Rio

#Rio2016: �鶹ֱ��app's Donna Vakalis competes in modern pentathlon

lanthierj — Fri, 19 Aug 2016 17:11:03 +0000

#Rio2016: �鶹ֱ��app's Donna Vakalis competes in modern pentathlon

lanthierj Fri, 08/19/2016 - 13:11

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Donna Vakalis completed her masters in Architecture at �鶹ֱ��app in 2009 and is now working on her PhD in the Faculty of Applied Science & Engineering

Topic

Global Lens

Rio

#Rio2016

Olympics

Modern Pentathlon

While working on her PhD in the Faculty of Applied Science & Engineering, modern pentathlete Donna Vakalis fences four times a week and swims five times a week. She shoots four times a week and runs five times a week.

She even rides twice a month.

Now, all that training comes down to a gruelling two days' worth of events for the last of the University of Toronto athletes to compete in Rio.

Vakalis, who competed in the 2015 world championships in Germany, placed fourth in the Toronto 2015 Pan Am/Parapan Am Games. An alumna of �鶹ֱ��app's John H. Daniels Faculty of Architecture, Landscape and Design, Vakalis began her PhD after competing in the 2012 Olympics in London.

Read about Vakalis in London

When she's not training, Vakalis studies the impact of indoor building environments on public health and productivity, under the supervision of civil engineering professors Heather MacLean and Jeffrey Siegel.

Read the Metro article about Vakalis

Before she left, she spoke with Matt Galloway of CBC Radio's Metro Morning.

"Most of us can barely focus on one thing, let alone be good at that one thing, let alone be good at five different things," Galloway told Vakalis. "What did it take for you to try to nail all of these different sports?"

"it is a little bit of a different mindset," Vakalis said, because the athlete's goal can't be to "be the very best you can be at that one sport" but "there is something appealing about trying to optimize multiple goals. So for anyone who has multiple passions, I think they can relate to this, when you want to be the best parent or the best friend, and also the best at work and also the best in your hobby – there's something really fun about optimizing them all."

Fencing is her toughest event, Vakalis said, adding that she learned it last and finds it a challenging combination of tactics and athleticism, particularly given the unpredictability of the opponent.

"People say it's a little like chess and track combined together."

Listen to the complete Metro Morning interview

You can watch Vakalis compete August 18 and 19 on CBC – and with so many faculty, staff, students and alumni cheering Vakalis on, civil engineering's Keenan Dixon is also live-tweeting her events.

“Donna is such an impressive student and athlete, the whole department is so proud of her,” says Civil Engineering Communications Coordinator Dixon. “We’ll all be watching, cheering and supporting her at every stage of the competition!”

See some of the social media highlights in the Storify below:

�鶹ֱ��app's Rosie MacLennan wins gold at #Rio2016

vzaretski — Fri, 12 Aug 2016 19:24:31 +0000

�鶹ֱ��app's Rosie MacLennan wins gold at #Rio2016

vzaretski Fri, 08/12/2016 - 15:24

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David Ramos via Getty Images

Veronica Zaretski

Author legacy

Veronica Zaretski

Topic

�鶹ֱ��app alumna and student of the Faculty of Kinesiology and Physical Education (KPE) Rosie MacLennan is Canada’s gold medallist in trampoline. She won with a final score of 56.465.

"I had a bit of a shaky preliminary round so I was coming into the final trying to stay strong, trying to stay high," she told CBC after the medal ceremony. "When I was done I looked over at Dave [her coach] and he had a smile on his face and that was the first indication that I did all right."

MacLennan is Canada’s Olympic flag bearer at Rio, the first Canadian summer athlete to successfully defend an individual Olympic gold medal and a three-time Olympian. She earned Canada’s only gold medal at the 2012 Olympic Games in London and finished in seventh place at the 2008 Beijing Olympics.

Read the Toronto Star story on MacLennan's win

Read the Globe and Mail story

Read the CTV News story

Read the Global News story

Read the Sportsnet story

Follow MacLennan on Twitter: @RosieMacLennan

As the world’s best continue to compete in Rio, take a look at these other outstanding �鶹ֱ��app athletes who are competing this weekend.

Earlier this week �鶹ֱ��app’s Kylie Masse won a bronze in the women’s 100-metre backstroke race. Masse, a second-year student of KPE, was named �鶹ֱ��app female athlete of the year, Ontario University Athletics (OUA) female athlete of the year and the BLG top female athlete in Canadian University Sport. She is also the first Varsity Blues swimmer to claim an Olympic medal while enrolled as a student at �鶹ֱ��app. Follow Masse on Twitter: @Kjmasse

Read the National Post story on Masse's victory

Read the Toronto Star story

Read the CBC story

Read the Sportsnet story

Third-year psychology student Gabriella Stafford will compete tonight and over the weekend in the 1,500 metres event. The Varsity Blues track star is part of a family who bleeds blue.

Stafford’s father, �鶹ֱ��app professor Jamie Stafford, represented Canada at four World Championships. Her mother, Maria Luisa Gardner (1965-2008), was from a running family with a brother, John Anthony Gardner, who was an OUAA champion for �鶹ֱ��app and sister, Sara Gardner, who also represented Canada at a World Under-20 Championship for �鶹ֱ��app. Gabriella's sister Lucia, who starts studying engineering at �鶹ֱ��app in the fall, just became the 2016 junior national champion in the 1,500-metre event.

Read the �鶹ֱ��app Magazine guide to all 12 of �鶹ֱ��app’s Olympic athletes competing in Rio

�鶹ֱ��app News will continue following the progress of �鶹ֱ��app athletes and will share developing news about our athletes in the coming weeks.

�鶹ֱ��app athletes have the advantage of training in top-notch facilities. At the downtown Toronto campus, athletes can train at the Athletic Centre, Varsity Centre, Goldring Centre for High Performance Sport and Hart House Fitness Centre.

At the University of Toronto Mississauga, athletes can train in the comprehensive Recreation Athletics & Wellness Centre. UTM recently welcomed 520 athletes during the Ontario Summer Games (OSG), and hosted the OSG basketball and field lacrosse competitions on the UTM campus. Read more about the Ontario Summer Games at UTM.

And at University of Toronto Scarborough, athletes can benefit from the Toronto Pan Am Sports Centre, a 365,000 square foot world-class facility, features a fitness centre, field house, climbing wall and an aquatic centre containing two Olympic sized swimming pools, a competition and training pool and a Dive Tank.

“When we designed the Toronto Pan Am Sports Centre, we worked closely with experts to create a complete environment that would give our elite national team athletes the best chances to compete international,” says Andrew Arifuzzaman, CAO at the University of Toronto Scarborough. “From the two edgeless,10-lane Mertha stainless steel pools to the starting blocks at TPASC, the facilities mirrors what our athletes compete in internationally.”

“I watched this week as our men’s and women’s wheelchair basketball teams prepared to head to Rio for the Paralympics,” says Laura Boyko, director of the health & wellness centre. “It makes me proud to know that TPASC is for everyone; an inclusive facility to help all athletes reach their full potential. �鶹ֱ��app has not only some of the greatest minds in the country, but also some of the most competitive athletes as well.”

�鶹ֱ��app's Gabriela Stafford takes family legacy of racing to Rio

lanthierj — Fri, 12 Aug 2016 12:20:43 +0000

�鶹ֱ��app's Gabriela Stafford takes family legacy of racing to Rio

lanthierj Fri, 08/12/2016 - 08:20

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Gabriela Stafford (photo © Edwin Tam)

Jelena Damjanovic

Author legacy

Jelena Damjanovic

Topic

Faculty of Arts & Science

Faculty & Staff

Subheadline

"An exceptional student and an outstanding athlete"

At 20 years old, Varsity Blues track star Gabriela Stafford was not expected to race at the 2016 Summer Olympic Games.

The undergrad, who is set to begin her fourth year of psychology studies, had her sights set on qualifying for the 2020 Olympics in Tokyo.

But her talent and hard work paid off much sooner when she won the Canadian 1,500-metre title at the Olympic trials in July and secured a spot on Team Canada in Rio.

A look into her family's history of racing shows this was not such a surprising result. Stafford’s father, �鶹ֱ��app professor Jamie Stafford, represented Canada at four World Championships. Her mother, Maria Luisa Gardner (1965-2008), was from a running family with a brother, John Anthony Gardner, who was an OUAA champion for �鶹ֱ��app and sister, Sara Gardner, who also represented Canada at a World Under-20 Championship for �鶹ֱ��app.

And Gabriela's sister Lucia, who starts engineering at �鶹ֱ��app in the fall, just became the 2016 junior national champion in the 1,500-metre event.

"With Gabriela and Lucia, there's been no regression to the mean," says Jamie Stafford, who is chair of the department of statistical sciences at �鶹ֱ��app.

Speaking from Rio where the family has gathered to cheer for Gabriela, Stafford says having her qualify and compete in the Olympics feels very normal.

"Gabriela is truly exceptional and solid," he says. "In truth, when she won the Olympic trials I knew she'd be very pleased and that's what mattered to me. On the other hand – it's really, really special!"

Does the family have a strategy for keeping their cool before the race?

"No. None," says Stafford. "We go nuts!"

Read the Globe and Mail story on Stafford and her family

The head coach for the �鶹ֱ��app track and field program, Carl Georgevski, made no attempt at containing his excitement.

"It's an incredible feeling to have an athlete that the program has developed, right from the very beginning, competing in the Olympics," he says.

Gabriela started out as a junior development athlete in the �鶹ֱ��app track & field junior development academy and made her way to becoming a provincial, national and international athlete and, finally, an Olympian.

"It's been a long process, so I really feel proud of her accomplishments and what she's been able to do by sticking with the program, but also with her coach Terry Radchenko who's been with her right from the very beginning, making sure that she gets the best possible training."

Assistant Coach Radchenko has coached Gabriela for the past six years and in that time watched her grow as a person and an athlete.

“She is a truly special young woman. Intelligent, motivated, a perfectionist, so tough, with a very big heart. She has improved so much over these past six year. Gabriela's future is very bright both on and off the track.”

Georgevski agrees: "She is 20 years old. Her peak is going to be in 2020 and 2024."

He describes Gabriela as the quintessential �鶹ֱ��app student athlete.

"She is an exceptional student and an outstanding athlete. It's so wonderful to have someone like her chasing her Olympic dream at a place like �鶹ֱ��app that makes it possible. I feel ... like a parent. So proud of what we have accomplished together."

Read about more �鶹ֱ��app athletes in Rio

Vice-President and Principal of �鶹ֱ��app Scarborough Bruce Kidd is a former Olympian and founding dean of the Faculty of Kinesiology & Physical Education. Kidd (pictured below with Gabriela and Lucia Stafford at a recent event to celebrate �鶹ֱ��app athletes Varsity Stadium) said he will be watching Gabriela's race from Vancouver, where he is visiting family after hiking the Chilkoot Trail.

Stafford races at 7:30 pm on August 12,

Asked if he had any advice for Gabriela ahead of her race, one Olympian to another, Kidd said he would advise her to stick to her plan and enjoy racing in the company of the world's best.

"She's one of them, so she should show them what she can do."

Coach Radchenko had some more advice.

“Gabriela is in a very tough heat with some of the fastest and most experienced runners in the world. Her goal going in was to run to the best of her ability, improve her overall ranking and take a shot at making the semis. The key for G will be to get herself in the mix with the top six in her heat and be there to use her kick with 300m to go.”

Sound advice from her biggest cheerleaders.

Follow Stafford on Twitter: @gstafford13

#Rio2016: How ‘moneyball’ research from �鶹ֱ��app can help athletes reach for Olympic gold

lanthierj — Thu, 11 Aug 2016 18:55:52 +0000

#Rio2016: How ‘moneyball’ research from �鶹ֱ��app can help athletes reach for Olympic gold

lanthierj Thu, 08/11/2016 - 14:55

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Tennis fan Professor Timothy Chan is applying his expertise in mathematical optimization to help amateur sports federations across the country make the most of their limited resources (photo courtesy Professor Chan)

Tyler Irving

Author legacy

Tyler Irving

Topic

Global Lens

Olympics

Rio

Faculty of Applied Science & Engineering

Mechanical & Industrial Engineering

Sports

Analytics

Timothy Chan

When Professor Timothy Chan sits down to watch a game of hockey, baseball or tennis, he isn’t taking a break from his research — he may be hard at work on a new paper.

A professor of mechanical and industrial engineering, Chan's expertise in sports analytics and decision modelling has been sought out by the Canadian Olympic Committee (COC) in the hopes that it could provide a competitive edge for amateur athletes.

Professional sports teams been leveraging statistics to improve team performance for more than a decade. By examining detailed data about how each player performs in various situations, analysts can build computer models that attempt to predict long-term performance. The technique, made famous in the Michael Lewis book and its film adaptation, Moneyball, empowers teams that can’t afford star players to make smarter use of the resources they do have.

This year, Chan’s research team attracted the attention of the COC as part of its National Sport Federation Enhancement Initiative (NSFEI). NSFEI is a four-year project designed to help Canada’s federations improve their organizational capacity, including business operations, leadership and governance, as well as their ability to effectively recruit young, talented athletes into their sports.

“National Sport Federations in Canada are resource constrained,” says David Patterson, who leads the initiative for the COC. “We see analytics as a way to better allocate scarce resources. These benefits could apply both on the field of play and away from competition, where we work hard to attract and retain more Canadians to a lifestyle in sport.”

Chan came to Patterson’s attention in 2013 after he won the best paper award at the MIT Sloan Sports Analytics Conference. “Sloan is the top conference in the field, so it made sense to approach Dr. Chan as the best among the best in analytics.”

Read about the award-winning paper

This past spring, Chan travelled to Ottawa and Calgary to deliver two seminars on sports analytics. “We started to work through some areas where we thought analytics could help,” he says. “The idea is that they can narrow down the focus and propose a research project that we could execute.”

Since the seminar, Chan has been working with Tennis Canada to help increase youth participation in the sport. Chan is determining the best locations in Canada to hold winter tennis camps, based on local demand and available indoor facilities. The goal is to make sure that the resource-intensive camps reach the maximum number of potential future Eugenie Bouchards.

Chan got into the sports analytics field almost by accident. As the Canada Research Chair in Novel Optimization and Analytics in Health, he primarily works on optimizing the delivery of health care. His research group has studied locations of automatic defibrillators within a city and deployment of ambulances in developing countries.

Read about Chan's work on defibrillators

However, Chan is also a big sports fan, and his models can offer insights for the sports world.

Read about Chan and hockey

“A lot of sports analytics is focused on statistics,” he says “whereas my background is in optimization.” Chan’s models not only predict future performance, they can be used to optimize performance in different scenarios — for example, determining how baseball players should switch defensive positions on the field if a player gets injured and a substitute is brought into the game.

Sports analytics is just one small branch of Chan’s research program, but he finds it rewarding from a problem-solving perspective and enjoys the chance to apply his work to help the community.

“I started this as a fun topic, but it’s definitely something I would be interested to spend more time looking at,” he says. “I think that the problems in this domain are very interesting, and there is still a lot of room for growth. There’s an opportunity to make a real impact.”

Behind the scenes at Rio: meet the �鶹ֱ��app physiotherapist helping Team Canada at the Olympics

lanthierj — Thu, 04 Aug 2016 12:53:11 +0000

Behind the scenes at Rio: meet the �鶹ֱ��app physiotherapist helping Team Canada at the Olympics

lanthierj Thu, 08/04/2016 - 08:53

Julia Soudat

Author legacy

Julia Soudat

Topic

As the 2016 Summer Olympics in Rio, Brazil kicks off this week, �鶹ֱ��app's Dinah Hampson will be there with Team Canada as part of their Health Sciences Team.

Faculty of Medicine writer Julia Soudat spoke with her about sport physio, potential challenges in Rio and the excitement inside the Athletes' Village. And about how someone who “detested biomechanics” as a student, found her calling as a department of physical therapy lecturer and sport physiotherapist

What will you be doing in your role on the Health Sciences Team for Team Canada?

I will be providing physiotherapy services to athletes and Canadian team members in Tae Kwon Do, sailing, canoeing, kayaking and fencing. Along with this, my role is to do what needs doing — sometimes this means unloading buses, moving furniture or even folding socks. A Canadian Olympic clinic will be set up, where I will be spending my time when I’m not at specific sport venues.

What is your area of research and work in physical therapy?

My clinical practice is based out of a multidisciplinary clinic in Toronto and is orthopaedic in nature. I see a lot of youth athletes, dancers and artistic performers. I’m most interested in foot and ankle mechanics. This is always entertaining to me because I detested biomechanics at �鶹ֱ��app. However, I loved anatomy and with professional maturity and education, I realized that it’s the specific joint mechanics that I really love to examine. The anatomical relationship of the bones and soft tissues become exciting when you look at what they have to do to create functional movement resulting in a performance skill. Watching sports with me can be a little annoying because I tend to comment on alignment and movement pattern as well as cheering on the athletes.

What got you interested in sports/sports physio? Are you an athlete yourself?

Truth be told, I stunk at all sports growing up. I loved ballet and thought I would be a ballerina so all my time was spent with my legs in external rotation. This made running sports difficult and being five feet three inches tall knocked me out of most vertically challenging sports. I did have a short interlude in springboard diving which fit well with my physical facility — I just had to learn how to land on my head! At some point I decided that science won over sports and I went to university, where physio seemed to be a good fit.

I remember vividly walking into a Sport Physio class at �鶹ֱ��app and listening to a young, energetic professor talk about the role of physio in sport, her stories and personal experience. I was so inspired that I began telling people I’d decided to go to the Olympics. I’m pretty sure they all thought I was crazy but I still get goosebumps when I tell this story and I will probably shake my head a few times in Rio when I realize I’ve actually made my dream a reality.

How did you get involved in the Olympics?

My first significant involvement with the Canadian Olympic team happened in 2010 when I interviewed for a position for the inaugural Youth Olympic Games in 2010. I was offered a spot on the Health and Science team. By this time, I had been involved in sport physio for 15 years, done endless local, provincial, national events, international single sport events and the 2008 Paralympic games in Beijing. Although I was part of a medical team of three for 62 athletes and 30 staff, we managed everything and what we experienced was truly special.

What are you looking most forward to when it comes to the Olympics?

It’s an indescribable moment when an athlete has a successful event, the Canadian flag is raised and the Canadian national anthem is played. So that is a given. However, in between those successes, I really look forward to eating in the Athlete’s Village dining hall. The dining hall is in the inner workings of Olympic life, away from media and competition. It is 10,000 athletes from around the world, sitting and enjoying a meal at the same time in the same place. You can look around and see uniforms from all over the world — people of every race, religion, and culture come together to share in the joy of sport. I can’t think of many things that match this on the “cool” factor list.

What’s your favourite Olympic sport?

I’m not sure I have a favourite Olympic sport. It may sound trite but all the sports are exciting and the passion of the athletes is intoxicating. If I could go see anything, I’d love to watch tennis. There’s something about one-on-one competition at the bottom of a sweltering bowl filled with hushed excitement that I find exhilarating. Being a sport physiotherapist means there’s a lot of volunteer time spent on the side of a field, gym, court or rink — which often means having the best seat in the house!

�鶹ֱ��app urban expert on Rio Olympics: “I don’t think any city is ever fully prepared”

lavende4 — Sat, 30 Jul 2016 14:38:35 +0000

�鶹ֱ��app urban expert on Rio Olympics: “I don’t think any city is ever fully prepared”

lavende4 Sat, 07/30/2016 - 10:38

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Aerial view of the Rio 2016 Olympic Games' Beach Volleyball Arena at Copacabana beach in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, taken on July 26, 2016 (photo by YASUYOSHI CHIBA/AFP/Getty Images)

Romi Levine

Author legacy

Romi Levine

Research & Innovation

Opening ceremonies are set to begin a week from today but the road to the Rio Olympics has been nothing short of rocky.

The threat of the Zika virus – which has prompted some athletes to pull out of the Games – still looms. The sewage-filled venue for some water sports, Guanabara Bay, was never cleaned up as promised. And, as so often seems to be the case in the final days counting down to the Games, the Athletes Village is still a work-in-progress. Add to all of this the existing social inequality and political unrest in the country.

Will Rio be ready for the Olympics? �鶹ֱ��app News asked David Roberts, assistant professor, teaching stream, in urban studies at the University of Toronto. His research focuses on the impact of mega-events on a city and its urbanization.

In 2014, an International Olympic Committee (IOC) member visiting the Olympics site in Rio said the preparations were the “worst ever.” Are they?
It’s hard to know what the worst-prepared city is because they said that as well for pretty much every mega-event, whether it’s the Olympics or the World Cup. I think it’s pretty obvious that there are some things that aren’t quite up to snuff in Rio – the Athletes Village seems to be only half-done just a few days before the Games and there’s sewage in the bay.

But I don’t think any city is ever fully prepared. And that’s part of the challenge of the whole thing.

Remarkably, cities and countries are able to rise to the occasion and what I think we’ll see is, as soon as the Games start, most of the media coverage will switch from lack of preparation or fear of disease or fear of violence and whatever else to the competition. These Games are really well orchestrated to capture that type of attention and draw attention away from all the other sorts of things that are happening.

I’m sure we’ll see some reports here and there about athletes getting sick or criticizing some aspect of the preparations like we saw in Sochi for example, but for the most part I think our coverage will be about the nationalistic celebration of sport.

There’s a heightened fear of terror attacks in the Western world – what are the security implications for the Rio Olympics?
It’s hard to know exactly what’s happening in Rio itself for various reasons. One, we don’t get as much news about Brazil and Rio as we do about other parts of the world – especially English-language news. Two, the political unrest makes it hard to get any official news that’s reliable.

Beyond that, it’s not the same space in which we’re seeing terrorism play out in Europe in particular and the Middle East.

Sure, the threat of violence is contemporarily something we have to deal with globally, but I’m not entirely sure what that means for Rio. If anything, Rio is prepared on the security front – they’ve spent tons of money on security. They showed in the World Cup two years ago that they have that capacity and mindset. Usually places that are hosting these events are in such a lockdown they are quite secure.

(Below: Brazilian Marine personnel patrol during training sessions for rowing teams at Lagoa Stadium venue in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, July 29, 2016 / photo by YASUYOSHI CHIBA/AFP/Getty Images)

Will the infrastructure spending leading up to the Olympics in Rio benefit the city in the future?
It’s hard to make the case that the long-term benefits will reap rewards that will pay them back for that amount of spending.

These spectacles have gotten to the point where they’re so expensive and so targeted at specific areas within the city – rather than the city as a whole – that the rewards are quite uneven and don’t match up, ever, to the spending that takes place and the host.

The owners of games (whether the IOC or FIFA) are quite adept at extracting their cut of the pie out of the whole system. Even if there is television revenue, a lot of that’s going back to these international organizations – and not into the communities there.

Some people will benefit a lot but it’ll likely be the “haves” of Rio society.

So why on earth do these cities do it?
That’s a great question. Part of it is the challenge to become recognized as a world class city. Whatever that might mean – keeping up with the Joneses or establishing oneself as a destination for tourists or business investment – is really a pressing concern of a lot of different cities.

We could ask that same question as to why Toronto would ever want to host the Olympics. What would be the benefit from all that expending? Maybe we can get some extra money for infrastructure. And it may be able to raise our profile – but to what end? I don’t think that’s ever really spelled out.

If you’re a politician wanting to put your stamp on a city, then that’s something you’re interested in, but in terms of social benefits, they never seem to play out.

It’s very much based on short-term thinking rather than any sort of long-term assessment of what might be good for Rio or any other city that’s hosting these things going forward. It’s especially a challenge when cities are faced with high levels of inequality and high levels of uneven development within a city.

It’s one thing for London to host an event because they have much of the infrastructure already there so they’re not spending as much initially to host an event, but even then it’s a risky gamble. it’s quite another when you’re dealing with a city that has some basic needs that should be taken care of and real stark inequality on the ground that this seems to only exacerbate.

(Below: the International Road Cycling competition in Copacabana Beach in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil served as a test for the Rio 2016 Olympic Games TASSO MARCELO/AFP/Getty Images)

Is it irresponsible for the IOC and other sporting organizations to grant these cities the ability to host these mega-events?
That is a really thorny question because for a long time the Olympics and the World Cup were all pretty much hosted in developed countries – in Europe and North America with a couple of exceptions. There was a strong critique by other parts of the world that say it really narrows who can take advantage of this opportunity. So there’s a huge critique about the fact that there was never a mega-event in Africa or the Middle East and it had been decades and decades since Central or South America hosted one.

The problem I think, ultimately, is that the formula didn’t change. The IOC and FIFA expect the same games no matter where it is in the world and don’t take into account the local context. Not only is the funding formula the same for a rich country and a developing country, so are the expectations of infrastructure and everything else.

A better question is – if we want these giant events to continue and we think it’s a good idea to have them in every corner of the globe, what can we do to make sure they don’t damage the local community, they don’t exacerbate inequality and they don’t negatively impact the ways of life of a lot of people?

There’s enough money there that FIFA and IOC don’t have to extract billions of dollars of profit if they host these games. If they had a more equitable structure, there might be a way of doing that.

How do you make those changes when these big sporting bodies aren’t willing to change their ways?
I think it’s through activism, I think it’s through political lobbying. I think it’s through pressuring some changes in law, since [IOC and FIFA] are both recognized as non-profits so they don’t pay any taxes. And I think it’s also in terms of activism from both athletes and consumers.

If we as consumers choose to not watch or choose to find other ways to influence the games – such as not supporting the sponsors – then change would probably happen a lot quicker.

But it’s rare to get a large enough group of people to boycott something – enough to make an impact.
That’s the effective power of these types of events – they tap into all kinds of things. They tap into our love of competition, our benevolent nationalism, they tap into excitement – they give us a collective thing to celebrate. There are a lot of reasons why the stories about inequality, disease and pollution go out the window as soon as these events start. It’s because what the news media and what we’re going to be talking about by the proverbial water cooler are the sporting events themselves rather than the context which they’re being staged.

One of the things I’m interested in is how these events are as much played out on television as anywhere else – and how adept planning departments have gotten at staging television events rather than urban events.

You clean up the parts that are going to be on TV and you make really nice parts of the city. You have this really uneven development that’s designed to look good on television and when you get there you realize it’s no different than any other television set – it’s quite thin in terms of its relevance to everyday life.

Rio

#Rio2016: �鶹ֱ��app's Donna Vakalis competes in modern pentathlon

Read about Vakalis in London

Read the Metro article about Vakalis

Listen to the complete Metro Morning interview

�鶹ֱ��app's Rosie MacLennan wins gold at #Rio2016

Read more about MacLennan here

Read the Toronto Star story on MacLennan's win

Read the Globe and Mail story

Read the CTV News story

Read the Global News story

Read the Sportsnet story

Read more about Kylie Masse

Read the National Post story on Masse's victory

Read the Toronto Star story

Read the CBC story

Read the Sportsnet story

Read more about Stafford and her family’s legacy of athleticism at �鶹ֱ��app

Read the �鶹ֱ��app Magazine guide to all 12 of �鶹ֱ��app’s Olympic athletes competing in Rio

�鶹ֱ��app's Gabriela Stafford takes family legacy of racing to Rio

Read the Globe and Mail story on Stafford and her family

Read about more �鶹ֱ��app athletes in Rio

Follow Stafford on Twitter: @gstafford13

#Rio2016: How ‘moneyball’ research from �鶹ֱ��app can help athletes reach for Olympic gold

Read about the award-winning paper

Read about Chan's work on defibrillators

Read about Chan and hockey

Behind the scenes at Rio: meet the �鶹ֱ��app physiotherapist helping Team Canada at the Olympics

�鶹ֱ��app urban expert on Rio Olympics: “I don’t think any city is ever fully prepared”