Player's Own Voice

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, but she is convinced that all the pandemic isolation has actually brought the Canadian national team to new strengths. Nobody asked for time alone, but when it happened, everyone had the scope to work on individual skills, and to focus on the many small things, on ice and off, that can make each separate member of the Beijing roster stronger. Believers in wholistic team building might demur, but there is no arguing with Canada’s domination in last August’s World Championships. And isolation or not, when the team comes together, as Spooner tells POV host Anastasia, it really really really comes together. Veterans like herself are more than happy to help the newest generation of players find their happy place in the mix. Good vibes in the locker room translate to good team cohesion on the ice. This is a national team that has every reason to believe in itself. Like Spooner says, “If we’re a goal down…we know we are a team that can score four times in a period.”

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 Beijing Olympics. In Biathlon, as in all competition, everything has to go exactly right on race day, but Lunder is happy to itemize the many ways that her team has their proverbial ducks in a row. From new, specialist shooting coaching, to demanding but considerate leadership from Justin Wadsworth, to good old camaraderie and mutual support among the skiers and shooters…everyone seems to be in 'work hard, enjoy the process' mode. How many successful campaigns begin with that same simple formula? Counting down the days now to the winter Olympics, Lunder, like most athletes, is focusing on staying smart, staying healthy, and giving herself the best chance possible to get on the podium. As she tells Anastasia, nobody has ever competed in the Beijing facility before. It’s a totally new venue. So why not a Canadian podium?

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 efficiency and endurance. Weidemann hauls her teammates in her wake for extraordinarily long distances. Weidemann hunkered down for a chat with her old teammate Anastasia, at home in Calgary, a short jog from the Olympic Oval. The Ottawa-born skater is as surprised as anyone to find herself a team veteran. Time flies when you are logging hundreds of hours toward saving fractions of seconds. One of the surprises for Weidemann, amid the inevitable slog of training, is the recognition that try as she might in every way to be a better athlete, life away from the ice has more influence than most people acknowledge. The week she got a new puppy was also the week Weidemann smashed personal goals in training. A trip out of town with family set off a streak of racing successes. It happens too often to be a coincidence. For the truly driven athlete…there’s an art to discovering when and how to step back, take the foot off the gas, and return to even greater results. Anastasia has often said Isabelle Weidemann is one of the most underrated athletes in Canada. Before the Winter Olympics get underway, here’s a chance to discover why that quiet background buzz about the Canadian Speedskating team is getting steadily louder.

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. Having made their mark on the sports world, there was no stage parenting going on, no pressure to do anything but try hard and love what he did. Dubreuil had no problem trying hard. His workouts were as long and tough as anyone’s on the circuit. And he had flashes of excellence, but his self-imposed desire to win big was getting in the way. The harder he worked, the heavier he felt, and top tier results eluded him. Away from the ice, life was ticking along beautifully, and Laurent was delighted to announce a new daughter. And that’s where things get surprising. The pull of parenting made Dubreuil decide to spend more time hanging out with baby Rose, and less time training. He did fewer, but perhaps better workouts and his times started to plunge. The less he cared about racing, wouldn’t you know, the better he did. So now, eight races into this world cup season, Dubreuil has eight podiums in a row. He smashed the Canadian record in the 500m this weekend. His idea about rounding into form for the Beijing Olympics is obviously on track. He is having more fun than ever. He is going like thunder in all his races. And Rose, the girl he calls the most important person in his life? She couldn’t care less. And Dubreuil wouldn’t have it any other way.

Truly history-making athletes are few and far between. Nordic skier Beckie Scott qualifies, beyond dispute. What’s quietly amazing about the Canmore, Alberta native though, is that she is still changing the world, fully twenty years after becoming the first North American woman to win an Olympic medal in her sport. It took a while, but that medal became Gold, as the worm turned. Most athletes have known for years about Scott’s standout integrity in a notoriously doping-plagued sport. The rest of the world woke up to her commitment to fair play when they saw her in the 2017 Oscar-winning documentary ‘Icarus’. Beckie Scott, alongside hurdling great Edwin Moses, did everything in her power to steer the World Anti Doping Agency toward binding rulings for clean competition. In the eyes of many athletes, both WADA and the IOC are still coming up short in that regard. But Scott’s principled fight for fair play kept the pressure and the spotlight on. And if the world ever gets the upper hand on cheating nations and athletes, it will be Scott’s work that led the charge. Which brings Scott to her latest history-making work for fairness. Nearly five years ago, she threw her energy into Spirit North, a nonprofit working with indigenous communities to give young people opportunities for sport that they would otherwise be denied. Why is this historic? Because it’s working. Every year, around 6300 Indigenous kids are getting a first chance to try a variety of land -based sports. Skiing, canoeing, mountain biking… the list of sports, and communities joining the program, just keeps growing and growing. Talking about this today with Anastasia, Scott makes clear that a strong moral compass has been her guide all along. An analogy that served her WADA years was that doping was like being a starting gate that is ten meters ahead of everyone else. Scott points to the convergence of historic, systemic factors and practices that have relegated many young indigenous kids to a starting gate ten meters behind other Canadians. For Beckie Scott, it’s a clear matter: a deep unfairness needs to be redressed. Making history again? That just goes with the job. And on a minor note, Beckie Scott is helping us make history yet again…By our calculations, she is the one hundredth guest on CBC Sports’ Player’s Own Voice podcast.

Mark Arendz delivered performance after performance at the 2018 Pyeongchang Paralympic games. He skied and shot his way into uncharted territory, nailing an incredible six medals in six events. Which left Canada’s undisputed star of the games in something of a motivational bind. It’s relatively easy to train with a goal of doing ‘better next time’. But how to focus on improving after an outing like that? Heading into the Beijing games, as Arendz explains to Anastasia Bucsis, means evolving as an athlete. ‘More’ is not the answer, but ‘different’ might be. Arendz' relentless pursuit of technique and fitness has led him to a place where he can still find flaws in his own gold medal races. He can still see ways to hit more bullseyes, more quickly. He can still bring more of his phenomenal talent and drive to bear on all the notoriously difficult Nordic disciplines. In conversation on the edge of ‘Frozen Thunder’, the shoulder season cross country training track at Canmore, Alberta, Arendz slowed down long enough to describe how his passion for technical excellence in sport likely evolved from his early need to solve the daily challenges of living minus an arm lost to a childhood accident on his family farm in P.E.I. 24 years of overcoming physical problems, as it turns out, is excellent preparation for an unparalleled athletic career. It should come as a surprise to no one that Arendz is already visualizing precisely where he’ll be at noon on March 5th, 2022…the minute, hour and day that his next Paralympic Nordic race gets underway.

It’s kind of an open secret, regarding Curling in this country: the best of the best will agree that qualifying for the Canadian Olympic team is harder than facing the entire world at the actual winter games. If that sounds unCanadian, maybe a little too bragodocious, judge for yourself in the week ahead, as Saskatoon hosts the national team qualifying tournament. If you need some insights about how that’s all going to play out… can we recommend lead Ben Hebert? The gold medallist, world champion, and four-time Brier winner is an excellent source of unvarnished wisdom about the game that he has devoted 25 years to perfecting. According to Hebert, at this level, and with these teams in the running, the whole tournament might come down to a couple of shots. Which means it could be anybody who’ll get to wear the maple leaf once Beijing begins. And - looking ahead to the Olympics themselves, Hebert is quick to say, Sweden and Scotland are the nations to respect, come February. Connecting in Calgary with his old Olympian pal Anastasia, Hebert holds forth on crucial topics such as whether a Saskatchewan team winning gold in Curling, or the Rough Riders winning the Grey Cup, would make Sask hearts beat hardest… on his lingering dismay at being swept off the podium in PyeongChang, 2018… and on how money and medals have driven everybody in the game to heights of professionalism and athletic fitness that would be unheard of barely a generation back.

She makes it look easy, flying around the oval at world class times, but for Speed skater Ivanie Blondin, the years since her medal-less return from the PyeongChang winter games have been marked by deep depression and poor mental health. Strangely enough, the versatile long-track athlete takes comfort in that history. Her attitude is: if she can still post winning times, even when she’s not feeling anywhere near top form, then she has to admit, the process is working. Fresh off becoming the new national champion in the 1500m –while still feeling sub par- the skater sat down to chat with Player’s Own Voice host Anastasia Bucsis, surrounded by a small menagerie of rescue animals. Blondin lays out her plans for the road to Beijing, and goes deep into the unusual living arrangements she and her husband, Hungarian speed skater Konrad Nagy, find themselves in, as the two athletes train and practise an ocean apart in Canada and Europe. Blondin has tasted competition peaks and valleys and she is making no secret of her drive to perform better than ever at the Beijing Olympics.

There’s a buzz on about the Canadian Speed skating team, heading toward the Beijing Olympics. The recent national trials revealed surprising strengths and plunging race times from veterans and newer hopefuls alike. Before the cheering echos from the trials had a chance to dwindle away at Calgary’s Olympic Oval, Player’s Own Voice podcast host Anastasia Bucsis convened a 'state of the skate' meeting with three champions of the sport. It's a raucous sit down chat about Speed Skating then and now. Chef du mission for the Canadian team, Catriona Le May Doane, Assistant team Coach Shannon Rempel, and multi medallist and commentator Kristina Groves all piled around the table to talk through the challenging pursuit of crazy speed on dime-thin skate blades. None of these women care much for clichés, but they all agree- this is living proof that if you build it, they will come. Canada’s most successful winter Olympic sport got to be that way, because decisions were made, back in 1988, to keep the Olympic skating Oval and institution, and coaching, training and expertise firmly in place. There are Olympic medal hopefuls right now, who got to be that way because they could see and skate alongside the best of the best, when they were first trying it out. Legends of Long track- this week on POV podcast.

Ten years after Piper Gilles and Paul Poirier began Ice dancing together, they have landed in a spot that is novel for both of them: Top of the heap. Creative, athletic, and artistic as they have always been, the duo’s dynamics have long contended with outsized competitors like Tessa & Scott and Kaitlyn & Andrew. It’s Piper and Paul’s turn in the sun now. And with the Winter Olympics coming on fast, they don’t have time to savour the spotlight. It’s all about getting their programme honed to perfection. Long-standing fans of the duo will be thrilled to learn that their latest long performance is built around The Beatles’ “Day in the Life”- interpreted by the same remarkable busker team whose ‘Starry Night’ electrified crowds for Piper and Paul starting in 2018. The Ice Dancers share secrets of an enduring partnership. Perhaps it’s counter intuitive, but in their case, the professional success together is firmly based in respect for one another’s personal lives. Paul jokes that he doesn’t trust any skate partners who never argue, but he and Piper are serious about making sure that support for one another comes first in every discussion, no matter how heated.

Nate Riech came into his first Paralympics under a burden of heavy expectation. Not just because his family tree is overstuffed with elite and pro athletes. Riech owns the world record in the T38 1500m. He set it, and then lowered it, in the months leading up to Tokyo. So he was confident and ready to race when the gold medal day dawned. But that’s where the going got interesting.... As an athlete enduring traumatic brain injury, Nate has learned to roll with a variety of symptoms. But even he was a bit freaked out to discover his right leg was suddenly not working properly during race day warm up. Incredibly, he and his coach had a backup plan for just such an outcome: he ran a series of short sprints designed to reboot his unpredictable nervous system. It worked. He’s sporting the gold now. And hungrier than ever to keep tearing up the record books, keep showing the world what determined people with TBIs can do, and keep inspiring anybody, who like himself, woke up one fateful day,young and motionless in a hospital bed. The term is overused, but Nate Riech is an inspiration, and a fascinating young runner to get to know on this week’s Player’s Own Voice.

Clara Hughes is one of those rare athletes who finishes an exceptional competitive career, and goes on to even more widespread fame. The former speed skater and cyclist met overwhelming success with her work in support of mental illness in the ‘Let’s Talk’ initiative. The advocacy and outreach work proved so involving that Hughes needed to step away again to recharge, and that led to an ongoing series of epic hikes. Clara Hughes has walked the famous east and west coast mountain trails for thousands of kilometers. Usually solo, always finding reflection and meditation in the process. For her old speed skating teammate Anastasia Bucsis, Clara’s reflective state opens the gate to lingering memories from a stellar career, and also to thinking through how today’s vocal athletes, like Naomi Osaka and Simone Biles, are ushering in social change that extends to every corner of the workplace. If that all sounds a bit nutritious, Clara Hughes has not lost her knack for blunt assessment of any situation, including her own delight at a 43rd place finish, not sooo long ago. Also, and this made us feel thoughtless, we got messages from our deaf audience, readers of the POV essay series, asking for transcriptions of the podcast. Hoping to make this a permanent part of the publication...

Erin Ambrose, pro defender in the PWHPA and on the national team, has a decidedly un hockey - like tendency to blow right through the usual scrum clichés... She's honest about all of it. Team USA?. Ambrose makes no bones about hating them. Is that the word she wants to use? Oh yes. She hates them. And guess what- she says we should love that hate. There's plenty of fire in that outlook. And having a brand new IIHF championship gold medal slung around her neck allows Ambrose to visit fresh memories of those excellent hard feelings. But she's not just another hockey star with a gnarly temper. Ambrose's passion is just as strong on the other side of the emotional spectrum. She is a supremely compassionate advocate for mental health, having fought, and continued to deal with her own intense anxiety and depression. Feared on the Ice, Erin Ambrose is welcomed everywhere else, because her mental health advocacy is so respected and received. She is a complicated and fascinating figure.

Everybody reacts the same way when watching Paralympics for the first time: “Those people are amazing!” The more they watch, the deeper the appreciation. “ Didja see how fast that guy swam the 100 free, and he only has one leg! How did that completely blind woman log such a blazing triathlon?” It never fails. If we like the Olympics for the athletes’ stories, we love the Paralympics for the same reason. Which brings us to Cindy Ouellet. Prepare to feel like a slacker: Ouellet is dominant in winter AND summer para sports, finishing a PhD in biomedical engineering, she’s a bilingual advocate for people with disabilities, LGBTQ2 people, mental health and anti- bullying causes, she’s developing a university course, and to top it all off, she’s like Mike Holmes with the power tools. Build it, Fix it, no problem. That’s not to say it’s all smooth sailing for the Captain of Canada’s Wheelchair basketball team. Cindy has suffered mental and physical setbacks that would knock anyone off their game. But we can safely add ‘determined’ to Cindy’s laundry list of admirable attributes. Just what the team needs, rolling into Tokyo. A little while before the Paralympics began, Anastasia caught up with Cindy at her home in Quebec City.

Devotees of endurance running will tell you, the beauty of a 5,000 or 10,000 meter race is that those long, fast laps are the closest thing to a chess board that track and field offers. Physical endurance counts. An ability to compartmentalize pain helps. Raw speed matters. But it’s those long minutes of strategic survival...taking and relinquishing control, testing opponents’ fitness, staying upright in a jostling pack of spikes, and carving a path to the finish line. It’s that real time running mental game that thrills. Mohamed Ahmed has emerged as North America’s fastest 5,000m man. His duel with some legendary African names in the semi finals and then on to the capper, his silver medal 5000m race? That was a game changer for Canadian distance running. Which is why Anastasia gave in to temptation and went ‘inside baseball’ with Mo Ahmed. It's a rare, almost moment by moment technical breakdown of Canada’s finest 5000m race. You don’t have to love running to enjoy this talk from Tokyo, but it’ll help!