Every good party has an inevitable hangover. But for J.D. Miller and other like-minded Canadian business people, the issue isn't only what happens to the funding for Canada's Olympic athletes once the 2010 Vancouver Games are over, it's what happens to the children.
"The very first line-item casualty in school budgets is phys ed," said Miller, a banking acquisitions and mergers specialist who has mentored amateur athletes. "No. 2 is the arts. I can tell you ... if you take phys ed and arts out of our children's education, and I just don't know what we'll end up producing.
"In 25, 30 years we could have an entire generation of people who have grown up doing nothing. There are health-care costs associated with that and life-skills costs. We need to encourage people to play more at all levels. High-performance sports can be the beacon ... but you need the full pipeline."
Canada's Olympic athletes will emerge these next few days from their Christmas breaks to resume preparations for the Vancouver Winter Olympics - and, in the case of Canada's sliding programs, that means a return to Europe to pick up the World Cup schedule.
Ten of them - Lyndon Rush's four-man bobsleigh team, Canadian women's bobsleigh athletes Helen Upperton, Heather Moyse, Jenny Ciochetti and Kaillie Humphries, and skeleton racers Jeff Pain and Michelle Kelly - are part of the B2ten program, a privately-funded, not-for-profit organization that provides high-performance Canadian athletes with resources, support services (sports psychologists, for example,) and technology tailored to their individual needs.
You will see the B2ten logo on sleds. But just as the athletes involved do not receive cheques, the individual businesses do not receive promotional consideration - just tax receipts.
For Rush - a native of Humboldt, Sask., whose four-man sled is third in the World Cup rankings and who is convinced his two-man sled, while eighth, has some speed secrets locked inside - it was a fourth-place finish in the World Cup two-man event last February in Whistler, B.C. (coupled with the urging of Naomi Le Bihan, the wife of four-man teammate Chris Le Bihan and possessor of a commerce degree) that eventually forced the issue.
"B2ten got it all started," Rush said matter-of-factly. "I approached them after talking to Helen [Upperton] I sent [Miller]an e-mail and told him our story.
"When we were in Germany, we tested the same kind of sled we ended up buying - a Singer four-man - and we were blazing fast. I'm like: 'We got to get this sled.'
"Once B2ten came on board, so did Own the Podium. I think they were like: 'Wow, if Rush wins a medal and we're not involved we'll look stupid,' " Rush said with a chuckle. "I mean, I don't know if that's what really happened, but ..."
Miller's group, B2ten, had raised roughly $3-million going into December to help offer material support to approximately 24 Canadian Olympians it believed met a set of criteria based on expectation of performance as well as quality of person. The theoretical underpinning, Miller said, is to offer private business a means in which to make a material contribution to Canadian sports - to "take a business-like approach in providing resources and putting them at the disposition of athletes so they can get what they need to perform."
Beyond that? Miller believes this is the way to "create role models to arrest the decline of sports and play in this country" at a time when governments can no longer be counted upon.
Once Miller became aware of Rush's issues, and was satisfied Rush and his team of Le Bihan, Lascelles Brown and, later, Dan Humphries "had the right dynamic and right stuff," Miller raised $125,000 from "business people in Alberta" to help Rush purchase a two-man sled from Monaco, which is where Upperton also purchased her sled.
Rush and his team took the ball in the four-man market and ran with it - approaching businesses knowing they were able to point to the involvement of B2ten as a way around any skepticism. The four-man sled they purchased was one the New Zealand team simply up and left in North America.
"Part of it is the nature of the sport," said Rush, who received support from the Vancouver law firm Bordner Ladner Gervais LLP, among others, in a relationship that was midwived by B2ten. "I mean, people think of bobsled as being kind of neat. I never had anybody say no flat out. At least they wanted to hear about it."
Know one thing about Rush's team: There will be no excuses in Whistler in February. B2ten is in many ways an attitude as well as a program that seems to fly in the face of the just-happy-to-be-here-and-set-a-personal-best stereotype too many Canadians still have of their amateur athletes.
"The Olympics are going to be on our track and we're going to have the best equipment, so there's no excuses not to do well," said Le Bihan, whose wife is expecting the couple's first child during the Olympic racing period. "We won't be scratching our heads in Whistler and asking 'What happened?'
"Lyndon's never had that before. We've been there, standing at the bottom of the track, saying, 'Gee, we had a good run and a good start and how come we're 18th?' That's not a problem any more."
For B2ten that's one issue solved, many more to go.