in Canada we aren't better when it comes to hype our athletes; For the second largest country in the world, we are more or less only 35 millions, if you consider that we compete against the UK, France, Germany or the US who have a much larger population pool.... result is that at top level, we still have less choice for the athletes, more or less. We had many deceptions that got catapulted by the medias, especially in french part of Canada where many french canadians would like to split up from the rest of Canada, when a french canadian athlete performs (or a kind of "adopted" athlete here), they will talk about him relentlessly in the medias.
One of our very good example was Stephane Ouellet. The guy had genuine and pure talent, apparently he even gave Roy Jones JR much trouble in sparring at some point. He did spare with Jones, did he really gave him THAT much trouble sparring? We can imagine that the truth is He was described as our next big thing. Well, he collapsed but like big time... and in a very shameful way.
Same thing with Leonard Dorin: the guy has tons of talent, got a draw where he should have won (in my opinion) against Paul Spadafora but the one of the good ol, days, he's been champion and they were thinking of making a showdown against mayweather because he had "much" chances to beat him. Next time you learn, he has a fight with Gatti, one power shot in the liver and the lights were out. the guy had talent, nobody denies it, but he was almost considered as the future big thing in boxing... And I must admit that at some point, I kind of was too in the bandwagon thinking he was "the" deal around his weight category.