By Anne Duggan
For Orleans resident Carol Anne Chenard, refereeing soccer is a sport. With a background in multiple areas of expertise such as speed skating, basketball, volleyball, and soccer, Chenard approaches the latest challenge in her wide-ranging athletic career like she always has: with passion.
Colonel By Secondary School’s senior athlete-of-the-year in her graduating year, Chenard will be the only Canadian soccer referee at the London Olympic Games. The 35-year-old feels confident in her preparation for the world’s largest sporting event that is now only weeks away.
“I am physically ready, and trying to stay healthy,” Chenard notes.
The owner of six World Cup short-track speedskating medals and a one-time world record holder in the 3,000-metre relay, she has plenty of experience with physical preparation. The fitness level required of an international soccer referee is impressive.
Her recent fitness test to qualify as an Olympic referee included six 40-metre sprints. Each leg had to be completed in less than 6.6 seconds. There were also 20 150-metre sprints to be run in under 35 seconds per leg. Along with the fitness aspect of her position comes training camps, technical training, classroom sessions, and video analysis.
“Referees are actually athletes,” she explains. “It takes focus, refocusing and training. We are our own worst critics. Refereeing is exciting because we can always be better.”
Stringent fitness requirements
Chenard’s path to the position of Olympic soccer referee began with a chance request by her Gloucester Hornets soccer coach to take an officiating course in order to develop a better understanding of the game.
After completing that first course, Chenard began to referee local games as a high school student to raise money for university. After a night calling an oldtimers game, a letter was written to the Ontario Soccer Association, enthusing about Chenard’s talent.
“Some people came out and watched me and the rest is history,” describes Chenard, making it sound easy.
Following a 10-year period when Chenard attended the Canadian short-track national team’s training centre, as well as completed a PhD in microbiology and immunology at McGill University, Chenard returned to Ottawa. She now combines a career as head of Regional Compliance Program of Controlled Substances at Health Canada with coaching at her home Gloucester Concordes Speed Skating Club and soccer refereeing.
Chenard believes her lifelong devotion to sport has helped plenty in her work career as well.
“Sport has brought me confidence, experiences and different languages,” explains the English, French and Spanish speaker. “Sport gives me the confidence to do public speaking and to speak to supervisors at work. It is basically who I am. My positive attributes have been built by sport.”
Moving her way up the ranks in the soccer refereeing world, Chenard first became a FIFA referee in 2006, operating on a national level. In 2008, she began officiating international matches, including the U20 Women’s World Cup tournament in Chile. And then the pinnacle came last year when she refereed the Women’s World Cup final in Germany.
It’s a daunting thought – potentially stepping onto an Olympic soccer pitch for the first time at one of the Games’ six football venues, with as many as 3.5 billion people watching globally – but Chenard is looking forward to the challenges and highs that Olympic sport will bring to her summer.
“If you are a soccer fan, the biggest event to watch is the World Cup, but if you are a sports person, it is the Olympics,” Chenard highlights. “So, it is a real honour.”