Canada Deserves Penalty After Olympic Drone Spying

Who could be so stupid as to fly an unauthorized drone over the Paris Olympics?

Furthermore, who could want to win a soccer match so badly as to spy with that drone on the opposing team?

Well, Canada did. And what the people who did this accomplished was badly embarrass the country, the team and the Olympic movement. Other than that, not much.

The Paris Olympics has spent millions of Euros on security and has brought in officers and equipment from around the world to augment French operations. The worst possible scenario is something along the lines of the terrorist attack at Munich games of 1972.

All that security and some dimwit decides to launch a drone to spy on the New Zealand women’s soccer team before Thursday’s match which Canada won 2-1. French security must be having fits about the carelessness of this and the fact that all those preparations went for naught by the actions of Canadian team officials wanting to win a game more than honouring the country and putting the fear of God into French officials.

This is not an issue of just wanting for sportsmanship, bad as that might be. This is about the security of the athletes at the games. One wonders what an overreaction by French officials might have caused. The smart and competent people in this fiasco are a part of French security that kept its cool and the Kiwis who played by the rules.

The villains? Canada.

New Zealand has a good club but they are not exactly a team of Messis. Canada could win without cheating but Canadian officials cheated anyway. The team administration needs to give its collective head a shake.

This is bad but it gets worse. Check this out.

Canada Soccer CEO Kevin Blue said in a release “additional information has come to our attention regarding previous drone use against opponents, predating the Paris 2024 Olympic Games.”

Canadian team head coach Bev Priestman has been suspended for the rest of the games and until a Canadian review of these events is completed.

This is carelessness on a grand scale. Canada punched a hole in security for the games, acted in an unsportsmanlike manner and apparently has been at this for a while.

You couldn’t fault Olympic officials for throwing the Canadian women’s team out of the Olympics. That would punish the wrong people … namely the athletes … but sometimes this is how these things unfold. A terrible action for a good group of wonderful competitors who are hoping to participate in a thrill of a lifetime.

No doubt Canadian officials are fighting desperately to keep the team in the games. But when you cross the line from unsportmanship to jeopardizing security, it’s hard to imagine the International Olympic Committee reacting in a mild way.

Canadian officials have jeopardized the women’s team even being able to compete.

That’s a cruel thing to do to these wonderful athletes.

But Canada went too far and now will face the consequences which are likely to be harsh.

So they should be.

Ken Gray

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