Arnott stands alone

Janet Arnott was studying the piece of creased white paper in her hand. It was the list of every curler and coach competing in the women’s draw at the Sochi Olympics, and through no doing of her own, Arnott, the Canadian coach, stood out among the rest.

“So,” she said, before drifting back to the page for a moment.

Arnott had just left the ice at the Ice Cube Curling Centre, where the Manitoba-based rink she coaches had 80 minutes to test out the facilities on Sunday. Jennifer Jones, the skip, is a four-time Canadian champion who will make her Olympic debut on Monday.

There are 10 teams in the competition. The list in Arnott’s hand included the names of all 50 female curlers, and all 10 team coaches — working with the United States and Russia and China and points in between.

“So yeah,” Arnott said as she looked up from the page. “I guess I am still the only woman coach.”

She had also been the only female coach at the Scotties Tournament of Hearts last winter in Kingston, Ont., and did not remember facing another team with a female coach on the ladder of regional competition that led to the Canadian championship. Her name always seems to stand out on such lists.

“It still eludes me as to why that is,” she said.

Last year, an official with the Canadian Curling Association estimated that up to 90 per cent of the country’s elite-level rinks employed men as coaches. There were more women in the junior ranks, but they were still in the minority.

There does not seem to be a definitive explanation for the disparity.

There are anecdotes, mainly suggesting men are more willing or likely to surrender time away from family and other commitments at home.

“The men, the coaches would still have the same sort of thing, but I just tend to think that the women just tend to stay more at home,” Arnott said with a shrug.

“I don’t know what else to suggest. It’s a huge commitment on a personal level for women.”