It seems that the longer Paul Beeston remains retired, the more he's pursued to work as a saviour of various elements in Canadian sports -- amateur or professional. The former chief operating officer of Major League Baseball and former president of the Blue Jays has proven over the years to be an executive with ample people skills, business acumen and competent labour negotiating ability.
A few years back, Beeston was touted as the best man to take the helm of the Maple Leafs empire. More recently, his name has been repeatedly promoted as the man who could help settle the National Hockey League lockout. Unfortunately, personal egos have got in the way of him becoming mediator of the issues which has disgusted many thousands of hockey fans on both sides of the border -- well, certainly on one side anyway.
Now, after Canada's senior International Olympic Committee member Dick Pound called for the appointment of a sports czar to save Canadian amateur sports, the name of Paul Beeston again has surfaced.
Chris Rudge, the CEO and secretary general of the Canadian Olympic Committee as well as a man often criticized for the financial woes and low Olympic medal production by Canada's elite athletes, brought up Beeston's name in an exclusive Sunday Sun interview.
"What we need is someone who can stand up for our athletes and who has the authority to do so," Rudge said over lunch. "I'm thinking of a man such as Paul Beeston. I had breakfast with him not long ago and we talked about the Canadian amateur sports picture. His big advantage would be that he is not encumbered with sports baggage. But a man like Beeston would have to be given a mandate to lead an agency which is outside Sport Canada."
Since it's unlikely that Beeston would be getting such an assurance, much less accept it, I asked Rudge what the first steps would be in order to correct the current situation?
"We must change the system," Rudge said. "We have 52 sports federations which are accountable only to themselves. Then there is Sport Canada which administrates government funds and is encumbered with bureaucrats.
"Speaking of funding, I don't think that money alone would turn our athletes into Olympic champions. It would be like us going to the underprivileged and giving money to some people and expecting them to become doctors or lawyers even though they don't have the proper schools and institutions for studying."
Rudge is well aware that what Canadian athletes need most (in addition to proper funding) are facilities, including training centres equipped with modern technology, medical and psychological supervision.
For instance, a city such as Toronto has only two 50-metre indoor and four outdoor swimming pools, while Sydney, Australia has a total of 45. In all of Canada, we have perhaps 45 such swimming pools, but Down Under they have close to 1,500. It's not surprising that Aussie swimmers are far superior to Canada's.
"One could say that we are sending athletes into Olympic battle with bows and arrows, while some other country's athletes get machine guns," Rudge said. "I've been here (at the COC) two years and things have improved. For instance, we finished our first quadrennial $1.25 million ahead of the game and all that money goes to the athletes.
"We are focusing on athletes and on changes in Canadian sports. In order to assist us and the Canadian athletes, we need the help of Prime Minister Paul Martin. He is the big guy who can make things happen. No sense in blaming our junior sports ministers who have no mandate to act," Rudge said.
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The hockey fraternity is mourning the passing of Bud Poile, former star of the 1947 Stanley Cup winning Maple Leafs. Poile also played for the New York Rangers, Boston Bruins and Detroit Red Wings. Upon retiring as a player, Poile became the first general manager of the Philadelphia Flyers and later the Vancouver Canucks ... Marilyn Creighton, wife of the late founding publisher of The Toronto Sun, J. Douglas Creighton, has sent a $100 cheque for the Sun's Variety Village Christmas Fund, as did Bob Hall, a prominent Toronto lawyer and one of the big supporters of Variety Village. Other donors include Sid Somers and family ($125), John and Jerelin Herbert ($100), Ted Francis ($3), George Robertson ($5), Daniel Rivet ($100).
