Beckie Scott: still making history

Truly history-making athletes are few and far between. Nordic skier Beckie Scott qualifies, beyond dispute. What’s quietly amazing about the Canmore, Alberta native though, is that she is still changing the world, fully twenty years after becoming the first North American woman to win an Olympic medal in her sport. It took a while, but that medal became Gold, as the worm turned.

Most athletes have known for years about Scott’s standout integrity in a notoriously doping-plagued sport. The rest of the world woke up to her commitment to fair play when they saw her in the 2017 Oscar-winning documentary ‘Icarus’. Beckie Scott, alongside hurdling great Edwin Moses, did everything in her power to steer the World Anti Doping Agency toward binding rulings for clean competition. In the eyes of many athletes, both WADA and the IOC are still coming up short in that regard. But Scott’s principled fight for fair play kept the pressure and the spotlight on. And if the world ever gets the upper hand on cheating nations and athletes, it will be Scott’s work that led the charge.

Which brings Scott to her latest history-making work for fairness. Nearly five years ago, she threw her energy into Spirit North, a nonprofit working with indigenous communities to give young people opportunities for sport that they would otherwise be denied. Why is this historic? Because it’s working. Every year, around 6300 Indigenous kids are getting a first chance to try a variety of land -based sports. Skiing, canoeing, mountain biking… the list of sports, and communities joining the program, just keeps growing and growing.

Talking about this today with Anastasia, Scott makes clear that a strong moral compass has been her guide all along. An analogy that served her WADA years was that doping was like being a starting gate that is ten meters ahead of everyone else. Scott points to the convergence of historic, systemic factors and practices that have relegated many young indigenous kids to a starting gate ten meters behind other Canadians.

For Beckie Scott, it’s a clear matter: a deep unfairness needs to be redressed. Making history again? That just goes with the job. And on a minor note, Beckie Scott is helping us make history yet again…By our calculations, she is the one hundredth guest on CBC Sports’ Player’s Own Voice podcast.