TVA Sports: Elizabeth Rancourt pushes the boundaries

Elizabeth Rancourt has been hosting National Hockey League (LNH) matches at TVA Sports since last week, with teammates Louis Jean and Michel Goodboot. A rare woman to earn this title, the caller works to remove prejudices, one by one. Because there is still …

She admits bluntly: Back in 2021, she and her fellow sports journalists sometimes receive comments like “Come back to your boiler” if they’re unfortunate enough to stutter at the sentence curve.

However, Elizabeth Rancourt knows her characters, just as Chantal Machape – her best friend – and her other companions paved the way for her. Fortunately, she adds, the majority are respectful.

“More and more, it’s really fun, people write to me that it’s nice to see a woman covering hockey, it’s refreshing, and they want more. But still someone tells me to go to my kitchen and let hockey play … the same thing.” Regarding clothing, he asks me why I wear dresses. We are told the slightest thing. This is the reality of 2021 and social networks; people think that they can say anything, that we will not read it and it will not affect us, ”Elizabeth Rancourt confided in an interview.

Prefer to laugh at that. His pride takes precedence over backbiting. Since it’s a little glass ceiling smashed Elizabeth Rancourt today at TVA Sports, few women have hosted NHL matches on French TV.

The show came just in time, 10 years after she joined TVA Sports and at the end of her last maternity leave, from which she returned on October 4.

“It’s a good” timing “for me to do this. A few years ago, I don’t know if I would accept. I would have been less comfortable. Going to the field, in other yards, to cover Al-Kindi, and talking to the” coaches “and players, as I did in past years (Since 2014, Editor’s Note), this gives an experience benefit. Now that I find myself in the studio, it gives me confidence in myself and in myself, which I hadn’t had before. Elizabeth says, “Today I feel like I’m on my X”.

“It’s a great sign of confidence,” she adds. I often see Lewis Jane in cartoons, and he is my role model. This guy is perfect. I don’t know of anyone switching from French to English that easily. I don’t compare myself to it, but it was a gentle back pat. “

Elizabeth’s father, criminal attorney Jean-Pierre Rancourt, played hockey in his youth and could have come out with a career. In Rancourts, the Canadiens’ Saturday Night Games have always been a religion. So much so, that Elizabeth found it a bit surreal to set foot in the locker room and chat with players and coaches when she was tasked with covering CH six years ago.

Working at TVA Sports since the channel’s launch in 2011, the journalist had until then followed Impact (now Club de Foot Montréal) on the road. She, who knew nothing about soccer when she started playing, ended up becoming a sports expert when she let go.

Previously, a McGill management graduate had worked for a year at TQS (which has since become V, then Noovo) before joining Argent Series, which Kibecor canceled in 2016.

The desire to ditch the business in favor of the media came to Elizabeth Rancourt by following her father in TV studios, conducting numerous interviews in Istry as part of his career. She never regretted her choice.

And if she’s currently in “joint custody” between TVA Sports and the Information Service (we see her on LCN and “Salut Bonjour Week-end”), she doesn’t hesitate to announce loud and clear that her heart is the sport.

“It’s not even a question!” , A young mom jokes from 4-year-old and 13-month-old cabbage scraps, who’s currently juggling her schedules in the early morning and late evening, week and weekend, and who knows a ray of mental burden.

“I recently told myself that I would need a bigger agenda! I am a very disciplined person, I write down all my commitments, and I cook a lot. But now, it’s getting a little more difficult!”