Sport a human, not political, tool
Strengthening Olympic hockey reason behind N. Korea trip for Hayley Wickenheiser
CALGARY (CP) — Hayley Wickenheiser was conflicted about the unified Korean women’s hockey team at last month’s Winter Olympics.
She felt the burden of easing geopolitical tensions had been unfairly heaped upon women who just wanted to play hockey.
But witnessing what that team meant to Koreans — and a chance meeting with the players on a beach — changed her mind and put her on a plane to North Korea.
If women’s hockey was a symbol of peace, Wickenheiser wanted it to last beyond the closing ceremonies. “It couldn’t die there,” she said Thursday. The four-time Olympic gold medallist in women’s hockey travelled to the North Korean capital of Pyeongyang earlier this month following the Winter Games in South Korea.
Wickenheiser ran practices for North Korea’s national women’s and men’s teams. She reunited with some of the women she’d met at the Olympics. North and South Korea agreed in late January to combine players from both sides of the demilitarized zone on one host women’s team.
The International Olympic Committee quickly approved it, even though it meant strangers were suddenly teammates.
Wickenheiser, the all-time leading scorer on Canada’s women’s hockey team who retired last year, went to the Pyeongchang Games in February as a member of the IOC’s athletes’ commission.
She happened to meet the Korean team on a beach prior to their first game.
Coach Sarah Murray asked Wickenheiser to say a few impromptu words of encouragement to the players. Wickenheiser sensed the North Koreans were tense that day.
The outpouring of emotion when Korea’s women played under a unified flag convinced Wickenheiser a door had opened, however.
Even though Wickenheiser was in the midst of trips to India to develop women’s hockey there, the 39-year-old from Shaunavon, Sask., wanted ice time with the North Koreans.
“I wanted to show those women that someone cared after the fact about them as human beings and as hockey players, not as part of a larger agenda,” she explained.
Wickenheiser admitted she had to overcome her fears of the unknown on the flight from Beijing to Pyeongyang.
She was chaperoned everywhere in North Korea. Her contact with the public was limited to hockey players, most of whom don’t know who Sidney Crosby is.
Wickenheiser had consulted with Canada’s Foreign Affairs Department and the Prime Minister’s Office about travelling to the secretive hermit kingdom.
“I wasn’t there to create world peace,” she said. “I can’t speak to any of the human rights stuff. I’m very well aware I saw what they wanted me to see those two days in Pyeongyang.”
Wickenheiser did talk to officials about the possibility of getting a North Korean team to her annual hockey festival in November.
“When I got to the rink, I was a little bit late for the start of the men’s practice,” she said. “I threw my skates on, I had jeans on, I went out and started running practice for the national team.”
Wickenheiser is aware hockey is a small bridge to North Korea that could be destroyed by larger political forces. But she hopes the bridge holds.
“I believe in the power of sport,” she said. “It can move the world forward.”