When Beckie Scott warns that “sport leadership is not interested” in accountability, alarm bells should start ringing. And when she adds that “it’s the public who have to hold sport accountable” because some of its most prominent organizations have been unable to “withstand the pressure of the business interests” – then it is time for us all to wake up and listen.
It’s no exaggeration for Scott to say that she has “lived sport at every level”. The 51-year-old has sat in sport’s loftiest boardrooms and stood atop its most coveted podiums. She’s been an inextinguishable ray of integrity in the maelstrom of sport’s bitterest scandals, and touched thousands of young lives through a sport charity she founded. Canada’s most decorated cross-country skier, a former member of the International Olympic Committee (IOC), and ex-Chair of the World Anti-Doping Agency’s (WADA) Athlete Committee – few have “had a foot in the dark side of sport and a foot in the light side” quite like Beckie Scott.
The 17-time ski World Cup medalist is quick to admit that over her career she became “cynical about sport administration, the business of sport, and what was happening behind closed doors”. Delve into her history, and it is easy to see why. In 2018, Scott resigned from WADA’s Compliance Review Committee in protest of the Russian anti-doping agency’s deeply controversial reinstatement, after WADA leaders covertly softened key conditions for Russian re-compliance in the wake of vast state-sponsored doping. At a subsequent WADA executive committee meeting, she was the victim of alleged bullying.
“So many people forget why we’re really here so quickly in the boardrooms”
Scott is now back at the heart of sport’s administrative underbelly as CEO of Canadian Cross Country Skiing. But does she still bear any scars from her experience inside its murkier cavities? “I wouldn’t say scars, but I would say lessons learned. I saw so many people lose sight of the athletes and forget why we’re really here so quickly in the boardrooms, and just get so wrapped up in the business, the politics and the end goals which had nothing to do with the values of sport.”
Scott joined WADA in 2005, a year after receiving one of the most unprecedented gold medals in Olympic history. Her historic Salt Lake City bronze soon became silver before finally turning gold almost two and a half years after her race when the two Russian skiers who initially finished ahead of her were found guilty of doping. North America’s first ever Olympic gold in cross country skiing was awarded at a Vancouver Art Gallery. As Scott candidly puts it: “Nobody had ever dealt with a situation like that before.”
The scandal-shrouded experience ignited a perhaps uniquely “strong sense of fairness, equality and equity” in the Canadian, and a zeal for advocacy that would impel the BBC to describe her as “the nearest thing the Olympic and Paralympic athlete community has to a figurehead”. So how does someone who was at the forefront of clean sport reflect on a contemporary landscape where the stench of foul play still lingers?
“They’ve either left or been discouraged, or they’ve been silenced in some way, shape or form”
“For a while (at WADA), it really felt like the good guys were making progress. And then I think it really shifted after Russia. The decision making and the principles behind anti-doping changed. I know that they just couldn’t withstand the pressure of the business interests”.
In an ominous statement for the future of clean sport, Scott admonishes: “There’s too few people left to hold them accountable and really drive change. They’ve either left or been discouraged, or they’ve been silenced in some way, shape or form.”
It all begs the question – is WADA still fit for purpose? In January, the organisation was rocked by the US government’s refusal to pay $3.6 million in annual dues after 23 Chinese athletes who tested positive for Trimetazidine remained eligible to compete at the Paris Olympics. This summer, suspected bias in WADA’s three-month suspension for tennis superstar Jannik Sinner led Stan Wawrinka to declare “I don’t believe in a clean sport anymore”.
“WADA is unduly influenced by the IOC”
Scott has no hesitation in saying: “I think (WADA) are going that way. The Chinese swimming scandal last prior to Paris really exemplified that. It should have been an open and shut case and […] it got completely distorted. I think that WADA is unduly influenced by the IOC, and that has just severely injured their ability to be effective.”
Elected to the IOC’s Athletes’ Commission by her fellow Olympians in 2006, Scott is no stranger to the inner workings of the Games. Having also sat on the board of directors for 2010’s Vancouver Winter Olympics, she laments the veil of controversy that now shrouds the world’s greatest sporting spectacle: “Prior to the Olympics we almost always hear of something scandalous or something that’s happened. The shine has been taken off the Olympic rings for sure. Over time I think people have become generally more cynical and less trusting of the IOC in particular.”
And yet for someone who has both witnessed and also lived the consequences of corruption in sport, Scott refuses to be disillusioned: “It is easy to get cynical and pessimistic about sport and particularly sport leadership, but then all you to do is turn to the athletes to feel hopeful again.” Speaking in an Olympic context, Scott’s sanguine words would resonate with even the most jaded of fans: “Once the sports start, it becomes all about the athletes again. It’s the athletes who inspire and it’s the athletes who really demonstrate the spirit of humanity. You’re happy for them or you’re crying for them. They kind of save it”
Beyond the charges of malpractice that have dogged its top bodies, a new spectre is haunting clean sport – The Enhanced Games. Next May, athletes will have the chance to use performing enhancing drugs to win up to $1 million should they break a world record at the deeply divisive competition, set to be held in ‘Sin City’ Las Vegas. Scott is absolutely unequivocal about the entrepreneurial venture: “It totally erodes all the principles of sport, the fair competition, the contest” – the very values she became synonymous with upholding.
“Prior to the Olympics we almost always hear of something scandalous”
But to the former WADA Athlete Committee Chair, the prospect isn’t just unethical, it’s highly dangerous. “The Enhanced Games is incredibly irresponsible and reckless. Anti-doping was created out of a number of moral principles. One of which is to protect the integrity sport, but the other is to protect the health and wellbeing of young people.” Her impassioned plea against the Games bleeds humanity: “Many athletes are at an incredibly impressionable time in their lives and they really run the risk of being drawn in to activities like doping […] without protection and any care for their long term health and wellbeing.” It boils down to safeguarding human beings “who may be vulnerable to the pressures from corruption and outside sources […] and then something like an Enhanced Games just glorifies that.”
While her anti-doping activism has been near-peerless, Beckie Scott’s inspirational footprint goes well beyond illicit substances. Even while she was navigating “the geopolitics and the discord” in her capacity at WADA, Scott was simultaneously living “the double life”. In 2017, amidst “travelling to these meetings in Geneva or Tokyo or wherever around the world”, the ever-remarkable Scott founded Spirit North, a charity that uses sport and physical activity to empower over 18,500 young Indigenous Canadians each year.
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Scott has long been distinguished by her singular social conscience, and upon reading Canada’s seminal 2015 ‘Truth and Reconciliation’ report – which concluded that the government implemented a “policy of cultural genocide” towards Indigenous people – she “just couldn’t go home and say that’s not my problem”. Indigenous life expectancy remains a staggering 19 years shorter than the general population’s in Scott’s home state of Alberta, and Scott simply “couldn’t look away”. “I felt like, okay, I have something to give here. I have the knowledge of the power of sport; I myself was shaped and transformed by sport. Why wouldn’t we offer that to kids who are so marginalized and so vulnerable?”
Once, Scott was the kid with a pair of skis and a dream, now she runs Canadian cross-country skiing. She’s been plunged into sport’s shady underworld, and now uses sport to uplift ostracized children. The mother-of-two even commentates on the very races she used to win. Not many have experienced the flaws of sport quite like Beckie Scott, so why does its hold on her seem to remain as irresistible as ever? “It’s just the just unlimited opportunity sport has to continue to uplift and transform, to connect people to positive outcomes, bring people together and create a sense of belonging for kids. The mental health, the physical health, the bigger picture of sport and what it really contributes to us as a society, is all inherently positive. That’s why I keep coming back.”
