The first message I saw this morning on my phone was an announcement that Salt Lake City was selected as the host of the 2034 Winter Olympics. My first reaction was, how long have I been asleep and what year is it? Once I figured that out, I realized that Salt Lake City would in fact host its second Winter Games ten years from now. And that the IOC is more than happy to award a bid city a full decade out to help ensure the stability of the Olympic movement. And that Salt Lake was the only town that actually wanted to host the Games anyway, a problem that seems increasingly pronounced given uncertainty around global warming. Because to host a Winter Olympics, you have to have winter.
That is probably the last time I’ll think about the Winter Games over the next 2 ½ weeks, because Friday is opening ceremonies of Paris Summer Olympics, one that’s had its series of faux pas on the road to the starting line. For example, there was the threat of protesters, well, pooping in the Seine about a month ago before President Macron would take a swim to show how clean the river was. This week, a whole bunch of French entertainers threatened to strike instead of performing at Friday’s ceremony, a crisis avoided by a last-minute contract negotiation. And Paris police has largely shut down the city in anticipation of any large number of security threats over the fortnight, including tensions over the wars in Ukraine and Gaza. And that’s without even mentioning the athletes’ concerns over the biodegradable beds used in the athletes village, whose construction allegedly are unforgiving to those hoping to get lucky in-between sporting events.
But none of these are as potentially hot as the revelation of what can only be described as the French Spygate, an international version of the New England Patriots cheating by filming other teams’ sidelines. In this case, it’s the Canadian Women’s Soccer Team, the defending gold medalists, who are in trouble for flying a drone over the New Zealand practice facility in hopes of gaining some insight before their opening match against each other. New Zealand officials quickly reported the offense, which resulted in one Canadian assistant coach and another member of their support team being sent home for the Games. Canada’s head coach Bev Priestman will also voluntarily sit out Thursday’s game against the Kiwis – yes, some events start before Opening Ceremonies. And Canada Soccer will have to do ethics training, which actually sounds like the worst part of it all. Beyond that, it seems unlikely we’ll see any additional punishment, other than some finger pointing and well-deserved crowd booing. Oddly enough, this isn’t Canada’s first drone incident, as their men’s team was caught spying on Honduras before a World Cup Qualifier in 2021. So either Canada cheats a whole lot or their just really bad at it.
Cheating is obviously nothing new to the Olympic Games. We’re most familiar with the performance enhancing drug version, something we’ll all hope isn’t overly pervasive in Paris, or at least that we don’t find out about it until much later. We’re also hopefully past the era where nations – or, shall we say China – would send underaged athletes to compete in sports like gymnastics. But then again, we’ll probably never really know. The fact is, maintaining law and order in the Olympics is like trying to control behavior over the entire Florida coast line during spring break. There’s just too many different jurisdictions with not enough ways to enforce rules, much less norms. So when it comes to an Olympic Games, IOC officials can say all they want about the sanctity of sport, about upholding the rules, and so on. In the end, it’s hope for the best, expect for the worst.
And perhaps that answers the most interesting question of Canada transgression – namely, why? Why would the defending champs risk it to see what the worst team in their bracket is doing? Why bother? And it’s because in the end, there’s not really a whole lot of risk. Even if and when they do get caught, what exactly is the IOC going to do? Kick out the defending champs? Ruin the TV spectacle. Highlight just how dysfunctional the Olympics are? Probably not. So when it comes to flying drones over an opponent’s practice, why not.
People of Salt Lake should take note. Because in only 10 years, the Seine may still be filthy, but the Canadians will be their problem.
Keith Strudler is the director of the School of Communication and Media at Montclair State University. You can follow him at @KeithStrudler
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