There’s gold in their veins, but not in their wallets. As we approach the next Olympic games, Canada parades its elite athletes like medals of national pride—shining symbols of perseverance and unity. But behind the glitter is a stomach-turning story of capitalist inequity. Young athletes like Skylar Sieben train using borrowed equipment, fundraise between shifts, and hustle likes on TikTok to keep their dreams on life support. The Olympic stage, once meant to celebrate human potential, now sells out to the highest sponsor while working-class athletes bleed for scraps beneath neoliberal banners.
Sponsorship isn’t support—it’s surveillance. Public funding for athletics has withered under decades of austerity, forcing athletes to become influencers, marketers, brands. The privatization of their excellence demands virality over victory, follower counts over finish times. If you’re queer, racialized, poor—or all three—your journey to the starting line is uphill, underfunded, and often invisible. Skylar’s struggle isn’t a tale of personal resilience; it’s a warning flare against a system that rewards those already standing on privilege’s podium.
There’s a myth Canada loves to sell: that we support our own, that we uplift talent regardless of background. But where are the public dollars when an athlete’s cleats fall apart? When housing instability or family caregiving threatens their training? Instead of building an equitable support system, the state offers token medals and rhetorical unity, while asking kids to crowdfund their way to the world stage. We don’t need more ‘heartwarming’ stories about athletes who overcame poverty—we need the poverty gone.
This is not just a sports issue—it’s a class war in sneakers. When media glorifies the one who “made it”, it buries the hundreds whose dreams were priced out before they began. Athlete development programs are increasingly built for the already-resourced, while grassroots talent is filtered through algorithms and corporate appetites. If Olympic dreams are to be truly collective, then missions like Canadian excellence must stop relying on underpaid, overworked bodies as brand collateral for national glory.
It’s time for a radical reinvention of how we fund and value sport. Scrap the corporate gatekeeping, end the hunger games of performance-based funding, and invest—truly invest—in a universal, publicly-owned athletic ecosystem. We owe working-class and marginalized athletes more than hashtags and hope. We owe them justice. Because when the starting gun fires, nobody should be left outside the track, watching wealth sprint past with the torch in hand.
