Hockey federations outside Canada and the United States have to pour resources into building the women's game to make it competitive and keep it in the Olympics, says the president of the one of the biggest women's hockey organizations in the world.
And Canada's former governor-general, Adrienne Clarkson, says she's prepared to use an ambassador as a courier to make sure the message gets through to International Olympic Committee president Jacques Rogge that women's hockey should remain in the Games.
"He hasn't yet responded," Clarkson said of a personal letter she sent to Rogge in response to his comments about women's hockey at the Vancouver Olympics. "I sent it by priority post to the Olympics headquarters. Maybe he didn't get it. Now I'm going to send it through our Ambassador to Switzerland (Roberta Santi) and ask that it be delivered right to him."
"We cannot continue without improvement," Rogge said on the day Canada defeated the United States for the Olympic gold medal. The comment was understood by some to be an ultimatum for women's hockey, in which the United States and Canada are far ahead of their competition. Clarkson responded with a letter, published in The Globe and Mail, which said that men's hockey had similar lopsided competitions in early days and that women's hockey needed an Olympic goal to keep growing toward parity.
"The aim of my letter was to put a shot across the bow," Clarkson said.
"I have not had a response from Mr. Rogge, but he is a gentleman and the chair of the Olympics and I expect to have a reply from him of some kind."
Rogge's position isn't hidebound: "There is a discrepancy there, everyone agrees with that. This is, maybe, the investment period in women's ice hockey. I would personally give them more time to grow, but there must be a period of improvement," he said.
That improvement is coming, said Fran Rider, president of the Ontario Women's Hockey Association which has grown from fewer than 5,000 participants to more than 37,000 over the past 20 years. The blowout scores the world has seen when Canada or the United States take on lesser nations at the world championships and Olympics aren't happening below the elite level, she said.
"At the under-18 world championships, the first game, Canada beat Russia 6-3. So that indicates they're not far off and that event is going to be a catalyst, same as the world [ competitions]and Olympics were to developing the over all game," Rider said. "That event will be the feeder system, and I believe in the next few years we'll see closer and closer competition. We'll be challenged to keep the gold medal in Canada."
She said Hockey Canada and the International Ice Hockey Federation would meet next month to discuss what can be done to level the field in the women's game.
"The one thing that has to happen though if this game is going to grow throughout the world is the countries have to invest more into developing the numbers at the grass roots, broadening the base of participation," Rider said. "When you don't medal, that's when you put more money into it. A lot of countries put money in if their teams medal. ... well, you need to put more in if you don't medal because you need to get them to medal."
Julie Chu, one of the top players on the Minnesota Whitecaps team that won last weekend's elite Clarkson Cup tournament, said the chance of women's hockey being dropped from the Olympics "is obviously something that's in the back of a lot of peoples' minds. ... We have to find ways for the Europeans and people abroad being able to grow the game as well."
Rider is optimistic that women's hockey will stay in the Olympics. Canada can do its part to train its competitors.
"It was tough to get there and we're going to keep it there," she said. "There are more and more girls throughout the world playing. We hosted the Chinese Olympic team here in Ontario. When they went back home (after a 13-7-1 exhibition record and seventh-place Olympic finish) they said they were being treated totally differently in their country. There's respect for women's hockey. They're coming back next year, and the Austrian team is coming."