Olympics: Canada's football women's coach banned
The deployment of a drone to spy on a rival team's training sessions cost Canada's women's football team six points in their Olympic group, and coach Bev Priestman received a one-year ban for the incident.
A day after Priestman, an Englishman, was fired as Canada's Olympic head coach, Fifa announced the sanctions, which include a £175,720 punishment for the Canadian Soccer Association (CSA). Fifa has also punished CSA officials Joseph Lombardi and Jasmine Mander for a year. The deployment of the drone by the Canadian squad was deemed a "violation" of Fifa's principles, the body that oversees football.
In relation to the CSA Women's representative team's use of drones during the Olympic football event, each official was found guilty of insulting behavior and a breach of fair play rules, according to a Fifa statement. After learning that a drone had flown over their Monday training session, the New Zealand Olympic Committee said that Priestman "voluntarily" resigned from her coaching position for Canada's opening match versus the Kiwis.
Following their investigations, FIFA and the CSA concluded that the 38-year-old was "highly likely" to have known about the incident. Priestman said in a statement on Wednesday that she assumed accountability for her coworkers' acts following Mander's receipt of a scouting report submitted by Lombardi. After entering a guilty plea to operating a drone without a permit in an urban area, Lombardi was sentenced to eight months of suspended jail time on Thursday, according to a French court. The CEO of the Canadian Olympic Committee, David Shoemaker, stated the next day that there "appears to be information that could tarnish" the country's victory in the women's football competition at the Tokyo Games.
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