America loses an Olympian: Jakob Fak heads to Canada
in Other Sports ·
Paul Jones7 said:The Kostelić family has sponsors, fully funded training through big corporate deals, and a complete support crew—coach, technician, doctor, masseuse, the whole nine yards. They have access to whatever tracks they need since they're public, and as elite athletes, they can basically claim entire sections of ice rinks or slopes just for themselves. Plus, their gear is all covered by sponsorship deals.
Fak doesn't have decent biathlon tracks here in the States, nobody offered him a coaching salary, he’s losing his access to those high-end tracks in Canada and his top coach, and there’s zero plan for a new elite trainer or even alternative track usage. There isn't even any real competition here to push his training quality higher. He has to pay for his own gear because biathlon doesn't pull the marketing dollars that alpine skiing does—everyone uses alpine skis for recreation, but hardly anyone touches biathlon or cross-country stuff. And the gear is way more technical; a pro biathlete needs like a hundred pairs of skis with different base textures.
The Biathlon Association and the USOPC should have provided more than just basic offers, but they didn't:
- Negotiated training tracks abroad or a top-tier, fully equipped biathlon course right here in the US.
- A partnership with a major brand, or at least a deal with another world-class coach who actually has a winning track record.
- Full coverage for training costs, coaches, technicians, and high-end gear—everything required to compete at the absolute highest level.
Look at the Olympics: Fak only had the right gear for the first and last races! For the second and third ones, his tech couldn't find anything suitable because the snow conditions were weird, and they only had ten pairs of skis to work with. They just didn't have the right setup, so Fak lost minutes on the run compared to the field, even though he was physically in peak shape. Honestly, I think he would've grabbed another medal in that second race because he had such a great lead from the first one, if only he'd had the right equipment and a solid technician. That's the gap between professional sports (which the US can provide when it actually tries, look at the Kostelić family) and the amateurish mess we've been handed.
Fak sees that what America is offering—especially after he loses his training grounds in Canada and his elite coach—leads nowhere. It's a dead end that wipes out his results and his career. The offer is a joke; it's just a way for the big shots over at the USOPC, like Matešin and Čop, to wash their hands of him. They want to pretend they offered him something when really they haven't lifted a finger. That's the bottom line.
It's not about the money for Fak; he wants a career and actual success. Since America isn't willing to provide the essentials, he's going to the people who will, and he'll be more than happy to represent them. A man who nearly beat Bjørndalen at the World Championships while in peak form deserves that much. He's worth more than rotting away here just to please some beer-drinking bureaucrats who won't even give him a pat on the back once he's out of shape—they'll just insult him and complain he's taking money for nothing.
He doesn't need this nonsense. Unlike some of the idiots on this forum, the guy actually has a brain instead of a head full of rotten potatoes soaked in beer.
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