The Canadian federal government, through Sport Canada, spends about $3.5 million annually to promote participation in sport for children and youth, largely through ParticipACTION and other programs, some of which also receive private funds.
Fair enough. Participation in sports is a positive thing for a number of reasons. It gets kids away from their devices and gets them moving. Team sports contribute generously to the socialization of children and youth, to—hopefully—their developing an understanding of fair play, group effort, winning and losing, all things that are likely to make them more well-rounded, more successful adults.
Money well spent. That’s an assumption on my part, because wherever there is government money to be spent there are people who failed somewhere along the line to develop those concepts of fair play and group effort. Scoundrels. Cheats. Sore losers.
An interest in sports at a young age, and the chance to succeed or fail at various sports, sow the seeds of what can be a lifetime’s interest. Very few will, for example, ever dribble a basketball for an NBA team, but I recall any number of people sporting significant grey hair playing pick-up ball at the Y or on the courts of various universities I attended. Ditto beer league softball, soccer, ultimate frisbee, et al.
Weekly on the mountains, there are folks who’ve been around long enough to collect Old Age Security cheques who take part in the Valley Race Series. Their love of sport has stuck with them for a lifetime.
The funds spent on children and youth sport pale to insignificance compared to the federal dollars spent on elite-level sports. Sport Canada spends about $180 million—some 50 times more—channelling funds to the Athlete Assistance Program (national team athletes), Sport Support Program (sports organizations) and the Hosting Program (Canada Games and international sports events).
Just to be clear, that funding does not include the hundreds of millions of dollars spent on Own the Podium, a program established for the 2010 Winter Olympics to salve the Canadian psyche for hosting two previous Olympics with no gold to show for the effort.
In the overall scheme of things one might consider the totality of sports spending a drop in the bucket. Or a waste of money.
High-level sports have been in the news lately. Frequently. Not for accomplishments on the field of play. Not for reasons to celebrate. Not for glory.
The news has been about abuse. Sexual. Psychological. Physical. Bullying. Discrimination. Maltreatment. Wilful blindness. All-too-human behaviour, fuelled by money, power, powerlessness, blind ambition, fear of missing out, dreams of glory.
Most recently, gymnasts. Before that, bobsleigh and skeleton sliders. Before that, synchronized swimmers. Elite athletes all.
This is probably a good time to hang a target on my back—front—and state my own belief that participation in athletics taken to the Olympic level constitutes a psychological malady. Any activity that all-consuming is pretty much the definition of an obsession, if not obsessive-compulsive disorder as defined in The Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders.
The thing that saves elite athletics is, tautologically, sport itself. Sport-based obsessions are given a pass because, well, they’re sports. No better reason. You want to spend 10 hours a day doing something over and over and over again that bumps up against the ability of your body to actually do it? No problem... as long as it’s a sport. And you dream of winning an Olympic medal.
You want to participate in something that completely disrupts your daily life—and quite possibly the life of your family—something that causes personal distress if you don’t do it to the point it disrupts your daily life, something you can’t stop thinking about, dreaming about. If it’s a sport, no problem. If it isn’t, your folks are going to send you to a shrink.
And even if it is a sport, you might be in trouble. If you’re not interested in competition, not interested in Olympic gold, the fact you spend 10 hours a day in the gym or pool or on the track is likely to be looked on less favourably. Probably considered nutty behaviour.
So what happens when that kind of obsession bumps up against those all-too-human behaviours? Sometimes nothing. Let’s not tar the current allegations with too broad a brush. I’ve known elite athletes who, other than their obsession with their sport, were perfectly well-adjusted human beings. I’m not sure the exception proves the rule. But I’m not sure it doesn’t.
But when you take that desire, mix it in with the funding, colour it with the hopes of international success, add a soupçon of national pride, you have a pretty good Petri dish for abuse. Success at any price. Coaches who push their athletes until they drop. Physically. Psychologically.
Coaches who know their continued employment depends on the success of their athletes. Athletes who know their goals depend on their continued access to coaches, trainers, medical staff, sports psychologists. Who know their parents want them to succeed as badly as they want to succeed. Sometimes even more. Who let coaches berate them, touch them inappropriately, even worse, because they’re afraid if they speak up they’ll be washed out.
Coaches who fail to control their devils and sexually abuse their athletes. Belittle them and discriminate against them because they are the “other.” Coaches who feed them baloney about their bodies, their diet, their motivation or lack thereof.
These stories repeat as often as tales of sexual abuse by priests. And the results are frequently the same. Cover it up. Deny it. Pretend it’ll go away. Stonewall.
Sports bodies, whose very existence depends on continued success and access to money, don’t want this to be the story. They want sport and success and happy competitors to be the story. They’ll do anything to make these stories go away. Anything except believe the allegations when athletes become brave enough—or retired enough—to make them.
And so now the federal Minister of Sport, Pascale St-Onge, says her office will be, “taking a closer look at how the governing bodies of more than 60 sports in Canada operate.” What? She doesn’t read the newspapers?
“We are looking to strengthen how we monitor the responsibilities of organizations to keep their athletes safe, and we will hold organizations accountable if they fall short of expectations,” she said.
Hard to do when it’s those very organizations that investigate allegations brought by athletes. Hard to do when those organizations rely on government money to keep doing what they’re doing.
Maybe better to just take the funding away. Reduce sport to sport. Encourage people to engage in sport for the pure enjoyment of playing the game, enjoying the activity, enriching their lives, playing for life, not for glory.
As if.
