It's still too early to discount Canada's Olympic athletes, despite the country's glaring absence on the medal podium, said Michael Chambers, the president of the Canadian Olympic Committee.
Chambers said Thursday he will not revise the COC's medal prediction which sees Canada placing in the top 16 of award-winning countries at the Beijing Games.
So far, relatively under-resourced countries such as Uzbekistan and Togo have one medal whereas Canada still has none after five days of Olympic competition. There are 10 days of competition left in the game.
"We're not even halfway into the Games right now and we're a second-half team, we've always been a second-half team," Michael Chambers told reporters Thursday in Beijing.
"I'm not modifying any predictions now."
At the 2004 Athens Games, 10 of Canada's 12 medals were won in the second week. This year, Canadian fans of the Olympics have held their breaths a few times in hopes the athletes would pull through, only to be let down each time.
Early Thursday morning in Beijing, Canadian swimmer Mike Brown finished fourth place by 0.09 seconds in the men's 200-metre breaststroke.
Other hopefuls, such as gymnast Kyle Shewfelt and fencer Sherrine Schalm failed to qualify to advance into the medal rounds.
Nonetheless, Chambers said there's a lot more competition left in the game.
"There are kids that were hoping for a couple by now and so we were hoping for the same medals they were," he said. "It hasn't worked out yet but there are lots of kids on the field of play next week that may make up the difference."
Even Prime Minister Stephen Harper said he's optimistic Team Canada will pull through.
He made the comment after a reporter asked him about the country's lacklustre performance at an unrelated news conference in Newfoundland and Labrador. He said the Games are far from over and that the athletes will be "coming up on the back half of the Games."
A lack of financial support of the athletes has been blamed for their underperformance. However, the government has committed about $24 million to help amateur athletes with training and coaching services. That money wasn't made available to this year's batch of athletes but Chambers said the results of that funding should be seen by the 2012 Olympic Games in London.
Peter Donnelly, a physical education professor at the University of Toronto, pointed out that the Korea Sports Council invested about $52 million in each athlete expected to win a gold medal.
"With those investments, you can buy medals but we're not doing that in our country," he said in an interview with CTV Newsnet on Thursday.
In the meantime, the athletes are trying hard to remain focused on their sport and not on the pressure to perform.
"The athletes are quite well shielded from the frustration and disappointment in Canada," said CTV reporter Lisa LaFlamme who is in Beijing covering the Olympics. "There is disappointment for sure, personal disappointment that they are working so hard and it's just not enough."
LaFlamme noted that the athletes have still done exceptionally well at the Games, shattering Canadian records and consistently improving their personal best times.
However, the athletes "know that a personal best is not enough to cut it on the world stage and certainly not enough to get them on the podium," she said.
With files from The Canadian Press
