In the weeks and months after Maggie Coles-Lyster alleges she was sexually assaulted, the Canadian cyclist buried herself in her sport.
The 21-year-old from Maple Ridge, B.C., was just 18 when she joined Doltcini-Van Eyck Sport’s women’s team as a development rider in 2017. It was during a multi-day race in the Netherlands that she said she was repeatedly sexually assaulted during massages by someone associated with the team.
The global body for cycling — the UCI — has launched a formal investigation into the Belgian team after Coles-Lyster and American cyclist Sara Youmans alleged abuses within the squad.
The allegations haven’t been proven in court.
‘This is out of hand’
“I didn’t talk about it for a while,” Coles-Lyster said in a recent phone interview. “I didn’t know what effect that would have on me. You’re always considering your future career. There’s always the not being believed, still kind of wrapping your mind around what happened. And then when I started talking to Sara, she was coming out with her story . . . I realized that it’s shocking how many people don’t really realize this happens in the sport.
“I felt this is a very important message and story that needs to get out for change to start happening because this is out of hand right now.”
Coles-Lyster, who captured two medals for Canada at last summer’s Pan American Games in Lima, Peru, alleged she was assaulted during her first massage with the Belgian team which was then under title sponsors Lares-Waowdeals. The Canadian alleged the individual straddled her around the tops of her legs and touched her genitals, which “seemed like a strange practice to me.” She said the sexual assault was repeated during massage sessions on days that followed.
She also alleged the individual took pictures of her during group meals and sent them to her with intimate messages.
Confiding in parents
Coles-Lyster eventually confided in her parents. It was a difficult conversation.
“It took a lot of courage for me to come forward and talk to them about it, because it’s the whole, as a victim actually understanding and coming to terms with what happened,” she said. “There’s really a big stigma that a lot of women feel around this, even unfortunately embarrassment, guilt, shame, all these emotions and even though you know your parents would always believe you, there’s always just these thoughts in your head. But you know they’re going to support you and love you no matter what.
Coles-Lyster won a silver medal at the 2019 Pan Am Games in Peru. (AFP via Getty Images)
“I have a great relationship with my parents. So once we actually got the conversation rolling, it wasn’t that hard to talk to them about it, and for them to help me.”
Coles-Lyster also reached the podium twice in UCI criterium races last season, and had a UCI victory on the track.
Team director Marc Bracke told The Canadian Press in an email that Coles-Lyster informed staff in April of 2017 that she “didn’t feel safe” around the individual “because he was stalking her with messages and photos . . . I took this seriously as a manager.”
Bracke said he’d been unaware of Coles-Lyster’s allegations of sexual assault until “I had to hear from the press last Saturday. I can understand that Maggy didn’t just dare to say this despite being safe in our team.”
Ethics Commission investigation
The UCI said in a statement it had been informed by the Ethics Commission of the opening of a formal procedure.
“The latter, led directly by the Commission, is under way,” the UCI said.
Cycling Canada’s high performance director Kris Westwood said in an email that it’s committed to the well-being of athletes the principles of Safe Sport particularly around sexual assault.
“Unfortunately, athletes often find themselves in team environments that are outside Cycling Canada’s jurisdiction, and sometimes this environment can be unsafe, as we’ve seen with the allegations brought forward by Maggie Coles-Lyster, who was a minor at the time of the alleged assault,” Westwood said. “We have offered Maggie our support, and we are glad to see the UCI’s ethics commission is investigating. We hope the people who committed these acts will no longer be in a position to victimize athletes in the future.”
Sexual assault in Canadian sport
Coles-Lyster’s allegations are the latest in a list of several high-profile sexual assault and harassment stories in Canadian sport. Canada’s track and field community was rocked recently by allegations against former national distance coach Dave Scott-Thomas. Former middle-distance runner Megan Brown came forward in a Globe and Mail story alleging that Scott-Thomas, a former University of Guelph coach, groomed her for a sexual relationship when she was 17.
The allegations against Scott-Thomas haven’t been proven in court.
Coles-Lyster said, with the current climate in Canadian sport, she felt it was important to speak up.
“It’s empowering other women to come forward and address these topics, not leave them under the rug,” she said. “Lots of people have come up to me and are shocked that this has happened. So it could be because cycling is still considered such a male-dominated sport or who knows, but for whatever reason people seem surprised that this happened.
“This has been really empowering to see the conversations this has opened up and the other women I’ve talked to about this who have had similar experiences, and just talking it through and what the steps should be. There’s a bunch of other athletes who have come forward recently, and I have considered reaching out to them. I think the strength of women banding together through issues like this is really important.”
Call for stronger policies
Coles-Lyster said policies within professional teams and national sport organizations need to be considerably stronger and more accessible. She pointed out that Canadian athletes must complete an annual anti-doping seminar, but there isn’t similar information about safe sport.
“What needs to be implemented, probably not even within just sport, but everybody . . . boys and girls need to have education on what sexual harassment looks like, so this all starts before anybody becomes a victim,” she said. “They need to know what it looks like, where to go if it happens. There’s still a lot of stigma, so people don’t talk about it enough.”
It was more than a year before Coles-Lyster finally felt comfortable opening about the alleged abuse, and reached out to a psychologist among others.
“I really had pushed it under the rug, and just tried to focus on racing and I was still going back to Belgium to race and just wanted to focus on that and doing well, because so much of doing well in the sport and succeeding as a cyclist seems to be how well you can do in Europe. So that kind of was my focus,” she said.
Coles-Lyster, who no longer competes for Doltcini-Van Eyck Sport, will race in the Manchester Six Day Series track race beginning March 13.
TORONTO – The Toronto Maple Leafs have announced cookie brand Oreo as the team’s helmet sponsor for the upcoming NHL season.
The new helmet will debut Sunday when Toronto opens its 2024-25 pre-season against the Ottawa Senators at Scotiabank Arena.
The Oreo logo replaces Canadian restaurant chain Pizza Pizza, which was the Leafs’ helmet sponsor last season.
Previously, social media platform TikTok sponsored Toronto starting in the 2021-22 regular season when the league began allowing teams to sell advertising space on helmets.
The Oreo cookie consists of two chocolate biscuits around a white icing filling and is often dipped in milk.
Fittingly, the Leafs wear the Dairy Farmers of Ontario’s “Milk” logo on their jerseys.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Sept. 17, 2024.
MacKenzie Weegar wasn’t bitter or upset as he watched friends live out their dreams.
The Calgary Flames defenceman just hopes to experience the same feeling one day. He also knows the road leading to that moment, if it does arrive, will likely be long and winding — much like his own path.
A seventh-round pick by the Florida Panthers at the 2013 NHL draft, Weegar climbed the ranks to become an important piece of a roster that captured the Presidents’ Trophy as the league’s top regular-season club in 2021-22.
Two months later following a second-round playoff exit, he was traded to the Flames along with Jonathan Huberdeau for Matthew Tkachuk. And less than two years after that, the Panthers were hoisting the Stanley Cup.
“Happy for the city and for the team,” Weegar said of Florida’s June victory over the Edmonton Oilers. “There was no bad taste in my mouth.”
His sole focus, he insists, is squarely on eventually getting the Flames to the same spot. The landscape, however, has changed drastically since Weegar committed to Calgary on an eight-year, US$50-million contract extension in October 2022.
Weegar has watched a list that includes goaltender Jacob Markstrom, defencemen Chris Tanev, Noah Hanifin and Nikita Zadorov and forwards Elias Lindholm and Andrew Mangiapane shipped out of town since the start of last season — largely for picks, prospects and young players as part of a rebuild.
Despite that exodus, he remains committed to the Calgary project steered by general manager Craig Conroy.
“It’s easy to get out of all whack when you see guys trying to leave or wanting new contracts,” the 30-year-old from Ottawa said at last week’s NHL/NHLPA player media tour in Las Vegas. “I just focus on where I am and where I want to be, and that’s Calgary.
“I believe in this team. The city has taken me in right away. I feel like I owe it to them to stick around and grind through these years and get a Stanley Cup.”
The hard-nosed blueliner certainly knows what it is to grind.
After winning the Memorial Cup alongside Nathan MacKinnon with the Halifax Mooseheads in 2013, Weegar toiled in the ECHL and American Hockey League for three seasons before making his NHL debut late in the 2016-17 campaign with the Panthers.
He would spend the next five years in South Florida as one of the players tasked with shifting an organizational culture that had experienced little success over the previous two decades.
“There’s always going to be a piece of my heart and loyalty to that team,” Weegar said. “But now I’m in a different situation … I compete against all 32 teams, not just Florida. There’s always a chip on my shoulder every single year.”
Weegar set career highs with 20 goals — eight was the most he had ever previously registered — and 52 points in 2023-24 as part of a breakout offensive performance.
“I think my buddies cared a lot more than I did,” he said with a smile. “All I hear is, ‘fantasy, fantasy, fantasy.'”
Weegar was actually more proud of his 200 blocked shots and 194 hits as he looks to help set a new Flames’ standard alongside Huberdeau, captain Mikael Backlund, Nazem Kadri, Blake Coleman and Rasmus Andersson for a franchise expected to have its new arena in time for the 2027-28 season.
“You have to build that culture and that belief in the locker room,” said Weegar, who pointed to 22-year-old centre Connor Zary as a player set to pop. “Those young guys are going to have to come into their own and be consistent every night … they’re the next generation.”
Weegar, however, isn’t punting on 2024-25. He pointed to the NHL’s parity and the fact a couple of teams surprise every season.
It’s the same approach that took him from the ECHL a decade ago to hockey’s premier pre-season event inside a swanky hotel on Sin City’s famed strip, where he stood shoulder-to-shoulder with the game’s best.
“From the outside — media and even friends and family — the expectations are probably a bit lower,” Weegar said of Calgary’s outlook. “But there’s no reason to think that we can’t make playoffs and we can’t be a good team (with) that underdog mentality.
“You never know.”
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Sept 17, 2024.
Jose Maria Celestino da Costa was named vice-president and head of soccer operations while Marianne Brooks was appointed vice-president of partnerships, Kelly Shouldice as vice-president of brand and content and Joyce Sou as vice-president of finance and business operations.
The new six-team women’s pro league is set to kick off in April.
“Their unique expertise and leadership are crucial as we lay the foundation for not just a successful league in Canada, but one that stands among the top sports leagues in the world,” NSL president Christina Litz said in a statement. “By investing in top-tier talent and infrastructure, the Northern Super League is committed to creating a league that will elevate the game and set new standards for women’s professional soccer globally.”
Da Costa will oversee all on-field matters, including officiating. His resume includes stints with Estoril Praia, a men’s first-division team in Portugal, and the Portuguese Soccer Federation, where he helped develop the Portuguese women’s league.
Brooks spent a decade with Canucks Sports & Entertainment, working in “partnership sales and retention efforts” for the Vancouver Canucks, Vancouver Warriors, and Rogers Arena. Most recently, she served as senior director of account management at StellarAlgo, a software company that helps pro sports teams connect with their fans
Shouldice has worked for Corus Entertainment, the Canadian Football League, and most recently as vice-president of Content and Communications at True North Sports & Entertainment, where she managed original content as well as business and hockey communications.
Sou, who was involved in the league’s initial launch, will oversee financial planning, analysis and the league’s expansion strategy in her new role.
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This report by The Canadian Press was first published Sept. 17, 2024.
