Virus exposes athletes’ thin Olympic margins
Any lingering hope Sarah Pavan had about competing on this season’s pro beach volleyball circuit was crushed the day city workers came to cut down the nets on Hermosa Beach.
Canada’s reigning world champion, with partner Melissa Humana-Parades, lives in the beachfront city just south of Los Angeles. Nets were taken down Saturday to discourage large gatherings.
“I had been going out and practising with my husband (Adam Schulz), just working on little things that I wanted to get better at,” Pavan said. “We have two of our own nets set up permanently where we train, so my husband had to boot it down to the beach to grab them, and he honestly just got there to take them down as the city was driving up to cut them. He saved them, but it was really, really sad.”
This week’s decision by the International Olympic Committee and Japanese organizers to postpone the Tokyo Games to 2021 was a relief to Canada’s athletes who weren’t going if the Games were held this summer.
But the current shutdown of sport worldwide means athletes aren’t earning prize money from competitions, nor performance bonuses from sponsors.
Pavan and Humana-Parades would have opened the season Thursday in Cancun, Mexico, but all FIVB tournaments scheduled for the next few weeks have been wiped out by the COVID-19 pandemic.
Tournament wins come with a paycheque of between US$20,000 to $40,000, plus crucial Olympic ranking points.
“It’s been really challenging,” HumanaParedes said. “Our FIVB season for 2020 is pretty much done, which is kind of surreal. Prize money from tournaments was my main source of income, and we no longer have them, so hopefully some of them will get postponed to a later time this year. But, again, there’s so many unknowns and I think everyone’s just in a financial pinch.”
Calgary-based sports agent Russell Reimer, who represents trampoline gymnast Rosie MacLennan and wrestler Erica Wiebe, among others, said Olympic athletes are entrepreneurs.
“They assume a lot of risk,” he said. “When you think of the potential payoffs for them for training in anonymity for four years and having to adjust to maybe a fifth year or an extended career, you wonder if they’ve planned appropriately or they’re financially in a position to do that.
“The younger you are, the less established you are, the more likely you are to get performance-heavy contracts. That would typically impact young athletes going into their first quad much more than established athletes.”
Some good news for Canadian athletes is a disruption isn’t expected in 2020-21 to their monthly Athletes Assistance Program cheques from Sport Canada, also known as “carding” money, that covers living expenses such as rent and food.
Own The Podium and Game Plan leaders said former Olympic paddler and Liberal MP Adam van Koeverden confirmed that Wednesday.
A senior card is $1,765 per month — $21,180 annually — and a development card is $1,060.
The AAP also provides supplementary money in the areas of tuition, relocation, child-care and retirement support with a limit of $13,000 per year.
Athletes who win a medal at the most recent Olympic and Paralympic Games, or world championship, are eligible for an additional $500 per month if their annual income is below $55,000.
Canadian sprint star Andre De Grasse makes a good chunk of his money through appearance fees, prize money and performance bonuses built into his contracts with major sponsors such as Puma.
But the first three legs of the prestigious Diamond League circuit have been postponed, and the remainder of the season is a big question mark.
“Just generally speaking, any of the higher-level professional track athletes are looking at five figures and, for some, six-figure losses for sure, based on the number of meets they would do in a season,” said sports marketing agent Brian Levine, who works with De Grasse and soccer star Christine Sinclair, among others.
Game Plan, an athlete wellness organization for Canada’s high-performance athletes, has scheduled a financial webinar for Friday.
“I do expect the amount of uncertainty right now is similar to anyone in Canada who is worried about their career,” Game Plan manager Thomas Hall said. “They are just trying to figure it out like everyone else, and uncertainty causes tension.”
Some athletes supplement their income with off-season jobs, which might not exist as the economy shuts down.
“Those people are potentially the hardest hit by this, so athletes will certainly feel it,” Hall said.
The Canadian Olympic Committee and Canadian Paralympic Committee drew a line in the sand last Sunday in announcing they wouldn’t send teams to the Tokyo Games this summer.
Canada and Australia were the first countries to pull their teams out. Within 36 hours, the IOC announced the Games would be pushed back to 2021. Reimer said he agrees Canada’s athletes improved their marketing power for 2021 by taking a bold stance.
“Just in the last four days we’ve seen so many athletes step up and fill the leadership vacuum outside the shadow of pros and make really compassionate statements about Canada,” Reimer said.
“The full narrative power of the Olympics and especially Team Canada now to build national identity and unity beyond the Games window, has never been stronger.
“We’ll see how brands respond to that.”