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Canada’s Hayley Wickenheiser, elected to IOC athletes’ commission, should remember her words from prior to Sochi 2014
Thursday is been quite a day for Hayley Wickenheiser: elected to the IOC athletes commission during the afternoon, USA-Canada women's hockey gold-medal game on tap for the evening.
Doubtlessly, there's wider interest in the latter, because #wearewinter. The veteran forward Wickenheiser will be integral in Canada's game plan to stymie U.S. sniper Hilary Knight when the teams face off at the Bolshoy Ice Place. It is remiss to skip over the fact that being "a tremendous representative for our country," to quote from the Canadian Olympic Committee release, also involves advocacy, something her predecessor Beckie Scott took to heart before Sochi.
Once the Olympics commence, there's a tendency to focus on the competition and drift away from the political underpinnings. With Sochi 2014 almost over, though, it's hardly a rehash to point out that the IOC compromised its principles by staging the Games in Russia, with its deplorable anti-gay laws. And it's worth noting Wickenheiser did speak out about it, at considerable personal peril, last year.
""I think most athletes in the free world think it's wrong what Russia has done," Wickenheiser said in August. "The Olympics is really one of the only places in the world where people should be free to get along and perform in harmony.
"It's about acceptance so it kind of goes against everything that the Olympics are about. It doesn't make a lot of sense to me."
It's not for anyone sitting nine or 10 time zones away to tell an IOC member how to approach the role, but one would hope Wickenheiser and the COC recalls that she did say her piece. It was more diplomatic to speak out months ahead of the Games. That was, really, a better time and place. It's almost too demanding to expect a high-profile competitor to do once inside the bubble of the Olympic experience.
The voice of all Canadian Olympians past, present and future might also also want to listen to the sincere statement that snowboarder Michael Lambert made during the week. Chances are, unless one is a hard-core snowboarding fan, they've barely heard of Lambert. The 27-year-old, who was competing in his second and last Olympics, came and gave it his best shot, but did not reach the final in men's parallel giant slalom. While he didn't go to Sochi primarily "to make a political statement, he couldn't ignore the forming guilt over not making one. For Lambert, and not a few Canadians watching from back home, seeing the country partake in a two-week sports and advertising festival that cost $50 billion US and allowed Vladimir Putin's government to make a hash of human rights is a mockery of our values.
Lambert ended up saying his piece to the Olympic News Service, but Bruce Arthur wrote a column about it. The gist of it:
"I am all for the purest form of sport in which all other distractions are shed with no consideration given to anything but your own process,” Lambert said. “At the same time, to act like there aren’t a lot of other very controversial things at play here, it’s ignorant. It’s not real, it’s not a reality. It’s not my reality.
... “The only people on earth who are probably going to hold perfect [winter] Games are people from Scandinavia,” he said. “They are going to be green, sustainable, be under budget and all of the buildings and services are going to be used afterwards.
“A perfect Games isn’t someone who blows the budget through the roof for no reason, has people suffer, shuts people up. How is that a perfect Games? Spends ungodly amounts of money and then we are all going to watch it rot over the next 10 years.”
Keep in mind there is a big difference between what an athlete with nearly zero media obligations and what one who's well-known and constantly sought out for quotes, such as Wickenheiser, can say.
Very few people took note of Lambert's message; many more rushed to pile on speed skater Brittany Schussler for her selfie-ness. Carefully chosen words have much less stickiness than controversy and the chance to stake out the moral high ground. (Schussler's choice to post a pic with Putin on Twitter wasn't terrible or evil; it was just guileless and naive.) It's hard not to think that Lambert, with nothing to lose since he's winding up his career, wasn't speaking for more than a few athletes who feel co-opted by the system. It's one thing to, as an athlete, have a narrow focus. Once one is done, it's time to realize that the world is very big. The ramifications of Olympic budgets getting bigger and bigger — when the time is long past for the IOC to have 5-6 rotating host cities apiece for the winter and summer iterations — are very, very bad. Ask Athens about that.
In time, that's the message that should be considered, bearing in mind that Wickenheiser, like Beckie Scott, is only one voice among many. Getting elected to such a high post confers great respect for the Shaunavon, Sask., star's accomplishments in getting women's hockey on the map. Point being, one would hope any athlete serving in such a capacity does a little more than try to maintain the status quo.
Oh, and Hayley, see what you can do about getting softball reinstated.
Neate Sager is a writer for Yahoo! Canada Sports. Follow him on Twitter @neatebuzzthenet.
