Reflections on Canadian Women at the Olympics
With emphasis on the team sports, women’s athletics generally, and the need for Canada to get serious about sports infrastructure outside the Olympic cycle and sports biz.
The Olympics are now over. I can come down from Mount Olympus and deal with the rest of reality again. I have some comments to send into the blogosphere about women athletes, specifically Canadian women athletes, and especially about some comments made by Canadian women athletes when they got sat down in TV studios.
I have watched these Olympic games more closely than any previous games. I set a lot of things aside to do so. I realized that these events can be quite engrossing. I realized some other things.
When I was much younger, I was very uninterested in athletics and sports, including the Olympics. I think the reason I have gradually become a sports fan is that gradually women have begun doing much more sports and getting covered adequately while doing it.
Women doing athletic things have vastly more entertainment value than men doing the same things. I do not see why this needs much explaining. The only things I really can’t stand are the “pretty-pretty” sports like synchronized swimming or rhythmic gymnastics.
Besides the entertaining and alluring aspects, women athletes are just more interesting personalities. They have much less of the entitled attitudes and other objectionable features of male professional athletes. They are usually better educated and more articulate.
Women seem to become professional athletes because they really like doing it, not because they hope to make a lot of money off it. Male athletes tend to focus on sports that pay extravagant salaries to superstars. Olympic events are mostly not in the big money maker sports.
This seems to be why there are now more women at the olympics than men. Also, why three quarters of Canada’s medals were won by women. But also, why there are no womens’ professional sports leagues in Canada.
The Question
Two prominent members of the Canadian Women’s soccer team, dangling their new gold medals, asked the camera why it is that if Canada is such a women’s soccer nation that it can consistently collect these objects at international competitions, that there is no professional league in Canada? It seems that in most countries with a serious national soccer team, there is also a women’s league which pays its players real money to play. Of course, they don’t get paid the ridiculous salaries of male ball kickers.
Canada has managed to develop a core of good players because they go down to the states to play in that league and perfect their skills. Others go to the U.K. or even more exotic locales. But as the two elite soccer ladies said to the TV news Johnnie, it would be much better if they could play in their home country.
This reminds me of a similar complaint from another group of Canadian athletic ladies. These ones play ice hockey and many of them also have had something gold hung around their necks. They have also been asking for a true professional league to play in when international competition is unavailable.
I do not know if these two groups have been talking to each other. They should; their solution is the same. However, there are some differences in their situations and aims.
The Case of Ice Hockey
The National Hockey League (NHL) is well known. It operates in Canada and the USA. There is also a semi professional men’s league in Canada. There have been persistent efforts by female hockeys players to get these group’s assistance in getting a women’s league going. They have had no success.
As a stopgap until the NHL comes around, Canadian women hockey players have tried to run several non profit leagues over the years, all of which eventually collapsed. In recent years a hockey league called NWHL, based in the USA, has emerged. Its founder tried to present it as a ‘startup’ and invited investors. Recently her investors threw her out of her ’startup’.
It is unclear if these investors will be able to run this NWHL any better. The players are still not paid seriously and their working conditions have not improved. It is strange that none of these groups can attract any serious investment, because there is much evidence that a real women’s ice hockey league could be very profitable.
The current vehicle for most female hockey players in North America is the Professional Women’s Hockey Player’s Association (PWHPA). It is able to find sponsors and hold exhibition tournaments. It attracts the best players and gives them better working conditions, but still does not pay them.
Most of the board of PWHPA are American players, though it operates mostly in Canada. A main focus of this group is to lobby the chief of NHL, Bettman, to start a women’s league. Bettman shows zero interest in doing this, though it would be a logical move and some of the NHL teams seem to want it.
The Canadian players in PWHPA need to take another look at all this. They do have a dream of having all the best players in North America in one league. But they are divided into two countries with much different cultures and political systems.
In a more sane and socialized country like Canada still is, government steps in when private business is unable or unwilling to provide something that is needed. The federal government funds and even builds facilities for all sorts of cultural activities in Canada. There is a very good argument for it to create women’s hockey and soccer leagues.
So, for the Canadian women in PWHPA, they are chasing the wrong Sugar Daddy. They can forget the American Bettman. Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau can get them what they desire.
This leaves the American players out of luck. A government sponsored league does not fit with the ruling ideology down there. No doubt a limited number would be allowed to come up and play in a Canadian league.
Thus the political problems of starting a women’s hockey league in Canada are formidable. It is likely we have a Canadian Women’s Soccer league before a hockey league.
The Case of other Team Sports
As for the soccer players, perhaps the two who gave the idea of a Canadian women’s soccer league a kick in front of the cameras will get busy setting up an organization to represent the player’s interests once they are all back in Canada. Perhaps they could make common cause with the hockey ladies.
There are other women’s sports teams which might also benefit from becoming organized and could add their strength to this movement. The rugby 7s and the Basketball women are most probable in this, but they both have their own problems.
The Canadian rugby 7s women’s national team is also noted for getting medals hung on them in foreign venues. This spring, there was a mutiny at their training centre against their long time coach, which would explain their performance well below their usual standard at this olympics
It is puzzling why rugby 7s is unable to attract more investment. It is hard to imagine a game more perfect for television. However, it seems this cult of amateurism still pervades within the rugby establishment. Money should not be allowed to corrupt the purity of the game.
This idea is a nonsense. It impeded the development of sports for many years. The fact is, that to get games played at the highest possible level, the players must train full time and so they must be paid a living wage, and so there must be a revenue stream which can pay them.
Pure amateurism means vacant lot, weekend warrior type of play. Anything else is hypocrisy; someone is making money at it, and it is not the players. The ugliest of hypocrisy is the pay to play system.
For years the national women’s rugby 7s team was in this pay to play mire. Recently, as one of their players noted, they have been getting about as much money as do people compensated for loss of employment during covid. In contrast, the New Zealand National Rugby chicks get paid a living wage and even maternal leave. This might explain why they win ninety percent of their games.
Our women’s basketball team also performed poorly at the Olympics but have no record of performing well. However, the best Canadian players can make a living playing in the American League. There is reason for hope that this league will expand into Canada, thus there is less urgency about a Canadian league.
The Cause
It offends me that Canada cannot create and maintain its own national sports leagues; with men’s teams but more especially for women. I look at how other countries are able to build their own national leagues. And of course, to back individual athletic competitors to train. It is because of money and will from the national governments.
We need the same thing in Canada. To get it going will require political pressure, which will require leadership from the players themselves. Christine Sinclair’s career is clearly nearing its end. Perhaps she would aspire to being the Jayna Hefford of soccer.
The mobilization of strong public support is usually what is required to get government in Canada off its ass to do something in the public’s interest. The country really does need its own sports leagues, the way it needs other artistic and cultural expressions, and the organizations behind them.
It is about sustaining our own national identity, which I think most of us find important. But just as important, it is about reducing the power of big money in sports. Thus, creating national sports leagues may be clearly seen as a political, not an economic, problem.
This would lead to much more really entertaining sports. We will see more women’s sports. It will likely make men’s sports more interesting because it will be less about power and money and thus bring more men into sports with the right motives.
Still, I don’t think men can ever compete with women in entertainment value as athletes. Here is one reason why women’s athletics is still often suppressed; the fear that the ladies will take over.
I really have nothing to say to that except; let them!