‘I just couldn’t sit in silence anymore’
HOCKEY LEGEND HAYLEY WICKENHEISER PLAYED LEAD ROLE IN CANADA’S OLYMPIC DECISION
Hayley Wickenheiser knew she had to speak out, because of what she was seeing in hospitals around Toronto. Wickenheiser, you may recall, is the greatest women’s hockey player ever, a four- time Olympic gold medallist, a living Canadian legend and, lately, an aspiring emergency room physician in the final year of a medical school degree.
Her medical mentors are the real pros, at least for now, and in recent weeks, as a medical rookie on scholastic rotation through the big hospitals, Wickenheiser could see the growing look of unease on doctors’ and nurses’ faces amid the mounting COVID-19 crisis.
“I was watching the stress and anxiety on the doctors and nurses I was working with, watching as these patients would come in, and seeing them worry over how to treat them,” Wickenheiser says.
At the same time, the former Olympian kept hearing stories, for example, of a 37- year- old, otherwise healthy airline pilot, being intubated after testing positive for the virus, or of the Italian Olympian, whose family member had died a lonely death, without them being able to care for them. Amid the snowballing daily cycle of alarm, and loss, and bleak virus- related news, practically everywhere, Wickenheiser put on one of the other hats she wears, in addition to being a medical student, as a member of the International Olympic Committee Athletes’ Commission. (For all you high achievers out there, she is also assistant director of player development with the Toronto Maple Leafs).
Commission members watch out for the athletes’ best interests. On March 17, a full six days before the Canadian Olympic Committee announced Canada would not be sending a team to Tokyo in July for the 2020 Olympics, Wickenheiser began typing a lengthy, now famous tweet.
“I just couldn’t sit in silence anymore,” she said. Her message, as an Olympic champion, and as someone with a front- row seat of an evolving COVID-19 situation in Canada, was that the IOC was acting irresponsibly, “given the state of humanity,” and given the Olympic governing body’s insistence that the Games would go ahead as planned. ( The IOC has since backed off from its position, and is now saying it needs a month to consider the fate of Tokyo 2020).
No matter: Canada officially followed Wickenheiser’s lead on Sunday, in a widely applauded move that didn’t come as any surprise to the former hockey player. After the tweet, the 41- year- old had multiple conversations with Tricia Smith, president of the COC. Smith understood what had to be done. The trick was finding the best approach.
“I may have started a ball rolling, but collectively Canada and Canada’s athletes have a much more powerful influence than me,” Wickenheiser says. “I am just really proud of what Canada did.”
Wickenheiser is no longer working hospital rotations. All the medical students have been sent home. Like most every other Canadian, she is given to bouts of worry over what has befallen the world. She has a 19- year- old son at the University of Victoria and two parents, both in their 70s, who returned, not so long ago, from a winter getaway in Maui and are now into their second week of self- isolation after being ordered there by their daughter.
“I put the fear of god into my parents, for sure,” Wickenheiser said, chuckling. “They are allowed to walk, to get outside — but they need to maintain social distance. I think all of us are worrying about our parents.”
Wickenheiser used to look for her family in the stands after winning an Olympic gold medal, a ritual she observed on four different occasions but that was never more poignant than after Canada beat the Americans 2- 0 in the final of the 2010 Games in Vancouver.
The crowd was a sea of red and white. Wickenheiser stood at the blueline, and remembers telling herself to look at each face, to read every handheld homemade sign, and drink in every detail, even the small ones, since it was an Olympic moment on home ice that was only ever going to happen once.
It is a moment Wickenheiser keeps returning to now, as politicians and health experts urge social distancing and self- isolation, and people continue to ignore them, while the ex-hockey player’s friends on the frontlines of hospital emergency rooms bear the stresses of seeing a pandemic unfold in real time. People are dying. More people are going to die. How many depends on Canadians playing by the rules, as unnatural as they seem.
“I stayed on the ice as long as I could in Vancouver, looking at the rink, at the people — at their faces,” she says. “We are not on the ice anymore, and we are not in the pool, or on a field or wherever, but we all need to be looking to each other.
“We need to be cheering for one another as Canadians. We are 37- million strong. We need to do the right thing.”