A scandal within the Paris 2024 Olympics took place before the official games even began. To our disappointment, it was Team Canada’s beloved women’s soccer team that bore the face of it.
Three days before Canada and New Zealand were set to face-off, a drone accused of recording New Zealand’s women’s soccer team during their practice session sent home an analyst and assistant coach from Canada Soccer immediately.
The rest of the consequences for Team Canada are only beginning to unfold.
Following the incident, the head coach of Canada’s women’s team, Bev Priestly, withdrew herself from the match. At the very least, this act of taking ability and responsibility for her team irably demonstrates integrity is still intact.
This incident opens doors to deeper ethical issues in high-level sports, where the stakes of representing a nation under the global eye place copious amounts of pressure on teams to perform their best, by any means necessary. But cheating simply defeats the principle of fair competition upon which the Olympics are defined.
The process of spying on the opposing team to gain insight almost undermines the essence of winning through your own team’s skill and effort. But upholding fairness is easier said than done.
The use of drones and video recording has become common in a world where technology and sports are so interdependent. While this doesn’t excuse the staffers of Soccer Canada, it does warrant more explicit and stricter regulations around technology use, which would deter teams from employing unethical tactics like this in the first place.
Although the Canadian women’s team is staying in the games, albeit without their head coach, they’re not exempt from the moral associations of cheating. Carrying the moral weight of cheating is as tough as any penalty or leadership absence. Online discourses and worldwide spectators alike are shocked and disappointed by the scandal as it’s so “unlike” Canada.
Isolated incidents don’t have to reflect the nation’s values, but it will take extra work for Team Canada to prove themselves and the credit of any future wins they take in the games.
It’s unfair to see a team of players, who’ve spent their whole lives training for a fair win, endure the consequences of an individual’s ultimately poor decisions, and perhaps unfair of others to conflate Canada with a negative reputation.
One thing is for sure, fairness is a lesson that we’ll never finish learning.
—Journal Editorial Board
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