She is one of 121 boxers who took off their boxing gloves to write a letter to federal sports minister Pascale St-Onge calling for the resignation of Boxing Canada’s director of high performance.
I encourage other athletes to speak up and I hope that others will have the courage to do so, she explains to Radio-Canada Sports. The truth must be said. You have to describe the reality.
The reality is what she describes as a climate of fear that has reigned at Boxing Canada for too long, she says. And the artificer of the tensions and the unhealthy climate would be Daniel Trépanier.
Daniel Trépanier, in the center of the photo.
Photo: The Canadian Press/Andrew Vaughan
He must leave office immediately, says the 38-year-old woman. I trust the boxing community can get over it, but it has to go. Athletes can’t take it anymore.
Not only do we not trust him, but fear has set in, says Da Silva. It’s not physical fear, but it is fear. You are always thinking about your actions, about what you say. It’s hard to verbalize it and it’s hard to admit you’re scared when you’re a proud athlete. When one is not free to speak, it is an environment of fear.
Boxing Canada replied to Radio-Canada Sports that it was unable to provide a reaction from Daniel Trépanier in response to the letter. The principal concerned did not respond to our message.
Da Silva’s assertions are, however, corroborated by Stéphan Larouche, president of the BoxeMontréal.com club in which Da Silva trained for a long time.
Stéphan Larouche speaks on the management of Boxing Canada
He leads a regime of terror and when you talk too much, you are put aside, illustrates Larouche. Our gym produced several champions who joined the national team and we realized that they were put aside, because we were not in the right gang.
The working climate is unpleasant, it does not look at the athletes as it should and it leaves them to themselves, he adds. Communication is zero, it is spoken by email. He threatens his athletes with suspension when they don’t fill out paperwork.
Larouche also questions Trépanier’s management style and denounces the subjectivity of the evaluation of athletes selected for the national team.
He uses his right of scrutiny to the detriment of qualifying tournaments because he wants submissive athletes who will not challenge decisions and that is very unhealthy. You can’t walk into a boxing gym if you’re not happy to be there.
One of the boxers of the Larouche club, Cedrick Belony, believes that he was unfairly ranked 4th in the last national team selection process. A process that would have relied on combat videos and a contest of push-ups and frog jumps, commonly known as burpees.
Belony, however, claims to have recently beaten boxers better ranked than him.
I find that he is incompetent, slice the young man of 23 years. If you want to win Olympic medals, you have to choose people right. How many years has it been since Canada had an Olympic medal? We played three games with him without a medal. He is not competent. There is something wrong.
Boxer Cedrick Belony criticizes national team selection criteria.
Stephan Larouche accuses Trépanier of putting the odious setbacks of Canadian boxing on the backs of athletes.
We thought he was going to jump after the Tokyo Games disaster, but the board is scared of him. Everyone protects their buttocks. He justifies his results in front of Own the Podium by showing graphs that illustrate data on the strength or speed of athletes. Each poor performance, we blame the athlete and it’s been like that for at least three Games.
Canada has not won a medal in boxing since the Games in Atlanta in 1996.
Myriam Da Silva’s Tokyo nightmare
Myriam Da Silva has almost no memory of her visit to the Tokyo Games last summer and the months that preceded what was to be her life’s dream. She feels Trépanier ruined what should have been a memorable experience.
She kept her Olympic clothes, but does not remember receiving them.
The months of June to September are a black hole for her. They no longer exist in his head. After her defeat, she remained locked in her room for 24 hours without eating or drinking. She intended to continue boxing, but opted for retirement, broken and drained.
Boxer Myriam Da Silva describes a climate of fear within the national federation.
When she joined the national training center, Da Silva had to mourn her longtime coach, Danielle Bouchard. Then, a few months before the Games, Boxing Canada fired the coach with whom it had started working and building a relationship of trust.
His replacement, John Mbumba, was expelled from Tokyo by the national federation after making disparaging remarks about delegation athletes on social media after their defeat.
Daniel Trépanier makes all the decisions internally and that creates isolation by taking away coaches with whom we feel good for no reason, denounces Da Silva. Then, nothing is done when it is mentioned that it does not work. It is always up to the athlete to adapt to the functioning in place. We are not listened to.
Da Silva says in particular that she was forced to deliver training rounds with Tammara Thibeault who is 15 pounds heavier than her, risking her physical and mental health.
Then when I asked not to train alone because things weren’t going well with my trainer, I wasn’t listened to, she adds. I was alone in a gym with a trainer who didn’t bond well. This is certainly not optimal preparation for the Olympics.
With this cry from the heart, Myriam Da Silva hopes for a better sharing of power between the national federations, the Canadian Olympic Committee and the other mechanisms put in place to defend the interests of the athletes.
She feels that she and her colleagues are the biggest losers when a federation is both judge and jury.
Reference-ici.radio-canada.ca