Player's Own Voice

In the great Canadian conversation about sports and culture, hockey always elbows its way to the microphone. But if we want fresh insights about how this nation is wired…Player's Own Voice podcast thinks that the CFL has lots to teach us about ourselves. No better time to think about it than around Grey Cup week. And no one better to help us mull it over than one of the greatest players in the history of professional ball, Damon Allen. The American born prodigy left San Diego of all comfy home towns, for Edmonton…in March 1985 no less, and stayed with the CFL for 23 record shattering years. Host Anastasia Bucsis and the legendary quarterback kick around some ideas: Canada has cooked up a beautiful game with its CFL rules. Canadian football has deep history, hometown teams and athletes who locals can actually get to know and care about. Heck, if you are willing to pay the person who comes along to make sure you don't damage the thing, you can bring the actual Grey Cup to your next house party. But our game has long suffered in financial and media comparison to the NFL. Why should a Toronto football fan look to Buffalo? There's a million ways to try to understand the Canadian-American mindset. Or you could just settle in for one smart CFL – NFL conversation with the remarkable Mr. Allen.

Reigning Olympic Ski Cross Champion and multiple X-game and world cup medallist, Brady Leman is not one to cut corners in the gym. The man is a conditioned brick of muscle. But for such a physical specimen - Leman is a surprisingly devoted student of the mental game. Against the mayhem and injury of competition, Leman works at mindfulness, visualization, and meditation, and he is more convinced all the time that psychological training is what's driving his world-beating results. The literal calm amid the storm is what it's all about. Host Anastasia Bucsis gives Leman the conversational room to expand on his thinking about best mental practises for competitors. After that, she reminisces with her fellow Calgarian, about all the ways their home city supported developing winter athletes.

When she was fifteen years old, Keely Shaw had it all figured out. Hockey would be the through line on a life plan consisting of high performance competition, scouting, scholarships, Olympics…sky's the limit. So when the grade nine girl was thrown from her beloved horse while she was out on the prairies, sustaining brain injuries and partial paralysis, Shaw's first reaction was furious resentment at the sport that was suddenly denied to her. It took a few years, a tonne of discipline, and working through significant psychological setbacks, but Shaw has found high performance sport again. Shaw is a world class road and track paralympian cyclist now. And when she isn't pounding the pedals, she's also chasing her Ph.D. Believe it or not, Shaw is studying the performance benefits of dark chocolate at high altitude! The plan always was to be competing at Tokyo 2020, but Shaw just never imagined this particular path would be the one to take her there. Host Anastasia Bucsis meets the Canadian paralympian as she sets her sights on the next world championship races in Milton, Ont.

Pierce LePage does not waste a lot of time second-guessing himself. Fresh off a strong debut at the IAAF World Championships in Decathlon in Doha, the young track and field star figures his fifth finish is a pretty good place to be at this stage in a career and Olympic cycle. The way he sees it, with some work on his throwing, he's got a path to a podium in Tokyo 2020. It's not the ambition that surprises with this phenomenal athlete. It's the chill attitude. So when LePage says his javelin and shotput are sub par, he says it with a chuckle, and he figures that with his height and wingspan…he's got the levers to be a throwing great eventually. It'll come when it comes. In the meantime, he's laying down 10.3 second 100 m dashes. At 6'7" that blazing speed looks surprisingly unhurried. Unhurried and unworried isn't such a bad way to go through a career, and with a long season of competition drawing to a close, LePage tells host Ansastasia Bucsis that it's time to take on a serious challenge anyway: The decathlete is a former pro video gamer... and he's fixing to spend the off season thumbs deep in League of Legends.

The 2019 Skate Canada grand prix underscores the new normal on the national figure skating scene. Today's skaters are younger, and to the casual fan, less familiar than the stars of recent vintage. With one exception: Kirsten Moore-Towers. The reigning Canadian Pairs champion is keenly aware that she alone has yet to retire from her star-studded generation. Does that make her wistful? Not at all. For 'KMT', it's all about being grateful to still be at the apex of her sport, still loving competition. She joins host Anastasia Bucsis to talk about the maturing athlete's changing relationships with coaches and partners. Kirsten is a fierce competitor on the ice, and a constantly thinking athlete the rest of the time. She has a growing desire to help shape the sometimes unhealthy body image (and eating disorder-prone) culture of her sport. Moore believes we can avoid the messaging that all too often accompanies rewarding female figure skaters for being lithe and lean and preformative in skimpy outfits. At the ripe old age of 27, the veteran has a plan to leave her sport better than when she found it.

Dylan Moscovitch enjoyed a long and storied career as a pairs figure skater, but he's in his early thirties now, and even though he's still a young man, he knew two years ago that he was done with competition. So Dylan did some reflecting: he had spent half a lifetime learning how to be an elite athlete. What could he do with those hard-won skills in act two of his life? Physical performance? Check. Ability to memorize, rehearse and sell gestures and moods? Check. He was comfortable in front of audiences and clusters of judges. He figured it out pretty quickly- he had nailed most of the core skills for professional acting. But as he says to host Anastasia Bucsis, there was an unexpected wrinkle. Athletes are trained to perform with confidence, while actors need to perform with vulnerability. How do you learn that? Reinventing yourself is what it's all about on this week's podcast.

It is hard to think of a more famous 9.84 seconds in Canadian sports. It took a lifetime of confident concentration to bring sprinter Donovan Bailey to the line for the race that made him king of the world. This week, host Anastasia Bucsis explores self-assurance with Bailey. Without that confidence, track history could very well have been different. Bucsis and Bailey zero in on one race to talk it through, because the thing we may forget, looking back at his triumphant 100 metres in the 1996 Olympics, was just how agonising the race was for competitors. It took an eternity to get underway. False start followed false start. The disqualified Linford Christie even refused to clear the blocks for a while. But through it all, Bailey kept his composure and his certainty of victory. He gives full credit for that confidence to his parents. Which is not to say they were stroking his ego. On the contrary, when Bailey was breaking world records, his folks often didn't even choose to attend, and both loving parents maintained a cool attitude about their son's growing fame and accomplishments.

No Canadian has seen greater Olympic glory than Marnie McBean. But the rowing legend says one of her most memorable moments came at the Sydney games, where she was injured out of competition. The support she got from her fellow athletes and from Team Canada, changed her outlook dramatically, and made the Olympic movement the enduring focus of Marnie McBean's life. Canada's Chef du Mission for the Tokyo Olympics comes into studio to share her understanding of Olympic sport culture with host Anastasia Bucsis. Beyond the individual insights she has picked up from years of mentoring, McBean has invested serious thought in the areas where the Olympics struggle. How do host cities justify the cost of building so much infrastructure? What is the work that still needs to be done to keep athletes safely away from steroid use? Are we any nearer clarity in the shifting sands of gender and competition? The chat raises more questions than answers, but the questions matter if sustainable Olympic games are the goal.

Rosie Maclennan is the only person to have won back to back Olympic gold medals in Trampoline. The way she sees it, that's history. You can't change history, can't take it away, no matter what you do in the future. So when it comes to Maclennan's approach to Tokyo 2020, call it a threepeat if you want, but that won't change her plan of attack: to be the best she has ever been on trampoline. Which is not to say that Rosie makes light of her legacy. Maclennan is proud of the fact that a whole generation of young athletes joined the sport because of the example she set. She tells host Anastasia Bucsis about her work with Right to Play, The Gist, and other female sport initiatives. The involvement goes well beyond lending her name to good causes. Maclennan recently earned a masters degree, focusing on Athlete's rights and responsibilities, and she ploughs into the work with serious purpose. Maclennan is also extremely persuasive on the matter of physical literacy in Canada's schools. She's at the peak of her game, in every sense… The concussion-like injury of several years ago is no longer a problem and a recent foot fracture is healing nicely. Rosie has written about her recovery from injury for CBC Sports' Player's Own Voice essay series.

When Battle of the Blades contestants throw it down on the rink, they are not chasing personal riches. They are in it for their favourite charitable cause, which sounds like a perfect summary of Sheldon Kennedy's life work. The former NHL player, who is strapping on toe picks for the first time for BOTB, is quick to say his life and career was permanently scarred by the sexual abuse he suffered as a youth. Before Sheldon, nobody talked about coaches as predators. And, in fact, the silence surrounding the issue nearly killed him. But Sheldon Kennedy has changed the world, and his own life story, by advocating for victims and training more than one and a half million sport volunteers and workers to end the abuse. How's he doing now? Well, he's a new farmer and a new father and he's having fun on the new skates. Host Anastasia Bucsis checks in with that rare hockey legend whose greatest work is happening off the ice.

Keegan Messing is serious about having fun. His goal is Olympic gold in figure skating, but that doesn't stop him from dreaming up a new Olympic contest. His idea is three kinds of skaters — speed, hockey, and figures — all duking it out in tests of overall skating supremacy. Unlikely, but fun idea, right? He is no stranger to unlikely plans. Born in rural Alaska, in a home with no running water, a young Keegan watched a DVD of Canadian figure skating great Elvis Stojko and knew that a men's singles Olympic gold medal was exactly what he wanted. He quickly figured out that Team Canada was going to be his best way to get there and having a Canadian mother opened the eligibility door. Like many Alaskans, the 27-year-old is at home in the outdoors. He can fix his own cars and dirt bikes with the best of them. His career makes him a jet-setter, but his heart sings when he's way off the grid. What sets Messing apart is the power he brings to performance on the ice. Coming up in the Patrick Chan years, Keegan's intense strength and jumping ability almost feels like a throwback to a previous era. He is in the driver's seat now as Canada's top male skater. Working hard and having fun every step of the way.

There are contradictions in most athlete's careers, but Canadian professional bike racer Michael Woods embodies a doozy. In the last year, he has posted career highlight results in the world's biggest races, even as he was battling injury and personal tragedy at home. Grand Tour racing is famously a sport whose athletes embrace suffering, but even so, Woods has found a way to harness setbacks and managed to train and race even harder through them. He gained the respect of thousands of racing fans, along with a lot of sympathetic winces with his performance at this year's Tour de France. He tells host, Anastasia Bucsis, that he picked up some of his mental techniques from Wayne Gretzky. He describes literal out of body experiences that he has had while winning some of the most gruelling mountain races in the world. Certainly a lot of years of punishing practice in the saddle and on the running track went into the mix as well. Those early years as a super elite track runner set Woods apart in other ways. For most of the peloton- winning a Tour de France is the dream …but as an early career runner- it's Olympic glory that fuels the fire for Michael Woods. Barring disaster- he has already marked a big X on his calendar for Tokyo in 2020. Oh- and about that nice smelling Peloton? Cologne. Plenty of it splashed around, especially on the Giro D'Italia. Who knew?

Four time Olympian Sam Edney is Canada's best-ever male luger. He recently peeled off his speed suit for the last time, and is about to begin a new sporting career, as high performance manager for the national team. This week, even before doping concerns swirled around Canada's canoeing hopes, host Anastasia Bucsis and Sam Edney sat down to talk about how Russian doping had such a dismaying effect on Edney's peak competing years. His doping rollercoaster began with a disappointing fourth place team finish in Sochi. Three years later, temporary redemption came with the announcement that due to positive results on the Russian team, Canada would become bronze winners after all. The sucker punch was delivered mere days before the Pyeongchang winter Olympics, when that decision was reversed. The Canadian luge team strongly felt that they had been cheated of the same medal twice! But whatever else the eve-of-competition setback did to the team mindset, Edney and his teammates regrouped and raced to a Silver medal at the 2018 Olympics. Now, the new High Performance manager can look ahead. His focus is on development, of the new luge track in Calgary, and the new crop of Canadian hopefuls.

Rebecca Johnston is eyeing a fourth trip to the Olympics. She has already helped deliver two golds and a silver medal. She has lived the experience from within as the pro game patiently built over the last ten years — but she has never seen a setback quite like the collapse of the CWHL. Host Anastasia Bucsis takes time with the all-star forward to talk about establishing one permanent, professional, equitable league. Having high quality refs, skate sharpeners on site, and some kind of broadcast schedule would be a nice bonus. As one of the premier players in hockey, Sudbury's Johnston has no shortage of ideas about the game's needs. As she sees it, away from the Olympics, and the Clarkson Cup, the women's game is played out in media silence. It is too easy to ignore what we cannot see or hear.

Erica Wiebe, Canadian Olympic wrestling champion, discusses the oddly isolating experience of stepping atop the podium, her newfound role as mentor to a generation of young women in the world's oldest sport, and her surprising reasons for avoiding a WWE career, despite the paycheque, her obvious fitness for the work, and an outsized personality that would seem to be tailor made for the theatrical ring.