Team Canada has yet to win a medal at the Beijing Olympics but a spokesperson for the Canadian Olympic Committee says it's too early for hopeful fans to be disappointed.
The Olympics entered its fifth day of competition on Wednesday.
"It's still early in the Games, we just finished day four in 16 days of competition," said COC spokesperson Steve Keogh in a telephone interview from Beijing.
The COC set a goal for its athletes and expect to place in the top 16 countries by the time the Games finish on Aug. 24. So far, 46 countries have at least one medal, including under-resourced countries like Uzbekistan, Togo and Georgia.
"We're still within reach," said Keogh. "When you look at the schedule, some of the sports that we traditionally do well in take place later on."
In the Athens 2004 games, Canada won two medals in the first half of the games and 10 in the second half, Keogh pointed out.
Silken Laumann, a three-time Canadian Olympic medalist in rowing, agreed that the best of Canada is yet to come.
"It's a great thing when on the first day of the competition you already have a gold medal and we can all relax and know that Canada is doing well," she told Canada AM on Wednesday. "We've still got a lot of athletes who have yet to compete but certainly to see Canada win a medal is something that's exciting for all of us."
She said there's an expectation that because athletes make it to the Olympics, they are expected to place for a medal, even though they might only be ranked as the sixth or 10th best in the world. She said it's much more likely for an athlete who is ranked in the top five going into the Olympics to win a medal.
Canada's performance so far is not weighing down on the athletes who have yet to compete, he said. Athletes are concentrating on their own sport and not paying much attention to some of their peers' mishaps on Team Canada.
"No one places more pressure on these athletes than themselves," he said. "They have pressure to get here and have pressure to get through the Games."
Olympic watchers in Canada have been rough on their representatives in Beijing.
"We're number one at sucking," said one blogger. "Beat that."
"Has Canada ever done well during the summer Olympics? They're a winter powerhouse though," wrote another.
According to the COC, Canada has done fairly well in the past few years at the summer Games. The country's athletes brought home 12 medals from Athens in 2006, 14 from Sydney in 2000 and 22 from Atlanta in 1996.
Team Canada's summer contingent performed the best in 1984 where they brought home 44 medals from the Los Angeles Games.
Canada's performance also made headlines in 1976 when Montreal hosted the Games for the first time ever. That year, athletes won 11 medals but no gold ones. They became the first country to ever host the summer Olympics and not win a single gold medal.
The lack of medals at Beijing so far has prompted critics to question the government's commitment to investing in Canada's amateur athletes.
Earlier this year, the Conservatives promised about $24 million to improve sports excellence in the country in hopes of getting more athletes to the Olympic podium. The money will go towards helping athletes with coaching and training camps.
Laumann said it's too early to see the effect of that financial boost for this set of Games but that the investment is a good start to giving our athletes an edge.
"Canadians put way more pressure on professional sports. Do we value amateur sports in our country? Yeah, I think we do but don't think we invest in it really heavily yet," she said. "The Road to Excellence program is a great start but I don't know if it's been set up long enough to really see the effects yet in these Olympic Games."
In the meantime, even though they don't have any medals to show for it, the athletes have proved themselves in their hometown so far by breaking Canadian records and by having many of them achieve their personal bests. That is something to be proud of, Laumann said.
Keogh said the good thing about being in Beijing is not hearing the criticism from back home.
"Being here I don't know what Canada is saying but I deal with the athletes on a daily basis and they're keeping a strong, positive outlook on the rest of the games," he said.
