Women athletes were repeatedly demeaned and disrespected.
Being selected for a U.S. National team is a lifetime aspiration for many. The proper training, coaching, and lifestyle choices make it possible to achieve this goal. In 2014–after a lifetime dedicated to the sport of canoe and kayak–I finally got my chance to join the ranks of the U.S. National team. I was competing in the category to maintain the gender balance in sport for the 2020+1 Olympic event.
It was a great honor for me, not only as a long-time sport participant but also because I had served proudly in the United States Army as an airborne soldier. I was overjoyed to make the team, and many veterans organizations supported my selection.
But, much to my disappointment, the climate of the U.S. national team was discriminatory for women in the C1 W category. The retention rates at the national team level were low. One reason was that the coaches refused to assist women in that category. Our coaches were all from Europe, and women’s equality favored male athletes.
Coached in excess, the men were believed to be more talented, but their performance proved otherwise. The male athletes didn’t produce, including failing to qualify for a boat spot for the current Olympic event. Meanwhile, our women were told that we were not the priority, and they were often barred from attending training camp.
The coach told us that he was being paid to coach male athletes only. I found that unnerving because, as a veteran, I knew that the Veterans Administration had allocated grant funding to enable veteran athletes to be trained for and participate in Paralympic and Olympic sports. There were funds available for me to participate.
Photo courtesy of the International Canoe Federation)
When our women were able to tap National team resources, it was only for lodging at world-level events. The rooms were booked under the male athletes’ names, and we had to ask for the room key under the name of a male athlete. The coaches claimed it was because the women’s c1 class wouldn’t be official until the 2020 Olympics. Still, it was demeaning to have women lodged under mens’ names.
There was more, too. The head coach made consistently derogatory comments about women during practices, openly said, I might add. He would also take measures to disable women from performing. For example, I was invited to a training camp at the London event site to prepare for the world championships and assumed significant personal expense to travel there. But, when I arrived there, I found that he had sold the water time that was to have been booked for me to a male athlete from Canada. To get water time, I had to negotiate with the Chinese national team for a slot during their session. That transaction cost double the price.
Even though other national teams came to my aid, the coach spent most of his time training his son–a heavy drinker who would often bring women from other teams to his hotel room. He was never disciplined for this behavior, even when his roommate complained that his evening endeavors kept him awake and prevented him from racing well the next day. The coach’s son could not make it past qualification heats.
There was sexual misconduct, too. A male athlete who represented the U.S. at several Olympic events made efforts to crawl into bed with one of our younger female athletes. The girl was under 16 at the time, and the male was well into his 20s. The girl reported this behavior to the hi-performance director, but nothing was ever done to the male athlete. He still is being allowed to represent the national team.
Year after year, I observed and experienced many acts of discrimination while I competed on the U.S. National team. The program had become an embarrassment, and the women were disrespected. When other teams noted this, our coaches made excuses about ‘not having enough funds.”
I knew differently because I knew how much the Veterans Administration had allocated to the sport’s organization. I had seen the Adaptive sports grant funding recipient lists. The ACA was at the top of the list and did not even seem to have paralympic training programs, even for veterans who were physically disabled.
When I made efforts to address this issue when I went to the OKC boathouse foundation Olympic training site to train (after seeing a male athlete who never served sitting in a wheelchair with a US Army sign on the back of it), I began to take action. The young man was being given the VA grant and purchased equipment to train in, and the coach was working exclusively with this athlete to exclude any other vet that came to train. The guy had never served, and a fraudulent image was being created.
The last straw was the summer I had to spend sleeping in my boat bag, surviving on the food I could forage. The males seemed to be fully supported. I certainly hoped that the organization had not been using VA funds to support its entire national team. It did appear that way, and that (as far as I was concerned) took the cake.
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Tracy Hines is a former U.S. National Canoe and Kayak Team member in Freestyle and Slalom Kayak disciplines. She was an Olympic Team selection in 2012 and 2016.
Ms. Hines is a U.S. Army Airborne soldier (retired) and holds a B.A. in sport science from Western State College and an M.S. from Montreat College. She participated in Deep Creek 2014 World Championships, Bryson City Worlds 2013, New Zealand Worlds 1999, World Championships Pau France 2017, and World Cups in London, CZ Republic, Liptosky Miclaus, 2016 British Open, 2015 Pan Am Championships, Italian National Championships 2017, and Pan Am Championships 2009.
“I recently requested that my athlete profile be removed from the Team USA USOC website due to the issues outlined in this article. I did this in response to grave concerns regarding equality for women. No conditions of equality existed. In good conscience, I could not associate myself as a sports ambassador and Olympic representative with an organization that failed to meet the objective of creating equitable conditions for women. I trained and raced for a lifetime to be able to represent my country, and recovered from an injury sustained on an Airborne operation to be able to do so. Equality for women needs to exist if a sports organization expects me to represent it in the Games. I served proudly in a military force where women are being trained to be in duties that require us to perform up to the required standards on the battlefield (men and women), including in frontline duties. Women continue to blaze the path in all areas of the military, and conditions have changed for women in the Armed services due to much work. I am simply asking, with boldness, that sports organizations associated with the United States of America follow suit.”
