 1980s and 1990s. After winning 22 medals in 1996, Canada dropped to 14 in 2000 and a dozen in 2004.
It takes up to two decades to produce an Olympic medallist. The lack of seeds sown in Canada 20 years ago has resulted in a spotty crop in Beijing.
The steroids scandal spawned by Ben Johnson in 1988 did not help amateur sports - or funding - at the time, but it seems that lack of a coherent game plan since then is the real problem.
Changes to Canada's summer-sport system are underway, but have come too late to do much good in Beijing. The federal government committed in February to kicking in extra money over the next four years heading into the 2012 Games in London and beyond.
Alex Baumann, a former Olympic swim champion for Canada, was lured back from the Australian sport system to head up Road To Excellence a year and a half ago. Road To Excellence is a plan modelled on Own The Podium, a five-year, $110-million strategy established in 2005 for winter sports to move Canada atop the medal standings at the 2010 Olympics in Vancouver.
RTE will have $20 million in federal money to work with in 2008-09, $28 the following year and $36 million for each of the two years heading into 2012. But Canada has fallen so far behind other countries in summer sport that more modest goals of a top-16 result here and top 12 in London are the targets. Getting to the top five will be near impossible unless Canada starts matching the massive investment of a country like Australia.
After winning five medals at the 1976 Games in Montreal, Australia made a concerted effort to become more competitive and developed the Australian Institute of Sport - an integrated system of sport facilities and programs headquartered in a suburb of Canberra.
It wasn't until 1996 that Australia's efforts really began to bear fruit, and then the Aussies won 58 medals, including 16 gold, at their own Games of 2000.
"Once you get the system rolling, it's much easier," Baumann said. "We're at the low level right now and it's going to take time."
Australia, primarily a summer-sport country, has a budget of about $250 million for sport, said Baumann. The Aussies - with 20 medals after seven days - are worried about their count here, however, and are saying they'll need another $200 million to keep them among the world's elite, he added.
In contrast, the Canadian government will spend $166 million on sport, both winter and summer, in 2008-09.
The United States excels in both Winter and Summer Games, finishing first with 102 medals in Athens in 2004 and second in 2006 in Turin with 25.
The U.S. Olympic Committee receives no continuous federal government funding, but pays for its athletes via corporate sponsors, individual donors and the investments made with surplus money from the 1984 Games in Los Angeles.
Baumann has to distribute the money over more sports than Own The Podium does on the winter side. So he wants to funnel the cash into a select group of sports.
"If that means trying to get it right with six, seven or eight sports, I would rather do that than try to go too wide," he said.
National sport federations will make their pitch to Baumann in November for funding. Performances in Beijing will have bearing on his decisions.
"Beijing is an indicator of what the gap is between us and our competitors," he said.
The sports that produce the most medals - swimming and track and field - will get top consideration for money. Canadian swimmers have made eight finals here, so they're well set up for a piece of the RTE pie. A sport that hasn't produced medals, but has shown it could with an influx of money, could qualify.
"We do need to take a look at strategic investments in some of those sports where we could put in $300,000 or $400,000 and get some results," Baumann explained. "It's probably more of a calculated risk.
"Australia did it all the time, in archery for example, but we have to have the right information."
More coaches of a higher calibre are Baumann's No. 1 priority. When he was executive director of the Queensland Academy of Sport, which was the regional component of the AIS, he had 26 full-time coaches across 22 sports for about 550 athletes.
"If we don't have the expertise in Canada, then we need to go overseas and get them there, but we have to be careful that we don't say 'we're going to pay a coach a huge salary' and then not give him the tools to do the job," Baumann explained.
His strategy also includes getting the athletes to more training camps and more international competitions, as well as increasing their support in the field of sport science and psychology.
Baumann isn't interested in adding to bureaucracy. If a sport federation does get money, he wants people in place who know how to maximize it.
"I've come from a system where often in the early days, so many services were pushed on sport, they didn't know which ones were the important ones," he said.
Baumann wouldn't say if he thinks the current Canadian team is too big for what it has accomplished, but he's emphatic that "happy to be here"' doesn't cut it.
"I do believe we shouldn't be here just to participate," Baumann said. "I've never believed in just making the national team and being happy and satisfied with that."
"If our athletes are here, there should be a realistic chance to get to the podium."
Despite the slow start, the Canadian Olympic Committee is sticking to its goal of a top-16 finish in the medal standings when the Games conclude Aug. 24.
"It's never time to modify the medal projection until the gun goes at the end of the Games," committee president Michael Chambers said. "We're not even halfway into the Games right now and we're a second-half team."
Softball shortstop Jennifer Salling of Port Coquitlam, B.C., says she and her teammates are oblivious to any criticism at home.
"There's our bubble as we call it and we try to stay in that as much as we can," Salling said. "We don't read comments, we don't read forums, we don't read all the websites, nothing like that."
Added Whitehorse weightlifter Jeane Lassen: "You don't want to get brought down by negativity. We all want to be that one to win the first medal because that's pretty awesome but we're all doing the best we can."
Despatie, from Laval, Que., is optimistic the medals will come.
"Don't give up on us," he said.
Edmonton swimmer Annamay Pierse, who was sixth in Friday's 200-metre breaststroke, says worrying about medals won't help her win one.
"You can't think about medals because then it throws you off," she said. "You have to think 'OK, what am I going to do that is going to get me to that wall and get me there as fast as I can go?"'
