I’m scanning the horizon at Windsor Park Nordic Centre, looking for a particular orange parka to reappear. It’s an absolutely perfect day for this cross-country skiing event, the temperature is just -14 C with a slight breeze. I’m standing among people I’ve never met, yet they’re all shouting my son’s name, calling him toward the finish line. In front of me, someone else’s kid falls down and is struggling to get back up. I bend over and hook my arm under his and put him back on his skis. I know his name, too, because it was shouted with similar enthusiasm by the same crowd that shouted my son’s name.
I am struck by how instantaneously this community has coalesced in just a few hours on the snowy golf course. The acceptance and inclusion through sport is immediate, especially with this group.
Sport, for me, had always been associated with high performance. I had a family member who competed at the university level, and we would gather around the TV for Winnipeg Jets and Blue Bombers games when I was growing up. We even had a couple of Don Cherry’s Rock’em Sock’em Hockey videotapes. But I was never much of an athlete myself. I was the kid sitting down in the middle of the soccer pitch braiding a dandelion crown while the game roared around me. I found my home in the arts, in dance and music, and later, in writing.
MIKE SUDOMA / FREE PRESS
Musicians and friends take part in the 5th annual Catfish Cup hockey tournament on the Assiniboine River in the Wolseley neighbourhood on Sunday afternoon. The hockey tournament featuring members of the local band Dirty Catfish Brass Band, along with their friends and fellow musicians, is an annual community event held at one of the man-made rinks along the Assiniboine River.
Sport, and especially professional sport, seems inextricable from politics, masculinity and capitalism, and events of recent weeks have only served to underscore this. Throughout the week, the top stories on the Free Press website have been ones criticizing the behaviour of Jets goalie Connor Hellebuyck’s post-Olympic behaviour. From the locker room to the White House, our hometown pride fizzled into skepticism and then dismay.
The political entanglements of sport are also threatening to make a can of worms of the FIFA World Cup this summer. Unrest in Mexico, war in Iran, and a southern neighbour being spurned by travellers across the globe sets the stage for a contentious month and change for soccer fans and the world of sport.
I was fortunate to go see the Jets best the Chicago Blackhawks earlier this week, and from my perch up in the nosebleeds I took note of the empty seats. This is a form of entertainment that is becoming out of reach for many a workaday Winnipegger. If, like me, your perspective of the competition is only ever from this bird’s-eye view, it’s easy to forget the power of sport to celebrate all abilities, genders and levels of performance.
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So I was suitably humbled at Windsor Park, when the origins and true heart of sport and community were dispensed in such quantity it was impossible to ignore. This day of skiing was part of the multi-day Special Olympics Manitoba Winterfest, which also featured snowshoeing, speedskating and other events, and attracted athletes from across the province.
My son is also on a swim team with Special Olympics, and I recall saying after his first provincial swim meet that I wanted to live in the world of the Special Olympics, so pervasive was the aura of inclusive community, the focus on judgment-free excellence and the pursuit of individual growth and success.
This is one place where sport dissolves the barriers of ability and experience, where the spirit of competition is transmuted into a spirit of communal achievement. Success is attained by everyone at all times, and an unspoken pact of trust and support buttresses every relationship. It’s a reminder we can re-make a world where working together is a joy and not a competition, where participation in that joy is freely given and where people come together to support one another’s achievements as a matter of course.
REBECCA CHAMBERS / FREE PRESS PHOTO
Spend any time at a Special Olympics event and you’ll enter a world where working together is a joy, not a competition, and where supporting one another is a matter of course.
Considering the dark days of uncertainty we are currently living through, it would serve us well to consider that those whom many consider to be less able than the rest of us may actually be leaders in a better way of living, restoring some sense of reciprocal accountability to one another in this “me-first” era. And perhaps, even if that’s not immediately attainable, we could shore up our resolve for a better world with the Special Olympics athlete oath: “Let me win. But if I cannot win, let me be brave in the attempt.”
winnipegfreepress.com/rebeccachambers
Rebecca explores what it means to be a Winnipegger by layering experiences and reactions to current events upon our unique and sometimes contentious history and culture. Her column appears alternating Saturdays.
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