Towards a Socio-Cultural Profile of Canada's High Performance Athletes

Abstract

On the basis of a data set developed from the Canadian Olympic Association's team handbooks for the 1980, 1984 and 1988 Olympiads, this paper presents a socio-cultural profile of Canada's high performance athletes. The study shows that Canada's Olympic athletes are mature in age and have demonstrated abilities at the international level. The data also indicate that when the ratio of female to male events is held constant, women are not under represented on Canada's Olympic teams as a whole. Despite some conjecture to the contrary, this study shows that athletes are proportionately represented from Canada's major regions. At the same time, the data show that Canadian teams are overwhelmingly comprised of Canadian born athletes. Finally, the data indicate that in the minds of an increasing number of high performance athletes, international level sport has become a full time occupation. In presenting this profile, several of the issues related to the data patterns are discussed and avenues for future research indicated.