Canadian women’s accomplishments diminished by drone fiasco

Opinion

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 26/07/2024 (409 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

There will come a day when the exploits of Canada’s women’s soccer team will be recounted as events taking place on the pitch over the course of 90 minutes or 120 or penalty kicks.

It will not be today, this weekend, or any time during the 2024 Olympic Games — and probably not in the foreseeable future that follows them. Which is a shame, because this women’s team, like so many before it, has enough of the remarkable for any number of those inspiring stories that supplement, and even prop up, the occasion of this quadrennial spectacle.

No, it’s not pay equity that’s providing the distraction at the just-begun tournament in France. It’s not the support, or lack thereof, from the governing body responsible for resources and infrastructure that has cast a pall over not only over the defending gold medallists, but also the entire contingent of Canadian athletes in Paris.

These and other issues certainly remain. They had also been successfully and, at least on the surface, amicably set aside for a week in July and hopefully another in August. There was, and may still be, a chance to medal in a fourth consecutive Games.

There is also a devastating question that will inevitably, and must, accompany any success achieved at these Olympics: Will it matter?

To their combined credit, Canada Soccer and the Canadian Olympic Committee have moved quickly to cauterize a wound self-inflicted by the use of drones to spy on opposing teams. Head coach Bev Priestman’s tenure with the group is likely done, and the assistants who surveilled New Zealand’s training sessions earlier this week were put on the first plane home.

The COC will have been caught completely off guard by the incident that first came to light when an accredited member of the national team coaching staff was arrested for guiding a drone through the strictly no-fly skies over Olympic France. Canada Soccer, perhaps less so — what with previous job postings requiring the drone-flying skills that got them into this mess in the first place.

It was an act of mind-boggling idiocy that got this snowball rolling. As is often the case when one is caught in the act, a history of similar and even systematic breaches of rules and ethics was revealed to exist that is now throwing doubt on more than one match or one competition.

As reported by Rick Westhead of TSN, a drone was used at least once during the Tokyo Games of 2021, and the operator allegedly broke Japan’s rigorous COVID-19 protocols in order to fly it. Predictably, there are some already arguing most teams employ clandestine methods to gain advantages over their rivals, and while that’s probably true, it nevertheless misses the point.

The International Olympic Committee takes these things seriously, very seriously. So seriously, in fact, that COC secretary-general David Shoemaker could not rule out a scenario endangering the women’s gold medal from Tokyo when asked about it Friday. He would no doubt have preferred to be answering questions about the 338 Canadian athletes set to participate in these Games, the Opening Ceremony flotilla preparing to light up the Seine or even the national women’s soccer team’s Thursday defeat of New Zealand.

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Viewed in isolation, which is almost impossible now, the performance in Saint-Etienne was really quite a good one. Canada kept 61 per cent possession in the match and scored twice from open play — the first a Chloe Lacasse goal that concluded some intricate build-up; the second a clinical finish from Evelyne Viens after captain Jessie Fleming picked her out with an impressive overhead pass.

All that seems trivial now, and once again it’s the players suffering most from the incompetence, dishonesty and malpractice of the people in whom they place their trust. And the suffering is far from over.

That yearned-for day when the Canadian women’s soccer team is discussed solely for its soccer seems a long way off, indeed.

jerradpeters@gmail.com

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