I often try to keep the content on my blog related to pre and postnatal fitness but every once in a while I deviate from it when there is another topic I want to speak on so today I’m taking a slight detour. And there are still some parallels I will draw for mommas and women so it’s not a complete avoidance of our typical content. If you follow me on Instagram then you know I’m a big Olympic fan. I think when you grow up an elite athlete you just love the Olympics. Obviously I’m a swimming fan cause the Olympics is one of the only times every 4 years that swimming gets attention from people who aren’t swimmers but I just love so many sports and there is something so unbelievable patriotic about rooting for the Canadian athletes at the Games. But I want to talk about Toyko 2020 because there has been some moments from these games (both before and during) that have struck me deeper than past games and I want to talk about it.
The Toyko games have drawn some significant attention to topics that we don’t talk about enough when it comes to high performance sport, women, moms and all of those areas…so let’s talk about them…
The Athlete and The Mom
This isn’t something that we talk about enough I think, but there were a couple of instances before the Olympic Games started that drew some attention in the area and I want to touch on them both. I don’t think that we often think of these high performance athletes completing on national teams as moms…but you might be surprised to learn how many of them actually are moms. Two Canadian moms in particular had to fight just to have a spot on the team. Kim Gaucher and Mandy Bujold made headlines prior to the Olympic Games eventually fighting their way to Tokyo, but the question that remains is should they have had to fight that hard?
Kim Gaucher plays for the Canadian basketball team and due to COVID there were no spectators at the Olympic Games…which included her daughter who was less than a year old whom she was still breastfeeding. Mandy Bujold is a Canadian boxer who gave birth to her daughter in late 2018. After training hard and prepping for Tokyo 2020 she was set to compete at the Olympic qualifier which was cancelled due to COVID. It was decided that boxers would qualify based on their rankings at tournaments prior to the qualifier…tournaments that Mandy didn’t compete in because she pregnant and postpartum…which meant from the the IOC’s standpoint, she would not compete in Tokyo. I think both of these women’s experiences are important to highlight here because it’s 2021. Are we honestly able to host a Olympic Games in the middle of a global pandemic but not able to see these two situations are just wrong. It takes an incredibly powerful woman to be an Olympic athlete…it also takes an incredibly powerful woman to be a momma…so an Olympic Momma, I mean just a rockstar. Then to be penalized for your choice to become a mother well that just rattles me.
I do want to say that yes, both of these women were able to compete in Tokyo, but should they have had to fight so hard for it…in my opinion no…and I’m truly glad that the IOC made the exception in both these cases but I can’t imagine the stress and anxiety that was placed on both these mommas and their families while they waited for these exceptions to be made. I do realize that if COVID wasn’t taking the world by storm that both of these situations likely wouldn’t have arose so obviously yes COVID played a large part in this…however I believe that this issue is bigger than that. Let’s flip the script here slightly and talk about an instance that wasn’t at all impacted by COVID. American track star Allyson Felix faced pressure throughout her pregnancy from Nike (her sponsor) after opting not to abort the pregnancy. Nike then gave her a new deal that cut her pay by 70% compared to her previous contract with no maternity exceptions. When Felix spoke out Nike did restructure how it works with athletes and mothers, but this is just another example of how mothers can be mistreated because they have the ability to bear children. And this example has nothing to do with COVID, so although the 2 Canadians were COVID related as well, it is not just a COVID thing. I will say that as I started to read through some of this information there were more and more stories, but I will leave you to read those for yourself.
The Canadian Women
Can we for a second just stop and take in how many medals have been won by Canadian WOMEN. Canada won a total of 24 medals…18 of them were won by women (individuals or teams). For those of you who want to know that is 75% or 3/4. Yes 3/4 of the medals won by Canadians in Tokyo went to women…WOW…just wow! Why is this a big deal you ask?? Well let’s talk about the sport drop out rate in girls. A 2020 report (Canadian Women and Sport) found that of girls who participate in sports 1 in 3 of them will leave sports by their late teens…by comparison the drop out rate for teenage boys is 1 in 10. I knew this number was high…but until I actually looked this number up I didn’t realize how high…1 in 3…that is shocking! And to make it even worse as many as 62% of girls never participate in any sport at all. I will tell you that I would not be the person I am today without swimming. The lessons that being involved in a sport at an elite level taught me are things that I would have never learned otherwise and these lessons are things that carried me not only through my swimming years but things that carry me through the rest of my life.
So why do I bring this up?? Because sport participation is huge, and inspiring girls to stay in sports is clearly something that we need to improve. Watching 3/4 of the summer Olympic medals come from women’s sports…I think that can be used as a stepping stone to help inspire and improve athletics for young women. These women who won medals in Tokyo are inspiring the next generation of athletes and it’s incredible to see. I hope that young women can look at this and know that with some hard work, perseverance and dedication they could be working towards a high performance sport win as well even if it’s not the Olympics.
Simone Biles
This is definitely the one incident from the Olympic Games that made me stop and think. My initial reaction was one of awe…it takes a lot of courage and strength for a high performance athlete to admit they are not competition ready…but my reaction quickly changed. Working in the health and fitness field I stopped and thought about this more…thought about the fact that we do not talk about the mental health of athletes enough. Mental health is a topic that is slowly becoming more and more common to talk about…but when was the last time you watched any major sporting event and heard the announcers talk about it. In fact, following this realization I started to notice that some of the comments that the announcers were making around all athletes could be negatively impacting some athletes mental health and this stopped me in my tracks. Not in a million years was it something that I think I would have ever come to notice without a catalyst event, but it was happening, clear as day…right there on my computer screen. Now don’t get me wrong, I’m not hating on announcers or anything like that…I understand that their job is to entertain and produce these facts about athletes performances so don’t come at me with that argument. I’m merely pointing out that some of those things could be damaging to some athletes and that maybe it’s something we should consider as we progress through large athletic events like the Olympic Games.
If you have ever competed in a sport…on a big stage or a small one you likely know the kind of pressure that come with it. It varies for each person to the next but odds are as an athlete you have probably felt it at one point or another. Now stop and think about how you reacted when you felt it. Maybe you excelled, maybe you did exactly what you set out to or maybe you feel short of what the goal was. If you’ve been in this situation more than once then it may have even been different in different situations. But have you ever considered pulling yourself out…I know for me this was a resounding no! I’m not saying that every athlete should pull themselves out when they feel pressure…that is a part of competition to a certain extent but it’s something to think about. Human beings put so much pressure on other human being and on themselves and maybe it’s time to talk about that pressure a little more. Get it out in the open and figure out how we can encourage high performance without creating athletes that may struggle with mental health challenges. Often in high performance athletics it’s a win at all cost mentality…and as I mentioned I don’t think we should tell people that they can win Olympic gold medals without hard work and resilience, but there may also be a better way than winning at all costs as well. This point is just something to think about it…it’s something that Simone Biles put on people’s radars and I hope that it brings with it more and more conversations as the years move on.
As promised a slight deviation, but still a little bit in context. I think that personally I watched these Olympics from a slightly different perspective than I ever have before and these are some of things that made me think as I moved through these Olympic Games…what’s your favourite moment from Tokyo 2020? I want to hear them!
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