The reasoning behind not sending a team
Hello everyone,
To begin, want to thank everyone who has supported this petition so far. To all signers who wanted to see this decision change, I need to inform you that sadly Athletics Canada will not be changing their minds on sending a team to this event.
They did note that they feel sorry for all Athletes affected, And I do believe that with the reasons they came up with they thought it was the correct decision. I don't agree with a good deal of the reasoning and I'll publish my responses below.
I believe it is now the best course of action to ask Athletics Canada that all athletes that would have qualified for this event be recognized with some form of "honorary" team Canada status. I will also be asking that they get a portion of the national team kit so they can receive a small portion of the national team experience they have missed out on. It's no fault of their own that Athletics Canada, unfortunately, couldn't participate in the U20 Pan Am games. This new request is my way of ensuring that they get something, anything that would aid them in athletic endeavours they may pursue in the future. So that they don't walk away with nothing from this situation.
In a recent communication with Athletics Canada, the reasons for not sending a team were outlined and are now shown below. These are the National Team Committees' rationale for not sending a team to this event. I mainly take issue with the "Regarding equitable chance to qualify for the team" point.
It can not be ignored that Athletics Canada seems to would have had great difficulty finding staff to lead this event.
This event has been known to be planned to take place for a while so it doesn't seem out of the possibility to plan alternative staff months in advance.
Regarding equitable chance to qualify for the team:
- As you know every athlete in Canada has been impacted one way or another by COVID. Not only has training been interrupted but so has competition, especially for younger athletes.
- The vast majority of athletes in this age group are at school and/or are starting university. The October date clashes with term / semester dates. Many have had their education interrupted or compromised due to COVID. We believe that most athletes and/or their parents will not wish them to lose another week of education at this time.
- This competition was originally planned to take place October 22-24, 2021 in Concepcion, Chile. We only had confirmation of the new date and venue on August 19, 2021. The late confirmation meant that there was no way to create a Criteria during the regular season.
- The late confirmation combined with COVID restrictions meant that there was no way a qualification competition, “trials” or “nationals” or similar could have been set up.
- For these reasons we don’t believe that all Canadians will have an equitable chance to qualify for this team.
Response:
Yes, the younger age group of Canadian athletes did have their competition cycle interrupted by COVID. Despite this, a handful of U20 athletes have made standard for national team selection. Although no official announcement was made by Athletics Canada, U20 athletes were indeed preparing for selection for the U20 Pan Am Championships in addition to the U20 World Athletics Championships. Most of them did mainly due to it appearing on the national team declaration form. In a situation where you did decide to send a team and released a standard after the regular season was complete, everyone still had an equal chance to compete and perform. The fact the standard came after doesn't change that.
Personal anecdote is not fact for everyone, but I’ve asked a few coaches of athletes I believe may have been selected for a U20 Pan Am team if their athlete would be willing to miss school time to participate in this event and every one of them said yes. Opportunities such as this only come so many times in an athlete's lifetime and opposite to what you believe, they are willing to lose one week of school for it.
Regarding representing Canada to the best of their ability:
- As noted above, this competition is now planned for late October in Concepcion, Chile. That is months after the regular competition season has finished. Coaches and athletes have not had time to structure their season to match that date. For younger athletes this is the correct period for base training and preparing for indoor competition and/or the following summer’s events.
- The late October date means that many of our regular U20 team coaches will be unavailable due to work commitments at schools and universities.
- The late October date means that many of our regular employed staff will be unavailable since this is the time of year that we have post-Championships debriefs and must present formal plans and budgets for next year to our funding agents. As you will understand, this is a bigger and more serious exercise at the end of one Olympiad and leading into a new one.
- This age group, this location and in many way this date, demand experienced team staff to look after athletes, however experienced staff will simply not be available.
- For these reasons we don’t believe that the team will be able to compete to the best of its ability at this event.
Response:
Another question I asked those coaches was; would your athlete be able to modify their training plan to be ready for this event? They also answered yes. I agree that at this time is the year, most athletes are in base season training. The only thing is athletes and coaches would have been able to change their training and preparation cycles for this event. Athletes from many other countries are preparing and athletes from Canada would have done just the same. In COVID time, everyone has learned to become adaptable for odd timing of events such as this one.
Regarding the staffing, I can’t exactly counter that. If your regular coaches have obligations that mean they can’t come to this event, I wish that you would have prepared alternatives. I see that you said you didn’t receive a confirmation for the event until recently but the existence of this event has been on the NACAC calendar for months. It was known to be delayed to this date. Even if no confirmation was received does that mean no planning can take place? Also, the fact that it was postponed means that you from the beginning didn't plan for this event because it happened after the school year was starting / regular season was over? Other countries have coordinated accordingly and I wished that Athletics Canada had done so as well.
Regarding safety at the event:
- The Public Health Agency of Canada is continuing to advise travellers to avoid non-essential travel outside of Canada. We can work with that for “consenting adults” on senior teams many of whom are professional athletes – making travel to compete “essential”. However, justifying travelling outside of Canada for an age group team is much harder. ( https://travel.gc.ca/travelling/health-safety/travel-health-notices/221 )
- As mentioned above it will be hard to get any experienced staff to travel to an event on this date. Experienced doesn’t just mean helping athletes to compete well, it also means experience of keeping a group of young athletes safe while they are abroad. The official government of Canada travel advice for Chile states: “Exercise a high degree of caution in Chile due to ongoing demonstrations and civil unrest.” ( https://travel.gc.ca/destinations/chile )
- For the foreseeable future we will be requiring all travelling teams, staff and athletes, to be fully vaccinated against COVID. Therefore, our team will be at low risk of catching COVID. However they are not at zero risk.
- We know that Chile has been one of the most impacted countries in the world by COVID with nearly 3 times the death rate per 100,000 compared to Canada. Even if no one on our team catches COVID there we know that their health system has been under tremendous strain and may struggle to help our athletes if they fall ill or are seriously injured in other ways. If anyone does catch COVID in Chile then they will have to quarantine in Chile, in unknown medical conditions, until they are cleared to travel. We will have to leave staff to look after anyone left behind in this way (whether the effected person is staff or an athlete). In an ideal world this should be medical staff.
- We have struggled all year to get IST support (doctors, physios, etc) to travel with teams because they all rely on income from private clinics for income and those clinics have lost income and clients due to COVID. They simply can’t take extra time off work. No one wants to commit to staying for an extra period should a team member contract COVID.
- The majority of sports doctors have refused to travel with younger teams due to the COVID risks mentioned above.
- For these reasons we don’t believe that we can reasonably keep the team safe at this event.
Response:
COVID had been a barrier for many things and I can't deny that. COVID is also a thing that everyone has learned to work around.
Athletics Canada was willing to take and overcome these risks with the U20 WA junior team to another country severely impacted by COVID.
Again, the timing of this event has added extra challenge and it is not for me to say if they could have been overcome by Athletics Canada without proper insight. Again wished you had found alternative people, coordinated and planned in advance - months in advance.
Just to back up my reasoning on why I don't think COVID made this event out of the question for a junior team in this time period is, even parallel sports organizations seem to be able to attend international youth events.
https://www.badminton.ca/page/27697/Junior-Event-Selection-Criteria
This page shows that Badminton Canada is preparing to send a junior team to China in early October. Sure, the host country has a differing COVID rate but I'm sure they also faced similar COVID issues pertaining to sending a junior team to an international event. The situation is not equal, but it just shows that it is a possibility for a Canadian team.
That said, I can’t ignore that you have had trouble staffing and it was not something you could overcome quickly to facilitate this event.
I believe that Athletics Canada will be able to accommodate my new request and I hope that it will be able to give closure to all involved in the situation.
David