The Bobbie Rosenfeld Award for Canada’s top female athlete is likely still to come and there is a good chance she’ll be part of the Canadian Press Team of the Year Award as well. Knowing what we do of Christine Sinclair she’ll likely appreciate the latter most of all.
Canadian soccer fans were calling yesterday Sinclair Day in reference to her jersey number of 12 and the date of 12/12/12. They might as well extend it to Sinclair month – still works with the 12, after all.
Today she was named Sportsnet’s Athlete of the Year. Ho hum, right? What’s another award in a season of awards? She’s already got the big one in the Lou Marsh, so why give more attention to another lesser one?
Because this one might be the most telling of all, that’s why.
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Make no mistake, the Lou Marsh Award is the most prestigious. It’s the award that people will remember years from now and the award that fuels the most debate. It also has the history to back it up. Since 1936, the top Canadian athlete has won the Lou Marsh. That a soccer player should finally get recognized by winning it is a very significant statement about the place of the sport in Canadian society. It has a place, basically. A Canadian time traveler from 1953 would be very confused by Sinclair winning, but, then again, that time traveler would be very confused by a lot of what they see in modern Canada.
That’s a good thing. But, it’s not the purpose of this article today. This is about what the decade old Sportsnet award says about Sinclair’s year. To understand that you have to understand the cultural differences between the Lou Marsh and the much younger Sportsnet award.
Whereas the Lou Marsh represents a sort of high-brow evaluation of who deserves to win the honour and is based on a somewhat arbitrary set of criteria decided upon by the country’s serious sports journalists, the Sportsnet award is more about the gut reaction of Joe Sportsfan.
Joe Sportsfan. Jane Sportsfan plays a limited role in the selection. Although there is an element of review from the Sportsnet editorial staff, the fan vote – driven largely through social media – is the biggest factor in the win.
Georges St-Pierre has won the thing three times.
Nothing against St-Pierre, who is a wonderful athlete and is underappreciated in the more serious sports media, but his demographic doesn’t exactly cross over with Sinclair’s.
Yet she still won. In a vote that is marketed to mostly 20-something men, a female soccer player still carried the day. Sinclair’s performance at the Olympics had that kind of reach. A voting block that had three times previously voted for a man who kicks people in the head for a living, selected a woman who kicks a soccer ball for hers.
A woman who lets her skills talk for her and stays true to herself. A woman who has reached mainstream consciousness without using sex appeal (not because it would be wrong to do so, but because it’s not something that speaks to her morales). And a women that doesn't play hockey.
That’s remarkable and, to me, speaks to just how incredible her 2012 season was.