Christine Sinclair has broken her silence.
The Canadian women's soccer star has often been described as guarded, private and quiet. Sinclair herself admits that she is "awkwardly shy."
But the 40-year-old has opened up in recent years, recently appearing on NBC’s “My New Favorite Futbolista” podcast to discuss her mother's longtime battle with multiple sclerosis.
"My mom lived with MS for 40 years and, as a kid, I saw her battle," Sinclair said on the podcast. "I saw her struggle. I saw her never give up. I saw her face the world bravely. She taught me a lot of perspective in life...Those days when I thought I was having a bad day. In the grand scheme of things, I have nothing to complain about."
Around the time that Sinclair became a teenager, she noticed her mother Sandra began to show up at her soccer games using a cane. Sandra soon told her that she had multiple sclerosis, a diagnosis and discomfort she hid from her children for 12 years.
Sinclair at the time was not familiar with the disease and in the pre-smartphone era didn't have instant access to information.
Soccer
"All I could see was her physical capabilities being taken away from her, like she was walking with a cane," Sinclair said. "At that moment in time, I didn’t know what that meant for the rest of her life."
Sinclair has always preferred to let her play do the talking. And oh the stories it could tell.
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Sinclair is soccer's all-time leader for international goals scored with 190, she has won an Olympic gold medal and she is one of only three players in history to score in five different World Cup tournaments. And she's one of Canada's biggest stars.
She has long been in the spotlight on the field but has never sought it after the game ended.
That changed when she was inspired by her mother to write her memoir “Playing the Long Game” after helping lead Canada to a gold medal at the Tokyo Olympics in 2021. The book was released just months after Sandra died in February of 2022.
"I think MS is a disease a lot of the time that people suffer through in silence and suffer with in silence," Sinclair said. "People have heard of MS, but they don't really know what it is. So for me, I just want people to know that they're not alone."
The first line of the book reads, “Talking about myself has never been something I’ve liked to do. For anyone who has followed my career, that won’t come as a surprise.”
She also described in the book the challenges she faced in connecting with new teammates.
"It’s not my natural behavior to be outgoing until I really get to know you," Sinclair wrote. "It’s not that I want to be standoffish, but I know I can seem that way.”
That, too, has recently changed.
Sinclair's longtime teammate Diana Matheson has noticed Sinclair making more of an effort to connect with her younger and often star-struck teammates.
"She's Christine Sinclair, like, they're in awe of her," Matheson said on “My New Favorite Futbolista.” "And I think as she got older and embraced that leadership role, she's aware of that and really intentionally put effort and energy into making sure she connected with those new players."
