Roger Jackson is counselling the nation and the national media to take a tip from The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy: Don’t Panic. Even if Canada is falling well behind Germany and the U.S. in the Olympic medal standings through the first 13 days of the Games, that doesn’t mean the country’s world-class athletes won’t be able to achieve the Own the Podium goal of finishing first in total medals won at the 2010 Olympics.

Jackson, the chief executive officer of Canada’s Own the Podium initiative, said in a teleconference Tuesday (Feb. 2) that no Canadians watching the medal count should be concerned if the U.S. and Germany get far ahead of Canada in the first two-thirds of the Games.

“We don’t expect Canada to challenge for the lead until the last few days of the Games,” Jackson said calmly.

Launched in 2005, the Own the Podium initiative has stated goals of helping Canada’s athletes win the most medals of any nation at the 2010 Olympics, and finish among the top three nations in the gold-medal count at the 2010 Paralympics.

The program was later expanded to support Canada’s targeted summer-sport federations as well, striving toward a top-16 placing in the 2008 Games medal standings – which was achieved with a tie for 13th in overall medals – plus a top-12 finish in total medals at the 2012 Olympics and top eight in the 2012 Paralympics.

Jackson said he has complete faith that “all Canadians will be very proud of our athletes,” and the projected late blooming of the medal count is simply a matter of scheduling – with some key freestyle, snowboarding, short-track speedskating, figure skating, hockey and curling competitions packed into Days 13 to 17 — and where the country’s strengths happen to lie.

“I’m very, very confident the Canadian team and the Canadian team results will bring great pride to Canadians,” Jackson said.

One of the initial ideas behind partners such as the federal government and 2010 Games sponsors funding the OTP program was to help all Canadians share in the Games by ensuring Canadian athletes would bring great pride to everyone, he added, and with Canadians investing in Canadian excellence they have seen “real achievement here.”

Backed by a vision of Canada as a “world leader in high-performance sport” and a mission to support the development of Canadian sports to reach “sustainable podium performances at the Olympic and Paralympic Games,” Own the Podium has been described by some as probably the greatest legacy of the 2010 Games, Jackson said.

“It has already demonstrated great success in providing leadership to strengthen the Canadian sport system,” he said, adding that officials are attempting to secure funding and structures for its future continuation.

He said they’re hoping to keep the program going with a strong, independent board and attain $22 million in replacement funding from the federal government, which is currently the largest contributor, since the OTP initiative will lose funding from VANOC sponsors and others after the Games are over.

Using recent Games as a reference for results, Jackson noted that Canada won 17 medals at the 2002 Olympics to finish tied for fourth with Austria, and followed that by winning 24 medals in Torino in 2006, including seven gold medals, to sit third in the total medal count. In 2009, Canadian athletes captured 29 medals at world championship events, more than any other country, with the U.S. and Germany close behind with 27 medals each.

Canada has “dramatically closed the gap from the 2002 results,” Jackson said.

Though Jackson said it’s difficult to pinpoint precisely how Canada’s Olympians will do in Whistler and Vancouver – just one of the many thrilling aspects of sport — the “news is good” about Canada’s number of top contenders. Jackson said number-crunching with day-by-day comparisons from World Cup results this season has shown that Canada has at least 30 athletes or teams who are “very serious medal threats for the Games,” Jackson said, and another 30-some athletes in fourth, fifth or sixth positions who have reasonable shots at the podium.

The three-time Olympian added that Germany has about the same number of top-six contenders, while the U.S. has “slightly fewer” than that, and he expects these three countries to battle for the overall lead in medal standings.