Tanenbaums make significant investment into women’s sports science research at U of T

Larry and Judy Tanenbaum are set to make another significant investment in women’s sports.

On Friday, with a gift from their family foundation to the University of Toronto, combined with matching funds from the school, the prominent Canadian business executives and philanthropists will announce the creation of a unique $5-million initiative that will help women athletes for years to come.

The Tanenbaum Knowledge Translation Chair for Science in Women’s Sport will address the lack of existing research about the health and sports performance of women and girls. The chair will then share the knowledge widely in practical ways to those who need it – from Canada’s elite athletes to community sport groups.

The announcement of the knowledge translation chair is expected Friday at the Tanenbaum Institute for Science in Sport Conference.

“We can directly improve the health and the performance of women athletes, and that’s the objective,” Larry Tanenbaum told The Globe and Mail in an interview on Thursday. “This is going to make a difference, and it’s also going to develop the next generation of leaders in this emerging field.”

Through Kilmer Sports Ventures, Tanenbaum has already made major investments in women’s sports.

He brought Canada its first Women’s National Basketball Association team, the Toronto Tempo, which debuted earlier this year. In June, he and Detroit-based Ilitch Companies became the first outside investors in the Professional Women’s Hockey League since it was established in 2023.

This latest investment, the chair at U of T, will strengthen research taking place through the Tanenbaum Institute for Science in Sport (TISS). It’s a centre for sports performance and sports medicine that was established in 2022 at the university’s Faculty of Kinesiology and Physical Education, owing to a $20-million gift from the Tanenbaum family’s foundation. The institute has been bringing together researchers and practitioners, and this new chair plans to do the same, supplying a megaphone for the needs of women athletes.

“The key is to disseminate the knowledge to the coaches, players and the trainers,” added Tanenbaum. “A lot of research just gets printed in a journal and stuck in a silo, but we need to get it to the people it’s intended to help.”

The chair will be led by an expert still to be hired to an endowed position at the university. The person’s role will include translating new knowledge from the research, making it useful to the sports community. An international search will begin soon to fill the role.

“It’s going to be a very unique position,” said Michael Hutchinson, the director of TISS. “I’m sure there are many candidates across the spectrum of sports and academia that would love to have this opportunity.”

Recent years have seen a growth boom in women’s sports around the world, with the number of professional women’s teams skyrocketing along with public interest, franchise valuations and brands hopping aboard. Yet research hasn’t kept pace with this cultural shift, leaving a gap of specific knowledge about how to aid the health and performance of these athletes.

Historically, females have been significantly underrepresented in sport and exercise science research. A 2021 study called “The Sex Data Gap in Sport and Exercise Science Research” explored the ratio of male and female participants in thousands of published studies and found that 63 per cent had both males and females, 31 per cent included males only, and six per cent included females only.

Many sport health guidelines are derived based on research done with mostly male participants, and that data is simply generalized to female athletes too, despite their many differences – from skeletal structure to hormones.

“There’s been a big push to say girls and women have unique needs, and we need more research on them because you just can’t extrapolate what happens with boys and men to women and girls,” said Gretchen Kerr, U of T’s Dean of the Faculty of Kinesiology & Physical Education.

The chair will gather athletes, coaches and managers around tables with medical experts and researchers to discuss the most pressing modern-day health and performance issues facing girls and women in their sports. They could narrow in on problems like the prevalence of ACL injuries among female athletes, or better return-to-sport knowledge for postpartum mothers.

The new chair will also translate findings and make them available widely to all women athletes and those who treat and work with them. Plans include an evidence-informed podcast series and an online hub with resources like toolkits and videos.

Julie Tanenbaum-Albert, president of the Larry and Judy Tanenbaum Family Foundation, points out that a trend in her parents’ donations over the years is open-access research, just like at the Tanenbaum Open Science Institute based at the Montreal Neurological Institute. She hopes to see new knowledge specific to female athletes shared internationally.

“Providing access to information, and to the highest quality data in everything that they do,” is how Tanenbaum-Albert puts it. “It’s an opportunity to evolve and develop female sports and athletes.”

When asked about his strong interest in investing in women’s sports, Tanenbaum points right away to the “strong females” in his family, including his six granddaughters.

“I think absolutely the bright light has come on over these last few years in women’s sports – soccer, hockey, basketball … they are taking a real front row seat on TV networks and streaming, and women’s sport is in fact good business,” said Tanenbaum.

“Judy and I, we have a belief in women’s sports, and it goes beyond the teams and leagues to the individual athletes. The focus needs to be on the athlete.”

Although his Tempo have already been eliminated from the WNBA playoffs, currently holding an 11-29 record with four regular season games remaining, Tanenbaum calls the first season “a huge success, absolutely”. He’s consistently been courtside at the home games, many sellouts, with a burgeoning fan base that has waited a long time to see this in Canada.

With an astonishing list of injuries to multiple key players throughout the season, the Tempo were never able to see their full potential on the court – perhaps a real-world case of more help needed in injury prevention and sport science.

“Our goal is always to win a championship, and that’s what we’re going to do one day,” said Tanenbaum. “I had the experience in 2019 with the Raptors, and we’re going to have it certainly with the Tempo here.”