What Actually Happened During the Canada Drone Scandal

First of all, please just allow me to say: I’m sorry for what happened. 

To the players, whose Olympic experience was sidetracked by this story.

To the fans, who questioned their faith in the team. 

I realize there are still a lot of questions swirling around about exactly what happened at the Paris Olympics last summer. It’s taken me more than a year just to open up about it all to people beyond my family and closest friends. But as one of five members of the technical staff at that tournament, I want to set the record straight, take accountability, and tell you my side of the story. 

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“Jas, I’m with the police.”

Joey is texting me. We are in the middle of a staff meeting. I panic. 

Are you f***ing joking?

I call him. No reply. 

I call again. 

“ ................................. ”

What the f?

I know this can’t be good. I text in our coaches’ group chat, and my fingers are shaking. “Joey is with the police. This is not a joke.” 

It’s July of last year, at the start of the Paris Olympics. We’re defending champions, prepping for our first game, against New Zealand. Our head coach, Bev Priestman, clears the room, except for the coaches. 

What now? 

I’m like, “That’s all I got. He’s not picking up. I don’t know.”

Joey Lombardi, our analyst, is the nicest guy in football. He has known me and most of the players since we were 15 years old, and it’s hard to find anyone in soccer in Canada who doesn’t respect and appreciate Joey. But right now we only know he’s been away from our camp for a few hours to gather information about New Zealand. Him being in custody for flying a drone, doesn’t even cross my mind. We don’t even know that French law limits where drones can be flown, so Joey getting arrested for that just does not occur to me. I am worried for Joey. Is he getting roughed up by police like in the TV shows? We need to find him. 

The French-speaking staff check Google Maps to find the nearest police stations, and then split up to visit them until we find the one where he’s being held. The officers at the station say he won’t be coming out today, that he could be in there for three days. 

Holy s***. 

Joey could spend three nights in jail!?

This is when I’m pushed into the spotlight, since I was the one who got Joey’s text. I am told the Canadian Olympic Committee and Canada Soccer will be asking about what I know, to help get him to safety and to understand the situation as best as possible.

“Great, no problem.” 

A day passes, and I’m asked by French police to come to the station. They have questions about why Joey was contacting me. We drive to the station for questioning, and that’s when I see Joey. He is waiting for me at the front door. I cry when I hug him. He tells me not to worry, that he is OK and I am only here to confirm his statement. They start asking me things through a translator in a tight and overcrowded office. 

“Did you know where he was?”

“No.”

“Did you know he’d be flying a drone?”

“No.”

I seem to finish the initial questioning quickly. The officer tells me he feels that the situation is blown out of proportion, almost as if my being there was wasting his time. But as I’m about to leave, two more officers come in. They are bigger, tougher looking, with limited English. They get so close to my face that I can smell cigarette smoke, and they start questioning me again. 

“What color does your team play in?”

“Huh?” I said.

“What color?”

“Uhm …….. red.”

“And where have you been training? What do your coaches wear?”

I’m confused. I’ve still not realized that a French law has been broken because a drone was used. These officers don’t know what they have in their hands. They’re trying to determine what the footage is, based on the colors that the players in the video are wearing. Whether it is a Canada team session or an opponent. 

Finally, I ask to leave.

I get back to the team hotel. We have a staff meeting and I tell everyone I saw Joey, and that he is OK. But I find it difficult to sleep at our hotel knowing he is spending the night in a jail cell. Somehow, most of our staff seem to just continue preparing for the game, almost as if nothing has happened, and I begin to wonder, If that was me in that jail cell, how much would anyone care? 

We continue to receive updates from the Canadian Olympic Committee and Canada Soccer. They are trying to get Joey help and get him out. The updates vary. He’ll be out later today. No, he’ll be out tomorrow. New Zealand media has picked up the story and within the hour, it is a headline across the world. 

A Team Canada staff member has been detained for using a drone to record New Zealand’s practice. 

Canada Soccer keeps telling us that everything will be fine. 

The next morning, on the bus to training, I am still trying to catch up on sleep. The quicker time passes, the quicker Joey will be out. The next words I hear change my life forever. I’m told that Joey and I are going to be sent home from the Olympic Games. And we are going to be named in a public statement shortly. (If that sounds like I skipped to the end, I felt that way too.)

I can barely speak. Nobody has told me anything. No warning, nothing. I ask if I can at least speak to the team? I’m told that I can’t. Panic sinks in at every level. 

I text my friends’ group chat, “I need a lawyer urgently, can anyone help?”

Within 30 minutes I get help from a friend of a friend, who is a lawyer, and she quickly writes a statement saying that I do not consent to any of this. I am trying to figure out who to send it to, but it’s too late. Just 15 minutes after arriving at the training venue, I check my phone:

Jasmine Mander and Joey Lombardi to be sent home from the Olympic Games.

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Before I tell you more, I want to make one thing very clear. 

I messed up. 

I really did. I should have said something. Spoken up. Rocked the boat. Like many people within the organization, I knew that there were attempts at Canada Soccer to watch other teams train. And I accepted it. I didn’t do anything to stop it.

It hurts even just to say that, but it’s true. I didn’t know that Joey would use a drone on that particular day in Saint-Étienne, or that there were even laws in France limiting where drones could be flown. (We were even trying to use drones to film our own training sessions.) But that is not the point. We should never have tried to watch another team train. Never. We’re Canada. No matter how you look at it, no matter the context, it’s simple: We should have played by the rules. 

I know this scandal has caused much anger, shame and frustration. But please, let me explain why I never raised questions about why we were trying to watch other teams, and why I went along with what was going on. 

When I started in the professional game three years prior, I slowly realized that watching the training sessions of your opponents was actually quite normal.

I know that will sound shocking, but it’s just the reality. From what I understood, generally in the global game, all kinds of methods were being used. Let’s say the opponent is training in the stadium, and maybe the media team opens the gantry for the analyst to watch from. Maybe head office staff share the insights they have. Or maybe a team has trained just before them, and someone sticks around in the tunnel just to catch a few minutes. Maybe the hotel overlooks the training ground and some staff scratch the itch of curiosity. 

At first, I was really surprised by this, but the longer I worked in the game, the more I heard firsthand that this kind of stuff really did happen around the world. The very best in the game did not bat an eye at it. It even happened when we played: Just a week before the Olympics, we played a closed-door friendly, and an agent filmed it on his phone. He put the penalty kicks online.

Of course, I understood on some level that watching teams’ game prep was immoral, but when I was new at Team Canada, the youngest member of the coaching staff by several years, I thought, Oh, I guess this is normal at this level. 

And I wanted to help the team. Look for any edge. I was 25 when I started at Canada Soccer, and I didn’t want to be that person saying, “Guys, listen…  should we be doing this?”

I wish now that I would have. That I could have been that person. A bit stronger. I definitely could have done more to avoid this scandal for everyone, and I’m sorry that I didn’t, especially as a Canadian.  

At the same time, it feels unfair that only a few people have been singled out for what happened. Just the other day, Canada Soccer published an article in which they said they had disciplined 14 staff members in the wake of the drone scandal. The women’s team doesn’t have as many as 14 coaches, so that tells you how far it extended. When the independent review came out last year, the Canada Soccer CEO, Kevin Blue, said that the incident was “a symptom of a past pattern of an unacceptable culture and insufficient oversight within the national teams.”

That’s accurate, but it’s hardly something that can be laid at my feet. To be very clear, this was not something that I started. But when you read about it in the news, there are only three names you see. Jasmine. Joey. Bev. 

To be clear, I have no problem with being held accountable and taking responsibility for my involvement, and I have spent more than a year doing so. But when 14 people are disciplined, and only three of us are named and shamed in public? That’s still very hard for me to accept.

Another thing I want to be very clear about. Some media wrote that Joey reported directly to me. He did not. We both reported to the head coach. The head coach reported to the CEO.

Others said that I directed Joey. Again, I did not. 

The only reason I was questioned by police was because Joey texted me first. And he did that because we were so close. 

I got caught in the middle. One text made me the contact point for the whole situation.

And no part of me is mad about receiving his text. Had I stayed at the Olympics knowing that my close colleague was sent home for something that others also were responsible for, I could not have lived with myself. 

Looking back, I should have said more publicly at the time. I should have apologized for my role in the scandal and taken accountability for my mistakes. At the same time, I never expected to be treated the way I was. I trusted the organization to consider the effect this would have on me, as a coach and as a human being. But I remember being at the Olympic camp when the statement came out, and seeing my name all over the news. My DMs were flooded with abuse.

My friends were texting me, “Saw the news. Are you OK?”

I wanted to tell them everything, but explaining it all felt so heavy.

I remember the very first night after the statement had come out, I went for a walk instead of joining the team for dinner, because I didn’t want to be a distraction. Bev left the team meal and called me, in tears. A lot has been said about Bev, but let me tell you: She cares about her staff and players. She was upset about what was happening, and I could tell how hard it was for her to be there for me as a friend while trying to move the team forward. 

On that walk, my mind also went back 10 years, to when I was sitting at Blenz Coffee at the UBC campus as a 19-year-old student coaching women’s teams. That day I met up with a coach whom I had worked with when I was a player on the youth national team. I wanted to ask for some career advice. Tips on how I could progress. I asked him about how to get into the national team organization. We pulled out a sheet of paper and I drew a line from where I was then to a Team Canada assistant coach role. My dream job. 

I didn’t want to be head coach. I didn’t like the thought of being the public face of the team. (The irony isn’t lost on me.) I wanted to be on the grass, working with the players, focusing as much as possible on the football. 

I didn’t want to coach abroad. I’m close to my parents and I love Canada. I wanted to be home. 

I felt that the national team was the epitome of any soccer career, whether as a player or coach. That’s where I wanted to get to.

And now — poof. 

Gone.

On the day Canada played New Zealand, I was en route to Paris to fly home. On the train, I watched the New Zealand game on my laptop, and after the game ended, my brother FaceTimed me. He was the physiotherapist for Team New Zealand, and I remember him saying, “You’re supposed to be here right now.” 

We grew up watching the Olympics together. He was in tears. I was in tears.

“We were supposed to be here together.”

When I got to the airport, I was so drained emotionally that I couldn’t find my way on my own. The security team accompanying me helped me hide like a fugitive on the run. If they had led me to a plane to Beijing or Brisbane or Buenos Aires, I would have boarded it. We spotted Canadian reporters, and I kept my head down, just following the steps in front of me. Online, the scandal had grown bigger and bigger. The media asked for comments from my brother every day at the Games. Every time I searched for my name, more abuse would appear. I shouldn’t have, but I was reading everything — there was more information online than I was getting from anyone else. The online world can distort reality. Does everyone in the real world hate me like they do here? 

Just before boarding the plane, I checked my phone and saw messages from my sister-in-law, my best friend and a distant colleague, all telling me to turn off social media. I tried to deactivate the comments on Instagram, but I was too tired to figure out how.

I turned on flight mode. 

When I landed in Canada, it was relentless. 

Hundreds of comments. 

“Cheater.”

“Disgrace!!”

“GO BACK TO YOUR COUNTRY.”

“Go kill yourself.”

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Over the next few months, I was a ghost. 

Scrolling on my phone. Saying nothing. Barely eating. I just wanted to sleep to make the days go by faster. I was exhausted from the trauma, and from what I have since learned was grief — the grief of losing so many people and my career in one swoop. I was having nightmares. I’d dream about things I wished had happened, but didn’t, like certain people I cared about asking me, “Jas. Are you OK?” 

My parents would check on me in the middle of the night to literally make sure I was alive. “Sorry, Jas ... just wanna make sure you’re still here.”

One day, my brother asked me the question straight up. 

“Jas, are you going to kill yourself?”

I was like, “What the f***, dude? No!”

I didn’t realize how much my family was worrying. He said, “Jas … if you’re not OK, just make sure you tell me.”

My lawyer told me to see a psychologist, to make sure I document my mental state. I visited my doctor who had me fill out a depression assessment that asked if I had suicidal thoughts. I ticked the box that said SOMETIMES. 

I don’t really think I had thoughts like that, but I can see how somebody gets to that point. You start asking yourself questions that you haven’t asked before. What happens when I die? Do I get to start over? This is a mess — how do I get out of it? A do-over would be nice. And that’s when I knew that, yep, I have to get this under control.

It took a while before something new didn’t pop up every time I hit refresh. I had a new appreciation for people in the public spotlight. I read everything. And, I just have to say … to all of you who wrote those comments on social media, and continue to, I hope you know that your words matter. You may just type them on a keyboard, but elsewhere in the world, in front of another screen, there are real people reading your words, and they do damage in ways you cannot imagine. 

I didn’t expect to be called the N-word. I’m not really someone who has ever felt her race, even as a young woman in sports, but this all felt different. It felt like there was a group of people who specifically wanted to see me punished, and who blamed my race or upbringing for what happened. 

Yes, I had reporters at my house. Yes, they were trying to talk to my neighbours, my teachers, and my U7 soccer coach. Other reporters spoke to nearly every one of my college soccer teammates that I had graduated with almost a decade ago. There were no limits on who or what was being asked. “Did she come from an abusive home? What was she like when she was out with her friends?” Suddenly I realized that anything from my past, real or fake, had become fair game. I remember often saying, “This will truly never end.” 

The saddest thing for me was the collateral damage it had on my family, even at their workplace, and how everything affected my dad. 

He’s a taxi driver who’s woken up at four every morning for the past 30 years. He used to work as a PE teacher in India, and when he got to Canada he began pumping gas at local stations. Then he got into driving taxis. He used to coach my soccer team, and when I got the assistant job with Canada, he’d tell everyone about it. 

You know when you get into a taxi and you wonder, “Is this a chatty or a silent driver?” Well, my dad needed less than 10 seconds to bring up his daughter.  

“Nice weather today, huh?”

“Uh-huh.”

“You like soccer?” 

“Soccer?”

“Yes, you know my daughter, Jasmine Mander, she’s an assistant coach at the Canadian soccer team … ”

Dad doesn’t have great English, but he knows that line. 

We also had this tradition where he’d drive me to the airport for national team camps, and then we would take a picture in front of his cab: 

But when the scandal broke, he stopped mentioning his daughter in the cab. There was nothing left for him to talk about.  

That broke my heart. He kept saying, “Jas, I’m with you. Whatever you need.”

But I felt like I had disappointed him the most. He’d tell me, “I would have never let you work with Canada Soccer if I knew what your job was.” 

People would say, “You’ll get through this,” and I questioned that. How could anyone know if I would? At the start, I kept switching gyms to avoid the stares and questions, but the scandal was all over the TV screens and people wanted to talk about it. I ended up buying some exercise equipment and using it in my backyard for the first few months. No restaurant hang outs. I would check the peephole before opening the door. Seeing if I could spot any cameras. Sometimes, I did. Friends told me they had heard where I had been in town, as if I was a candidate for celebrity spotting. My close friends came over the way they do when there’s been a death in the family, with food to help pass the time. That helped, and I will always be grateful for the people who showed up.

I’d often call Joey, and then we’d ask one another how we were doing. “Jas, you know what? I don’t even like that photo of me that they’re using.”

I’d laugh.  

The story, and my photo, were so widely circulated that I started to feel like Canada’s Most Wanted. 

Thinking back on that time, the hardest question I got was always, “How are you?” 

I’d think, What do I say? A quick “fine” or the whole trauma dump? 

I learned a party line that would lightly engage and quickly divert. “Oh, you know, just trying to stay out of the news!” I have since realized that it was anxiety and unforgiving shame I was feeling. Somehow, a part of me felt that I deserved the abuse.

When a close friend invited me to her wedding, I remember saying, “Oh … you still want me there?”

She looked at me like I was crazy. 

Eventually I started to wonder, “Are people turning their backs on me, or am I turning mine on them?”

Shortly after I came back to Canada, I got an email from Canada Soccer saying I had been put on a paid suspension as a precautionary measure. The reason I didn’t resign was that I wanted to share my side of the story as part of the independent investigation. But when the report from that investigation came out last November, I was disappointed. I read it online like everyone else, and I don’t think it brought enough attention to the actual process behind the culture at Canada Soccer. It was very convenient that so many names were redacted. I couldn’t help but think,If you’re going to take out so much, why post the report at all?

Things only started to get better for me last January. New calendar, fresh start. I looked in the mirror and I needed to move forward. I remember this one time I complained to my cousin, “I can barely leave the house ...” 

And she just looked at me, shook her head and laughed.

“Jas ....... You’re not Jennifer Lopez.”

I needed that reality check. I really did.

And she was right. The people who abused me online weren’t coming after me in the real world. In fact, people have rarely criticized me in public. If I go to restaurants, people don’t remember me specifically, they just know the story. I’ll never forget one of my first walks after the Olympics. Hoodie up, head down, trying not to be seen. A car pulled up next to me. 

I was like, F***** hell, here we go.

Before I turned my head to look over, the guy lowered the driver-side window and said, “Hey, sorry to bother you, but I just wanted to say that I hope you’re doing OK. You coached my daughter many years ago, and she absolutely loved you. So I just wanted to say thank you for that. And that we’re behind you all the way.”

I almost cried hearing that.

That’s when I realized that, if I don’t get myself back out there, I’ll miss out on all the good parts, too. It’s human to think that you’re the center of the universe, but the world moves on. And I have to move on, too. In the time that has passed, I have felt that support from players and coaches who have continued to reach out with both honesty and care. Everyone wants something from you when you’re at the top, but I’ll always remember the people who reached out when I was at the bottom. 

I realize there’s a chance that this episode will follow me forever, or at least for a long time. When I walk into rooms to meet with people, I do feel like it precedes me. “Wait, you mean Jasmine from Canada Soccer? The coach who was sent home from the Olympics?” 

I wonder if I’ll ever get the chance to make a true first impression again.

But I hope that I’ll get to write more chapters, and that people will understand the full picture of everything that went down. Yes, I made mistakes. Yes, I should have done so much better. If you still think I was an idiot at the Olympics, you’re probably right. Just understand that I was part of an organization, and that I simply tried to do my best. I know that it wasn’t good enough. I never wanted any of this to happen.

Honestly, it has felt like breaking up with 40 million people at once. 

The years representing Canada were some of the best of my life. I’ll never forget the Olympic gold we won, the celebration tours, the pre-meeting hype music, the post-match family visits, and getting everyone I knew tickets to the home games. I was in it. Feeling every win and every loss. 

I love Canada. I loved working with our national team. 

I’m sorry. 

I’ll be cheering for you always,

— Jas