Vanessa Gilles of Team Canada celebrates with teammates after scoring her team's second goal during the Women's group A match between France and Canada during the Olympic Games.Tullio M. Puglia/Getty Images
Given the circumstances, Vanessa Gilles’s remarkable night in Saint-Étienne probably won’t feature on any rolls of the greatest Canadian Olympic moments.
But maybe that’s why it should.
Ms. Gilles was at first the goat, and then the hero, in a come-from-behind Canadian victory that ranks with the very best in the team’s history. She scored in the penultimate minute of extra time to put Canada over France 2-1.
It may feel like weeks, but the Canadian soccer cheating scandal has only been going on for five days. Three days ago, FIFA, the world governing body of the sport, docked Canada six points. The players haven’t spoken about it since, but it has taken a toll.
“None of us have really slept. None of us have been able to really eat,” Ms. Gilles said. “It’s just been a lot.”
It was win or nothing for Canada on Sunday.
You could feel the ‘this is where the villain of the piece gets it’ energy from the beginning. That’s what happens when 25,000 French fans shout La Marseillaise at you in France – you know it’s not meant to end well.
For 60 minutes, Canada played that part. Sluggish, uncertain, unable to put passes together.
By that point, France was up 1-0. In this unusual scenario, that meant Canada was actually down two goals.
A few Canadians were at fault on the French goal, but none more than Ms. Gilles – the shot went through her legs.
Then in the 58th minute, a glimmer. A poor French clearance and a goal against the run of play from Jessie Fleming.
At that point, Canada began to move its feet. The French had clearly decided a draw was good enough. Canada is their Olympic bogey team – just get rid of them and move on.
There was a generous amount of extra time added – 13 minutes. Based on the sound, the crowd was already thinking about the size of the lineups at the nearest tram stop.
Then a cross, a deflected shot, and the ball fell in front of Ms. Gilles.
As Ms. Gilles came out to the mixed zone afterward, face still wet with tears, the first thing someone said to her was, “Some of the other players are saying that’s a surprise goal from the centre back.”
“Well, that’s a bit rude,” Gilles said.
“With her left foot.
“That’s more accurate.”
She would go on to describe the years it took the ball to reach her non-shooting foot, and the time it took to watch it bounce off the inside of the post, as “Matrix time.”
In a different sort of soccer country, someone would already be printing shirts with the look on Ms. Gilles’s face, her arms struck straight up in the air after she scored. That’s the look of someone who knows that they just nearly got run over by history, but it missed.
Afterward, the Canadian women celebrated like they’d just won a medal. Maybe not a gold. But a battling bronze.
The players flocked to the sidelines to hug family members they have not seen in person between games.
Meanwhile, the French trudged in looking shell-shocked. There is a possible world in which Canada plays them again in the knockout rounds. France must be wondering if this is 2012 – when Canada pipped it at the very last minute for the bronze that began this national story – all over again.
On Sunday, the Canadian players talked about tears and rage and tears of rage.
“It feels like it’s us against everyone right now,” Ms. Fleming said.
“It’s been hard. We’re human,” Ashley Lawrence said.
Ms. Gilles described a nightmarish scenario after the Canadian team heard their penalty – some players collapsing, some punching walls (that was her), and others walking around zombified.
As Ms. Gilles spoke, teammates were filtering in behind her, slapping her back or rubbing her shoulder. The hero on a given night traditionally gets the most ribbing, and she got some of that, too.
Ms. Gilles didn’t seem elated. She looked exhausted and not from exertion. Emotionally wrung out.
When the topic swung away from the result and back onto the scandal, she suddenly looked even more tired.
“We’re not a part of this, and we’re getting sanctioned like we were doping,” she said. That may be the clearest statement yet from a current player that they did not knowingly benefit from the fruit of the poisoned coaching tree.
How that works would be hard to explain, but for once, someone from the Canadian soccer set-up was not talking as though they were giving a deposition. Ms. Gilles just said it.
Two hours before the game, defrocked head coach Bev Priestman released an apology through her lawyer. Say this much for Canadian soccer types – they have a real sense of dramatic timing.
In it, Ms. Priestman was still leaning hard on the word “accountability” in lieu of responsibility. It was hard to read the thing without rolling your eyes.
What do you have to say about Ms. Priestman now?
Ms. Gilles rocked back – “I can’t even start talking about Bev, or I’m going to start crying again.”
Whether out of sadness, pity, anger or some combination thereof, she would not say. There are a bowling alley’s worth of shoes still waiting to drop on this one.
But for now, knowing only what we know for sure, you’ve got to admire the unwillingness to do what everyone expects you to do. To just keep plowing forward when going home and hiding must seem pretty attractive.
For reasons that may have been beyond their control, this will never be anyone’s most admired Olympic team. But it really might be the most resilient.
“We’re going to beat Colombia and we’re going to progress out of the group,” Fleming said.
Having survived so far, who could blame the soccer team for turning into Olympic Joe Namaths. Because if it turns out the way it’s starting to look like it just might, the women on this team were the only ones who believed all along.