Canadian Olympic Committee

And, you know, I always laugh.

You know, my wife works for the Canadian Olympic Committee, so she travels.

But, like, it'll be 4 o'clock in the morning when I'm in Europe.

And my phone will ring and somehow she thinks it's 10 o'clock in the morning in Europe.

No one knows at that time how long this is going to last, how bad this is going to get, what it's all going to look like.

But it is the Canadian Olympic Committee in partnership with the Canadian Paralympic Committee that is the first of any international body that steps up and goes, we can't do this.

We're out.

And the floodgates open at that point and everyone follows suit.

What have you seen or what have you wished that you had had back in the day? Yeah.

Yeah, you know, with the Canadian Olympic Committee, they have game plan and they have a whole program for athletes, not just after sport, but during sport.

If they're struggling, that goes beyond the sports psychologist.

And it's real time funding that is, you know, allows athletes to access proper support.

So we can actually plan for that scenario.

And, you know, way back in my previous life when I was working with the Canadian Olympic Committee, you know, we had to navigate some pretty big things, including the death of, you know, the the fiance of an athlete.

Right before the games.

So this is, you know, not planning for it just makes it harder.

And now our next goal for the campaign is, of course, to have a big organization taking a stand.

And the big vision is, of course, to make the French Olympic Committee take a stand for the next winter sports in 2030, just as the Canadian Olympic Committee did in 1988 when banning the tobacco ads.

And it's really time for that.

And we do hope that there might be a win quite soon with the Ski World Championships in Falun that are progressing in this issue as well.

And, uh, what is the timeli- timeline like for you now as you gear toward heading to Los Angeles?

Yeah, so, um, we're right now, uh, just sorting out our final, kind of, what, w- what is called our ask, where we go to Canadian Olympic Committee to ask for our funding for the year going forward next year.

So we have a couple of trips planned, um, with, uh, our national team as it, as it is, the, the 12 to 18 guys we have on the national team, which so proud of what they did in Düsseldorf, Germany, to be able to basically, you know, they had, they had to beat the number two team in the world, they had the number three team in the world, um, and we lost to the number four team in the world by, uh, you know, with, uh, by basically a touchdown.

So, uh, we lost to Italy, Italy clinches.

As for those brands, agencies and campaigns that are winning awards at award shows, the Sponsorship Marketing Association handed out its Sponsorship Excellence Awards in Nashville last week, and the Winter Olympics were the big winner.

Best in show for sports went to Maple Leaf Foods and the Canadian Olympic Committee for a campaign called Victory, but first, protein.

It marked the company's Olympic debut as Team Canada's official protein partner, and it was built around athlete storytelling.

Best in show for events and venues went to Michelob Ultra, which turned Park City Mountain into a Team USA celebration during the 2026 Games, with exhibits of Olympic artifacts, watch parties, and a concert by Kygo at the summit.