VANESSA'S VICTORY TOUR

Olympic champion Vanessa Gilles humbled by treatment she is receiving on trip home

Vanessa Gilles jokes that she has been practicing her Queen wave for the occasion.

Deep down, though, Ottawa's Olympic gold medal-winning soccer star is humbled by the attention she is receiving after finally returning home, including being honoured by the Ottawa Redblacks at their game versus the Hamilton Tiger-cats on Wednesday.

Last week, she was toasted at a City Hall ceremony, where Mayor

Jim Watson proclaimed it “Vanessa Gilles day”.

And then there was that visit to her former soccer club, when she expected a couple of kids to show up.

Instead, a throng of

200 young soccer players surrounded her, wanting to know anything and everything about the crazy dream gold-medal run in Tokyo six weeks ago. The tense final ended with Canada knocking off Sweden, when even the round of penalty kicks went into overtime.

“I didn't realize the gravity of it until one of my old soccer coaches asked me to speak,” she said in a telephone interview Tuesday. “I thought it was just going to be one team. The whole club showed up and I took pictures with everyone. It felt like I was walking into a daycare with a bag of candy.”

Gilles, 25, owns a modesty to go along with her sense of humour, seemingly still a little bit in shock about the Olympic experience and where her soccer life has taken her.

A former competitive tennis player, she moved on from that racquet because she preferred a more physical, team-oriented environment. She hadn't given much thought to soccer, but when her Louis Riel high school team needed a goalkeeper, she gave it a shot. Turns out, she didn't much like the position, but she was a natural at the game.

“I felt too secluded (as a goalkeeper), so I moved to centre back, and I've been there ever since,” she said.

Eventually, that led to a scholarship and huge success at the University of Cincinnati, followed by signing with a semi-pro team in Cyprus.

She's now in her second season with Bordeaux in France's top league, taking a break in the schedule to return home to Ottawa.

It certainly has been a wild ride for the past few months, a newcomer to the national team who took on a larger role as the Olympics went on.

The family couldn't make it to Japan due to COVID19 restrictions, but as the gold-medal celebration went on, she reached out to her brother, Sebastian, so they could enjoy the moment together.

The two have always been competitive with each other — “it was like World War 3, growing up,” she said — but over time, he has become a voice of advice, support and humour in her life. Their personalities are similar.

“It was the first call I made on the field,” she said. “I asked: `Is this real life, did this really happen?' He said: `Yes, it's real life.' And then he hung up and went back to work.”

While much of Canada was still celebrating the Olympic soccer triumph, Gilles returned to France to play in Champions League games for her club team.

That, she says, helped keep her feet on the ground.

“When we were at the Olympics, we were of course on Cloud 9, but when I went back to France, it was just another day,” she said. “France wasn't even in the Olympics for soccer.”

The Olympic soccer team has kept in touch through group chats and she acknowledges that there has been a “collective lull” at times, with everyone coming down a bit after reaching such lofty heights. The club will get

together again next month during the “FIFA window”.

At this point, Gilles is relishing the time she can spend here with family and friends, who she says “chirp her” all the time in order to keep her level headed.

She can't help but think about how cool it would be to play games in Ottawa, if there was a will and a way to have a professional women's league in Canada.

“Absolutely, I'm reflecting on that,” she said. “I'm at a cottage with three friends from Ottawa. They all have the talent to play in a pro league, but they just didn't receive the opportunity like I did.

“If I didn't have a French

passport (her father, Denis, was born in France), I'm not sure I would have had this chance. I would have had to start my non-athlete career.”

In 2019, Gilles spoke at the Commission on the Status of Women at the United Nations in New York, talking about the relative inequality in professional sports between men and women.

“Male athletes have 200 times more opportunities to play professional,” she said. “And then, when you factor in being Canadian, it's even a bigger (gap).”

Gilles is well aware of the difficulties the world's top women's hockey players have had in trying to establish a proper, workable professional

league in North America.

“I think the more we talk about it, the more people will think about it,” she said. “People are incredibly shocked when they hear those statistics.”

It will be on Gilles' mind Wednesday, while the Olympic gold medallist is watching the Redblacks play.

“Hopefully one day, we will also have women's pro soccer on that field,” she said.

“All those little girls wouldn't just have to see us every four years, they could see us every week, playing games here.”

It felt like I was walking into a daycare with a bag of candy. Vanessa Gilles, on the overwhelming response to her visit to her former soccer club