As Canadian sport wrestles with winning and athlete wellness, Norway a possible model

"We do not do this for the medals. Do not misunderstand, we love to win, but it should be done in the proper way."

Given the current athlete unrest in Canadian high-performance sport, that statement by Norway's top Olympic official Tore Ovrebo seems profound.

With the word "joy" baked into its sport values, the northern country with less than a fifth of Canada's population has topped the medal table at the last two Winter Olympic Games.

Norway won in total medals (37) and gold medals (16) in Beijing's Winter Olympics in February, compared to Canada's 26, including four gold.

New federal sports minister Pascale St-Onge says there's been accusations of maltreatment, sexual abuse or misuse of funds directed at least eight national sport organizations in her first five months in office and called the situation a crisis.

The trampling of athletes' mental and emotional health in pursuit of the money to win medals is a common thread in athletes' grievances.

Medals as a measurement of success isn't said to be the problem. The thorny question is how to pursue international sport glory with athlete wellness at the forefront, while also holding those in the high-performance sport system, including athletes, accountable for the over $200 million Canadian taxpayers spend annually on it.

Canada as a top-three country in the world in winter sport and top-12 in summer sport is a measurement of success people can understand, but how that's achieved is in a moment of reckoning.

"Using [medals] as a metric of success is OK, but is shouldn't be the only metric of success," two-time Olympic trampoline champion Rosie MacLennan said.

Norway and Canada have a lot in common in Olympic and Paralympic sport, including athletes who struggle