What a healthy coach-athlete relationship looks like

DeBues-Stafford has become one of Canada’s most successful distance runners. She owns a 3:56.12 1,500m personal best, she’s a World Championship finalist and an eight-time national record-holder. She credits her success in large part to her coach, the University of Toronto’s Terry Radchenko

Gabriela DeBues-Stafford had the same coach for almost eight years. Terry Radchenko, then coaching with the University of Toronto Track Club, met DeBuesStafford when she was 15 and in grade 10. The pair formed a very tight bond. DeBues-Stafford said Radchenko was like a second father to her: “That’s how I would describe the relationship,” she says.

“He was also a friend, in the way that you’re friends with a parent.”

DeBues-Stafford has since parted ways with Radchenko after moving to Scotland, where she lives with her husband and trains under coach

Andy Young. Despite no longer working with Radchenko, DeBues-Stafford credits him with much of her track success, and with being “a very good person.”

There are many uncanny similarities between DeBues-St afford ’s stor y a nd t hat of Megan Brown. Both lost their mothers at an early age – DeBues-St afford ’s to cancer just before she turned 13. Both women took up running largely as a way to grieve and heal, and both met the coaches who would soon have a major impact on their careers. “Running has always been a huge part of my healing,” says DeBues-Stafford. “I relied on Terry and conf ided in him a lot about what I was going through. And he was always so good to me … I felt like he was someone who really saw me and heard me.”

DeBues-Stafford says the coach-athlete relationship can be difficult to keep 100 per cent professional, but that it can be personal without being inappropriate. “It’s hard to keep these relationships just about running,” says DeBues-Stafford. “It’s so much more than a sport or a job, and that’s especially true when you’re young.

“For me, I put so much of myself into running that it felt like my running, trauma and grief were all intertwined,” says DeBues-Stafford. “And Terry was with me through all of this. So when I was on the verge of tears at the track, it was OK to admit that I wasn’t doing well, and he knew what I meant.”

She and Radchenko were very close, but their relationship was always appropriate and productive. “Terry was a huge help to me while I was grieving, but there were also boundaries,” she says. “We didn’t meet outside of campus hours or practice times. There were obviously physical boundaries. Our conversations were about running and treatment primarily, unless otherwise brought up by me. We didn’t spend time together outside of practice or races, unless it was for a meeting

regarding training.” DeBues-Stafford says she never had to consider whether his behaviour crossed a line.

Brown’s story made DeBues-Stafford ref lect upon how vulnerable young athletes are. “I’m so grateful that, just by chance, I had a compassionate coach like Terry,” she says. “I was able to thrive under his help and guidance, instead of being taken advantage of.”

Madeleine Kelly is the 2019 Canadian national 800m champion and a web writer at Canadian Running. Originally from Pembroke, she now lives in Hamilton.

Peel thinks things are changing, though. “The i ndependence of the Athletics Canada Office of the Commissioner is helping to change the culture,” she says. “It looks terrible that so many athletics coaches are being caught, but it is also because there is an independent Office to investigate complaints, so athletes are bringing situations forward. Athletics Canada acted quickly to suspend McInnis, Porter and Dave Scott-Thomas (this time). What happened in 2006 is inexcusable, but it wouldn’t happen now. And the Athletes Council has a strong voice that is taken seriously, at least at the board level.”

As a coach with the Hamilton Olympic Club from 1989 to 1996, I was shocked that I never had a single parent come and interview me before they sent their children my way. Maybe the parents were more subtle in their screening, asking other parents and coaches. Since those days it has been refreshing to see how coaching programs now include extensive education modules on appropriate coach/athlete relationships and interactions. While getting coaching certification for hockey and triathlon, I went through hours of training on the subject. Sport can, and should, be a safe space for children, and sports associations are trying to make sure that is the case.

But as optimistic as Peel is that things are changing, the title of her piece in the Globe was “Megan Brown’s Experience Highlights the Need for a #MeToo Moment in Sports.”

The way Scott-Thomas’s suspension was handled last fall, with no one (least of all his athletes) being told what was happening or why, illustrates, to me, that the system continues to protect successful coaches first. While I understand that an investigation needs to remain confidential, not admitting that an investigation is taking place doesn’t help.

Peel has been shocked at how many mothers have approached her at the east-end Toronto café she now runs and said that “they no longer feel sport is a safe space for their kids.”

It’s important to realize that most coaches don’t abuse their athletes. The best coaches are supportive and provide a safe, caring environment designed to help athletes excel. As a coach, you do learn a lot about the people you’re working with – many intimate and private details that require the utmost discretion. Gabriela Debues-Stafford found a coach who she could trust, and has gone on to not only be a great athlete, but a grounded person who is ready to excel in any endeavour.

I wish I could share Peel’s optimism and be confident the world is ready to celebrate sport without solely being focussed on winning. A number of coaches might have been suspended, but is Canadian society ready to make athlete safety and well-being its first concerns when it comes to supporting our best athletes? Is it OK to just make it to the Olympics, as long as you’re healthy? Are we ready to spend money for athletes to just compete, and not win at the highest levels?

So how do we achieve the balance? To set up a system where appropriate relationships between coach and athlete are the norm? We first need to start celebrating the benefits of sport at the most basic level – as a way to be fit and healthy, to develop self-esteem and confidence, with winning as a wonderful byproduct, rather than an all-consuming imperative.

“I don’t know how one changes what winning means, and what wins are valued,” Peel says. “Talking more about the process of competition than the result. Athletes have to stop being suckers for the idea that winning is everything, and then maybe society will follow. I’m sure this is all very naïve, but I believe it. Most athletes I know don’t talk about winning an Olympic medal as their best moment in sport.”

But at least those athletes had their moment at the Olympics. Megan Brown never got hers. For some reason here in Canada we were happy with the numbers – she was involved in a program that developed lots of champions and Olympians, so society was OK with turning a blind eye to the devastating issues that were also happening.

Are we ready to truly embrace running’s #MeToo moment? Right now the Canadian track and field community are trying to find out. I sure hope we are.

Kevin Mackinnon, the founding editor of Triathlon Magazine Canada, has been a senior editor with Canadian Running magazine since its inception. A former professional triathlete, Mackinnon works in the endurance industry as a coach, race announcer, editor, writer and photographer.

“The independence of the Athletics Canada Commissioner’s that so many athletics coaches is also because there is

—Ann Peel