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women's olympic hockey: canadian hearts of gold

By on February 22, 2014
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By Natalie Hughes, Editor in Chief.

My favourite image being shared around social media the evening after the game was won was this little beauty. (P.S. I’m Canadian.)

So who said that women’s sports can’t draw an audience, induce excitement or be as financially lucrative as men’s sports? I saw so much happiness and pride in women and men watching and celebrating together over the Canadian Women’s Hockey team win, I just had to comment on it.

Let’s start with what transpired at my workplace. (In addition to my work here at Simply Woman, I run a multi million dollar business with 40 employees, most of whom are women.)

I’m not usually a sports fan myself–I had to be informed on what the big deal was with the olympics that day–but the electricity among my fellow team members was palpable. It was torture for them to not be in front of a television set to check the scores. (Maybe next Olympics, I can figure out a way to have the events on during break times, but for now, I just couldn’t let them suffer.) Throwing productivity out the window and caution to the wind, I offered to let one of the ladies run down to a business common area every few minutes to check the score. The joy on our own employees faces that I would let them track the game was only eclipsed by the final roar we heard when Canada won in overtime. I’m pretty sure they made up for the time lost with all the energy gained from tuning in to such an exciting win.

And the viewership of this week’s gold medal game between the US and Canadian Women’s teams was a win of its own:

According to CBC’s early numbers, “The game posted the highest online viewing audience ever to a CBC live event and topped the previous record set during the prior day’s men’s hockey game between Canada and Latvia.” And we weren’t the only workplace slacking during the game. Canadian business news source The Globe and Mail reported:

“Canadian Imperial Bank of Commerce economist Benjamin Tal was on his way to a meeting when he saw hundreds of people watching the game on a big screen in a food court. ‘It was 2:45 and my meeting was at 3:00, so I decided to stay for a few minutes,’ he said. ‘Talk about timing. Less than five minutes into it, Canada scored the winning goal. It was an unbelievable picture to see hundreds of people celebrating and hugging total strangers.’

I love that. Spontaneous group hugs, even in the stuffy, impersonal financial district.

What does this mean for women and sport?

Well, I’d like to make a leap here and say that it means we DO care about seeing women at the height of their sports careers, out there playing with every ounce of will and skill they possess. No extra doses of sexuality are necessary, despite what the creators of “Lingerie Football” would like to think. (read this article by Jennifer Heard if you haven’t been blessed with that sight yet.) We don’t have to do something different with women’s sports to get people to watch them win… we simply need to begin treating it with the importance it deserves. We need to see it as worthy and be willing to invest resources into it.

I do know this. The Canadian team put this disrespectful meme to shame this week:

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Who’s laughing now?

 

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