HeatStroke: Why Canada’s Summer Olympic Program Is Failing—And How We Can Fix It, is Michael Simonson’s incisive and passionate diagnosis of Canada’s Summer Olympic performances and the disparate nature of amateur sport in Canada. He reveals why a country that seemingly dominates at the Winter Olympics is content in putting up with sporting ineptitude at the Summer Olympics. In doing so, he discovers that Canada’s success at the Winter Olympics has more to do with the vision of Canada’s winter sport organizations than with the health of the sport system itself.

But Simonson’s exposé is written out of love of his country and sport, and in the hopes of turning Canadian sport around so all of our athletes have the opportunity to be successful. While his book is a tough diagnosis of our sporting ills, it also examines Canada’s plan for resurgence at the Summer Olympics, while offering its own blueprint for success, not just in the short-term but for many Olympiads to come. Examining some of the best practices implemented in Canada’s winter sport system HeatStroke provides a made in Canada solution to our summer sporting ills.

Once again in Beijing, Canadians sunk back onto their couches in despair after their Summer Olympic heroes came up short of winning medals. Meanwhile, at the 2010 games in Vancouver, Canada’s winter athletes look to top the overall medal-count for the first time in Olympic history. Simonson wants to know why? To do so, he has:

• Reached deep into his own experience as a rower for Canada and in amateur sport organizations.
• Utilized his connections as a high ranking director to investigate as to what is going on behind the closed doors of Canada’s sporting organizations.
• Investigated and documented the funding and infrastructure of amateur sport in Canada, from the federal level to the provincial to the local.
• Talked to hundreds of Canadian athletes about what works for them in the Canadian sport system, and what doesn’t.

Simonson also examines the Midas touch of the Australian sport program that has resulted in many gold- medal -winning performances by Australian athletes. He shows how a country that is virtually identical to Canada became the preeminent sporting nation within the Commonwealth.

The leadership of Canada’s sporting movement comes in for stiff criticism in the pages of HeatStroke. Quick to take credit for Canada’s success at the 2006 Games in Torino, the federal government has placed little emphasis on sport for the past twenty five years. The minister overseeing matters at the 2008 Beijing Olympics was Helena Geurgis whom acclaimed political columnist Don Martin called “a lost cause…and over her head.” It didn’t help either that she had been given the responsibility of acting as the Minister of Intergovernmental Affairs while balancing her duties as sport minister The result is a sports program without vision.

The Canadian Olympic Committee (COC), an organization that classifies itself as the leader in Canada’s amateur sport community, is quick to accept praise for the success of its winter athletes but refuses to accept any accountability with respect to the performance of Canada’s summer athletes. Meekly hiding its Summer Olympic failures behind a veil of poverty, the COC fails to acknowledge that Canada places more money into high performance sport than most nations, Australia included.

Quick to criticize the feds and the COC, Simonson acknowledges that the success of Canada’s winter sport movement could not have occurred without effective leadership. The 1988 Winter Olympics left a lasting image on the city of Calgary and continue to provide winter athletes with state of the art athletic venues from which to train. The organization responsible for maintaining the facilities, WinSport Canada not only provides for the facilities operational costs but provides financial assistance to winter athletes and direction for Canada’s winter sports movement.

Canada’s winter sport organizations backed by some best winter facilities in the world then follow WinSport’s lead in hiring knowledgeable individuals whose vision has produced Canada’s most decorated athletes.

Unfortunately, a WinSport type of organization doesn’t exist in Canada’s summer sporting community leaving these organizations to their own devices. And without effective leadership from the federal government and the COC - Canada’s summer sport organizations are spending more time and resources defending court cases than they are in producing athletes. Athletes, as a result are frustrated and angry at the system they work within while Canada’s summer sports program witnesses an unprecedented level of futility.

In a desperate attempt to improve summer performances, Canadian sport officials have developed a plan similar to the Own the Podium program introduced in 2005 for Canadian winter sports. But as Canada’s winter sports organizations have shown it takes years to develop Olympic champions and Canada’s summer sporting ills cannot be solved by simply throwing money at the problem.

While critical of Canada’s plan for resurgence at the Summer Games, Simonson provides his own plan that will help restore our sporting legacy at the Summer Olympics while maintaining our present rate of success at Winter Olympiads.

Finally, Simonson documents that if Canada’s athletes are truly serious about garnering success at the summer games they can no longer rely on the fallen promises of Canada’s sporting bureaucracy. With over 80% of all athletes living below the poverty line and billions of dollars being applied towards various sport causes, Simonson notes that only our athletes have an interest in improving things within Canada. And with interest in amateur sport greater than it has ever been there is no better time to change our amateur sports program than now.