Today on CBC they were talking about the Canadian Women’s Hockey team, and how they are blowing away the competition, and how some have suggested that perhaps they should back off and win by less of a margin. I’m not sure how I feel about that.

On one hand, when the US fielded its “dream team” in basketball in the 90s, no one suggested then that they dial it down a notch, and, say, only win by 20 points or so per game. It was just a given that they were the best and were going to walk away with the gold, and everyone else was playing for silver, and praying not to meet up with them at a critical point in the ladder. No one seems to think that the American dominance in this sport is something to be ashamed of.

But on the other hand, I saw on TV how women’s hockey in non-North American countries is such a fledgling sport, that the repeated crushings of their teams will prevent the development of women’s hockey into a real competition. Young girls are unlikely to get inspired to sign up for a sport where their country does not perform well, and the government is unlikely to make development of the sport a priority when Canada and the US will probably continue to dominate no matter what. Canada will never get valid competition until other countries start to do better — kind of a catch-22.

It’s to the point where the Olympic Committee is considering not having women’s hockey as an event in the 2010. I couldn’t think of too many other sports where women do not compete — just the decathalon (women do a pentathalon, I think) and baseball (women play softball). I think hockey is big enough with young girls in Canada that I’d like to see it become a respectable world-wide sport, and maybe having Canada help out with that by not crushing other teams is the way to go. I saw Hailey Wickenhouser (forgive my terrible spelling, I’m too lazy to look it up) suggesting that the way to fix the problem is to send Canada’s best players and coaches to other countries to grow the sport, and I like her idea — it’s Canada’s job to make sure it gets real competition in the future.