Player's Own Voice

Kaylyn Kyle has parlayed years of soccer with the Canadian national team and in pro leagues, into a bustling career as a broadcast soccer analyst. What sets Kyle apart isn’t just her deep knowledge of the game and tactics, but her willingness to speak plainly about the issues and players before her. Kyle is not afraid to court controversy, nor to call out poor behaviour when she sees it. She’s bru...

Here’s the thing that Patrick Chan wants to understand about his fellow figure skater, Kurt Browning… after 45 years on ice, how has Browning managed to stay in love with his sport? Not just stay active in it- because hey, a job’s a job, but stay enamoured with it all? Browning has a one-word answer to the question: Curiosity. Browning can’t help himself, he’s still curious about the next solo, th...

People always say Sport teaches valuable life lessons. If true, Rugby Sevens stalwart Bianca Farella has earned a doctorate in the last 18 months. Just before the Tokyo Olympics- something like 55% of players and alumni agreed that there were culture and coaching problems at Rugby Canada. Tackling that messy situation was necessary, and a great long-term project, but the timing was awful for the w...

Summer and Brooke McIntosh’s parents have a good problem brewing. October 28 to 30th, Skate Canada International will likely see Brooke figure skating on one side of the Greater Toronto Area, and on the exact same days, Summer will likely be tearing up the pool in World Cup races on the opposite side of town. Scheduling headaches are part of the price to be paid when raising two high performance a...

In the ever-expanding universe of Women's Soccer- very few stars shine brighter than the Captain of USA's national team, Becky Sauerbrunn. With more than 200 caps and counting, her contributions on the pitch have filled scores of highlight reels.  So it seems strange to say her biggest impact, and likely her most lasting legacy, will be Sauerbrunn's work off the field, largely behind the scenes. S...

‘Culture’, toxic or otherwise, is invoked almost daily in sports. Like a collective mood, it is easily named but much more difficult to manage- let alone improve. Rhian Wilkinson, the new coach of the Portland Thorns, has managed to do both those things. She inherited a club that had recently endured a blistering abuse scandal. Turning that culture around is an ongoing success story, and it’s by n...

NASCAR drivers generally have a lot in common.  For starters, they are overwhelmingly American, male, and coming from seriously wealthy backgrounds.    Winnipeg's own Amber Balcaen has got her 'outsider' bases covered.  As the only Canadian racing full time on the NASCAR circuit, she's overcoming challenges left, right and centre.  Luckily, Balcaen is used to fighting for what she wants. Her backg...

The more public the troubles at Bobsleigh Canada Skeleton become, the less easy they are to nail down. More than seventy athletes are calling for a leadership overhaul, amid complaints of ‘toxic culture’ and a serious breakdown in trust and respect between the people who actually do the high speed, high danger sports, and the people who coach, train, manage, repair, and organize on their behalf. T...

Antoine Gélinas-Beaulieu has one heck of a backstory. He was a teen prodigy. A top-ranked world junior speed skater in both long and short track, which is extremely rare. He simply loved skating- and he had his own, happy, idiosyncratic ways that served him well. He was the kind of kid who'd warm up on a unicycle, instead of the usual stationary bike. But a new coaching regime stole all the joy fr...

After years of working on communications for high performance sports, Dina Bell-Laroche has witnessed many extremes of emotion. But the moment that altered her career forever was the death of her sister, nearly twenty years ago. The grief and her experience in sport combined for Bell-Laroche and led her to coaching and councelling athletes who are dealing with loss in its many forms. With national...

Brad Gushue held 40 pounds of granite in one hand, and in the other, the distinct possibility that Canada would leave Beijing without a single curling medal for the first time since the sport was introduced to the Olympic games in 1998. As it happens, the granite hung lighter in the balance. The skip of the Canadian team delivered a shot that locked up a Bronze medal,  exactly 16 years after his g...

Charles Hamelin knows how to conduct an Olympic Career. Medal at your first games. Keep medaling and staying strong for sixteen more years. Somewhere in the middle of all that, give Canadians a warm fuzzy moment by celebrating a win with a rinkside kiss. Save the best win for the last appearance. In his final skate, the short track G.O.A.T. bagged one last Olympic gold medal. There are only three...

Greg Westlake is both ironman and spokesman for para Hockey. Ironman because these are his fifth Paralympic games, and he remains remarkably fit and injury free despite his long and storied career. Spokesman because his ideas and involvement with para sport are only getting more persuasive with each passing year. For Westlake, it’s all about knowing your worth, and not being shy to demand it. The...

When figure skater Elladj Baldé started sharing videos of himself having a ball, skating on frozen lakes, the response almost overwhelmed him. Tens of millions of views piled in…making Baldé quickly realize that he had a responsibility to put this unnervingly powerful new tool to good use. Retired from competition, but more engaged than ever in the wide world of skating, Baldé has become an icon o...

Even by Beijing 2022 standards, Keegan Messing faced a tense obstacle course to get to the games.   A positive covid test result just before 'go time'  threatened to undo four years of practice and planning. He rocketed into Beijing, having flown the long way round the world to get there, too late for his beloved team figure skate event, and just barely in time for his solo routines. But when he h...

Considering Mark McMorris' medical history, it's no surprise he jokes about enjoying rare time off between surgeries. It takes another beat to process his comparisons with teammate Max Parrot's recovery from cancer. But that is the unlikely reality:  Two guys, buddies on the same team, both at death's door not so long ago… both on the podium in Beijing. You either laugh or cry at life's twists and...

Picture two radically different sports. Snowboarding and Golf, for example.  Nothing in common, you say? Laurie Blouin might persuade you otherwise. When she's doing her Slopestyle or Big Air events- flying and spinning at stomach-lurching speed and altitude, stomping the touch down- she says that's the very same feeling she gets when a round of golf comes together on the links. Mortal athletes ar...

Here’s how life works for Lisa Weagle, a curler at the pinnacle of her sport: Sometimes she’s the lead, and an undisputed force in that capacity. And sometimes she’s an alternate, as she happens to be for Jennifer Jones’ team right now at the Beijing Olympics. And for Weagle, you better believe, there is no difference in the approach or commitment, whichever role she lands. The fifth member of Jon...

Just as the Beijing Winter Olympic competition was getting underway, Anastasia pedaled up alongside Canada’s most recent Olympic medallist- track Cyclist Kelsey Mitchell. Her golden ride was the final capping glory on Canada’s Tokyo campaign. Olympians, regardless of winter or summer specialization, can always learn from one another. So Anastasia tapped Mitchell for insights and advice on getting...

Nancy Lee is the IOC advisor on Gender Equality. The straightforward job title belies a serious complexity of work. For starters, Gender Equality is not simple math. 5000 male and 5000 female athletes is not a one- and-done solution. Some events, such as Nordic Combined, are still men-only at the Olympics. That’s changing by the way… but not in time for Beijing. There are issues with some of the p...

Shortly before Stephanie Labbé dropped a surprise retirement notice on the soccer world, the Canadian national goalie and Olympic champion hunkered down with Anastasia to talk through her motivations, her historic career, and her plans for the future. First thing many people want to know about, is that remarkable, disarming smile on Labbé's face as she braced for Swedish penalty kickers to do thei...

On the eve of Olympic competition, it is bracing to see that Women’s international hockey is no longer a tale of two countries. Canada- USA is the rivalry that North Americans love of course, but Finland, Russia, Germany are all serious contenders nowadays, which is all for the good of the game. Canadian forward Natalie Spooner is counting the days to Beijing now. And it may seem like a paradox, b...

Vernon B.C.’s Emma Lunder began this biathlon world cup season with a bang. She landed a 6th place finish in Sweden, in the 15 k individual competition. That is a deceptively strong result in a sport which Europeans have dominated since, well, forever. And although the Canadian national team veteran recognizes that cracking the top 10 is always a good sign, for Lunder, this year is all about the B...

Isabelle Weidemann is having a year. The Canadian speedskater is number one in 3000 and 5000 meter racing. She is the woman the rest of the world is chasing, heading into the Beijing Olympics. Weidemann is also the acknowledged diesel engine in Canada’s pursuit trio, along with Ivanie Blondin and Valérie Maltais. Why Diesel? Because once the lanky 26 year-old gets up to speed, she has fantastic ef...

Veteran speedskater Laurent Dubreuil is having a career season many, many years after he took up the sport. So he faces a friendly and blunt question from Anastasia: “What took you so long?” Dubreuil is quick to acknowledge that he had some great advantages coming up in Canada’s most successful Olympic sport. For starters, he is the child of two Olympians, Robert Dubreuil, and Ariane Loignon. Havi...