EP61 Mark Lee - Sport Broadcaster

This is episode 61 of the Empowered Athlete podcast. Are you 6, 5, 2, 25 and male? Or maybe 5, 4, 1, 10 and female? Are you a swimmer, runner, gymnast or hockey player? Have you had three knee surgeries like me or a shoulder that tends to get sore? We all have different bodies and it makes sense that we require specific training and adjustment for best results. Are you self motivated, ready for consistency and want to follow a training plan customized for your needs? Maybe you are ready to be coached.

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Today in the Empowered Athlete Podcast, it's something a little different. Normally we're speaking with the athletes who compete at the highest level, but our guest today does the commentary at the highest level. It's none other than Mark Lee. Mark is the veteran of 14 Olympic Games. He has covered it all. Many of the athletes we featured on the show, Mark has called their biggest games and highlights. He's done it all in broadcasting. He's done NHL, women's hockey. He was behind a documentary for the CBC covering the BALCO scandal and Victor Conte about international doping and steroids in sports. The winner of two Gemini Awards, Mark is a true, true professional and has fantastic stories to share with us today on this episode. So sit back and enjoy Mark's silky smooth voice and great stories. Here we go.

Welcome to the Empowered Athlete Podcast, created to support athletes in their pursuit of excellence and inspire others toward their best life lives. Hosted by Kari Schneider, coach to top performers in sport and life, and Paul.

Durden, former national and professional volleyball player.

Hello everyone. Thanks for joining the Empowered Athlete Podcast. And I have to start by saying that I'm feeling a little self conscious today about my voice because as you know from the top of the show, we have one of Canada's most famous voices joining us, Mark Lee. Welcome to the podcast. Thank you so much for making the time to join us today.

Hey Paul, it's a real pleasure. Thanks for having me on the podcast.

Oh, the pleasure is all ours.

It really is. If our listeners are recognizing your voice, it's because you have been such a pillar in so many Canadian sporting events, 14 Olympics and so many different sports you've covered, from women's hockey to Cycling to athletics, so many different things that, and even the CFL covering great cups, play by plays and you've been awarded with Geminis or broadcasting expertise. So how did you get into this and become such a staple in Canadian sport?

Well, Kerry, thanks for that lovely introduction. I'm blushing. Well, I got into this business actually at a very young age. My father was in radio broadcasting for 40 years and when I was a young boy growing up in Ottawa, I used to go with him, tag along on weekends to the radio station. And I just fell in love with the whole concept of broadcasting. And, and so when I was in grade 12 in high school, I started doing some part time work on weekends, just doing the odd shift around the radio station in terms of like some recording work in the production area and eventually got my way on air. And my father was very concerned to make sure that, you know, there was no nepotism involved here. So he was pretty tough on me and paid me pretty poorly and gave me the worst shifts there were. And so, you know, if I still hung in after that, he thought maybe I really was passionate about it.

And you, wow, so make you earn it.

Make me earn it and. Exactly right. And you know, I can remember days thinking, you know, wow, he's pretty hard on me and maybe I'm not as good as I thought it was. And, and it was actually good training for me because I worked really hard. He gave me a tape recorder to take to my bedroom and I used to stay up late at night and, and take old news scripts and read them into the tape recorder, then play them back. And it was a great learning tool because you, when you hear yourself back, you know, it's, it's, it's a cringe worthy experience when you start, yeah, that's for sure. You start to learn, you know, how you sound and then you. I would listen to other really good on air, like news and sports people and then try to kind of like pattern myself after the good ones. And it was great. And then I got into university and I took the journalism program at Carleton University, which is a really quality program. And I had a little head start in terms of, you know, on air experience because I'd been going for a couple of years through my summers and on weekends in high school. And it really helped me, you know, get going, get my degree and then come out of university with, with a little bit of, a little bit of practical experience to go with my, my degree. And, and off I went. And at that point I actually broke ties with my dad in Terms of. I was offered a full time job in Montreal at cfcf. And that was the moment where I realized, you know, in order for me to go up, you know, to progress and to feel like I wasn't, you know, didn't have my dad over my shoulder or I didn't have a crutch or anything like that, I moved and went to Montreal and began my career.

And the type of work you're doing throughout journalism school and the stints you had with your father at the radio station, was it. How much of that was sport coverage? And you played, you're a quarterback at Carleton. Yes, there as well. So obviously you love sport, but how much of the work that you were doing on the journalism side was sport related?

So when I was working at my dad's radio station, it was all sports. So he put me on the air in the summer before grade 12, a Saturday night at 11 o' clock in the summertime, so nobody's listening and I did the late night sports report on the radio station. And then gradually he allowed me to work. I started working Saturdays or, sorry, Sundays. So I did the Sunday shift and I was on the air early in the morning, Sunday morning and then I did the afternoon drive as well. And in between, when I was going to university, I did a lot of homework and that sort of thing. And the kind of funny, the funny part of all that is that you're right, I was playing football at Carleton and on Sunday morning, especially in the fall, I was like reporting on myself and like on our team and all the other things that went on in Ottawa. Right.

Completely unbiased.

Completely unbiased. Of course, yeah. I couldn't change some of those passing stats, but.

And possibly a little under the weather too.

Well, yeah, I mean it was, I. One thing it taught me was, was being prepared and being organized because you know, playing football and you're practicing at night, getting home at 8:30 or whatever and then you know, you got a full course load at university and then you're also working on the weekend. I didn't have a day off, so I was like Monday to Friday school, Monday to Friday practice, Saturday games, Sunday on the air, back at it Monday. So I had to, I had to be fairly organized to kind of keep that going.

That's what you're describing is this, is this thing we hear so often. It's like those preliminary steps to mastery. We were lucky enough to interview a number of high level athletes. And all those hours that you're getting in, you must have not only been ahead of your peers in journalism. But now looking back, you can probably, you can tell us whether you feel like that experience early on and having to juggle everything, but really being immersed not only in sport and journalism and practicing your trade, all of which were paving the way to really develop some level of mastery.

Yeah. You know what, it's funny, all these decades later, you know, I read about Malcolm Gladwell's 10,000 hours, and then it sunk in that, you know, and I tell a lot of young people this, that, you know, you've got to pay your dues. That was the one thing my dad always said. He said, mark, you're paying your dues right now. And so by doing that, by putting in the extra work, by missing out on a lot of social things, I felt like I was investing in my future and practicing, you know, just practicing. And even when I would, would do it in my bedroom at night, I felt like I was, you know, getting those 10,000 hours. And so it did help me when I got to university and, and then, you know, at Carleton, we had our own radio station, we had our own news service in the, in the radio, on air side, I had a little bit of a, of an advantage that way because I'd been on the air. And so it gave me a bit of a head start that way. And, and so I was able to get a full time job right out of university in Montreal. That was a big part of it was those six years, two in high school, four in university, of doing that.

Extra work in terms of making the jump. Sorry, I just wanted to ask, in terms of making the jump, going through that, like paying the dues, the six years there and the hard work on the radio side, I know there's a pivotal moment where you made the move from Toronto to Winnipeg, threw yourself into the television side. What was, can you tell us about how that six years led up to that and being in Montreal and the decision to make that switch?

Right. Yeah, that was probably one of the scariest moments in my career because I'd gone to Montreal for a year and then this is at a university, and then I got into CBC Radio and I'd spent 12 years at CBC Radio. I worked in the national newsroom and then had my own show called the Inside Track, which was a sports documentary program. And it was a really serious program. I got to travel the world from Istanbul, Turkey, to, you know, the Nebraska Cornhuskers in ncaa, you know, football, you know, corruption. And I did a lot of really interesting, you know, in Istanbul I was covering the International Olympic Committee. And so I got exposed to a high degree of sports journalism and also a high degree of pressure to deliver documentaries and also host this show. And so I had a lot of radio experience. And then all of a sudden 12 years in, I had this offer from my former boss in radio who was now head of CBC Television, Network television sports. And, and he said, I'd like to bring you into television. He said, but the job's in Winnipeg. And I thought, wow, this is a big change. And so basically we had. Our firstborn son was 18 months old and my wife, who's from London, had never really been outside southern Ontario. And here I was asking her, you know, would that, could we do that move? And, and so from a personal point of view, it was quite an upheaval to, to move that far away from all of our friends and family. But from a professional point of view, I was moving into a whole new media medium in television. And I'd only done a little bit of television in Toronto with network sports alongside my radio job. And so I'll never forget starting in Winnipeg. I arrived there and I was, my job was to do the local sports and I also, on weekends I worked on the CFL on CBC as a host. And I basically got thrown into the fire. I didn't have much experience at all. And I'll never forget trembling every morning, getting up thinking, what am I going to do today? And I had, I learned on the job and I was lucky enough to have Scott Oak as my mentor there. You know, Scott's an incredible broadcaster and Scott, you know, got me going and I was lucky to work with some terrific producers and directors there. But that was a real, that was kind of like. So I didn't have any kind of run up, I didn't have any prep. I just got thrown right in. And so I think what helped me survive there was, you know, my work ethic and the journalism that I'd learned. CBC radio helped give me that kind of background to take on that challenge.

There's a couple things that are coming to me here when it comes to it sounds like that experience in Winnipeg was still a form of paying your dues. So, you know, you're right. But maybe at the same time it was like, okay, everything had paid off, but little did you know it was going to shift into, into television in Winnipeg. Who knew? And at the same time experiencing that, did you? You just experienced overcoming a massive amount of fear, not only making that change, but also on a day to day basis not knowing what you were facing next. Do you have any advice, athletes or coaches who are listening as to, you know, what helped you go through that fear in order to make that next step and whether it was worth it?

Yeah, well, fear is the operative word there because I was really in sort of untested territory. And you're right, I was kind of right back to paying my dues because, you know, the sports people were saying, we're going to put you in this market in Winnipeg. We're going to let you sink or swim on the local, you know, station and we're going to watch you and we're going to see if, you know, if you can make it. And then we're going to bring you in on weekends on the football telecast, starting out as the sideline host again, sort of an entry level position there. And so I knew, you know, in the, in the past I had a composure and a comfort zone when it came to radio, but I didn't have that in tv. And so what it, what it taught me was that when, when, when you're live, you know, when, when the lights come on as an athlete and you're at the start line or you're on the volleyball court and it's game time, you, you can't go back and, and have any redos. It's the same thing, right? I mean it, you have to, that, that's what you learn to do, is you learn to like, realize you're going to make mistakes, but realize that you're going to learn from every mistake and you're going to keep getting better, try to minimize those mistakes, but also know that there's no turning back once the lights come on. You kind of forget about the fear because you're now in the game, so to speak, and go for it. And that's, that's what I did. I just had to, I had to sink or swim. I realized there was no turning back. I'd moved my whole family halfway across the country and I put my whole career on, on this pivotal sort of pivot point into a new medium.

That's amazing to hear you say that. You expect to make mistakes, which is really, really, really important because if you're going out there trying to be perfect, a mistake will really throw you. Whereas if you have that mentality of, okay, there might be a mistake here or there, I absolutely don't want one, and I'm going to learn from it if it happens. But knowing that it is most likely going to occur, it really changes how devastating or easy that Mistake can be in terms of your performance.

Yeah, that's a really good point, Paul, because I did make mistakes. And what. And I, and I'm a bit of a perfectionist in that I really wanted it to be so polished and what I had to do is leave each show behind. So go into every, every, every broadcast with best intentions and then take the positives out of them and, and then just realize the mistakes you made. Learn from it. But, but don't dwell on it such.

A parallel to the athlete on the field or court rank. Such, such a huge parallel that way.

So you have a good story. Do you have a good story for us of where it really fell apart? I mean, I've heard you mentioned a few in the past me, but do you have one that just comes top of mind where.

Yeah, that you can laugh at now, but probably made you want to, you know, crawl into a hole at the time?

Okay. Well, I remember the first time, my first week on the air on the local sports, my wife came home and said, you're not blinking. Like your eyes are so wide open. And that was, that was, that was just me being so focused and intent, right. Said you're, you know, you need to relax a little bit. And I didn't realize that I was like just staring at the camera. Right. And of course, right away I felt like hugely embarrassed. I said, I can't go back on if that's the way I look. Right. But after a while, as I started to calm down, you know, she said, now you're looking a bit more relaxed. Now you've got to speak up a bit more. Like, here's my wife coaching me right from our family room, you know, at 7:30 every evening.

But that's never happened for us or anything.

No, I do remember, I mean, I was at CBC Winnipeg for four years before I went to the Olympics in Atlanta. I may have told you this story, Paul, but I was covering volleyball and beach volleyball at the Atlanta Olympics. And the way that that worked was the broadcast center. The international broadcast center in Atlanta was located right across from the arena that's no longer there. It's called the Omni and where the old Atlanta Flames used to play. But they were having one of the major indoor tournaments going on in there. They had set up in Athens, Georgia, so we couldn't get to both venues. So they had a broadcast, they called it a tube booth at the broadcast center where you would go in and call the other games off a TV set. And then the beach volleyball was making its debut at Those games. And it was at a place called Atlanta beach, which was in another part of Georgia. And so we had one live location and then two locations we called off at TV set in the broadcast center. And this one day, this was back before they, when they still had side out. So these matches were going for two and a half, three hours, some of them. And, and so one day I called seven volleyball matches with, with Charles Parkinson, who you know well and I. We'd called about three matches from the Omni and we were back over in the afternoon at the broadcast center preparing for the first child and he's debut in beach volleyball. And we had about 45 minutes. So Charles and I were quickly getting ready to prepare for that match. And one of our associate producers came running into this lounge where we were sitting and said, you've got to come down to the tube booth and call a match right away. And I said, no, no, no, Fausto was the chap's name. I said, we're not on for 45 minutes. He goes, mark, I'm telling you, you've got to get down to the CBC suite now. And he had this look of panic in his eyes. So here I am again. This is my first major television Olympic experience with a heavy load workload. And so we go down the escalators into the bowels of this giant broadcast center where every major network in the world is broadcasting from. And I get to the edit suite and I can hear the producer who's running the main show with Ron McClain screaming, Are those guys there yet? And the producer looked shoulder, he took his finger off the key and he said, are you guys here yet? I said, no, no, we're not here yet. Tell me what's happening. And so he went back and he said, no, they're not here yet, Terry. And so he turned, I said, you guys have got to get in the tube booth and you got to call Russia, Tunisia men's indoor volleyball right now. Because nothing's going, nothing's, nothing's happening right now at the olympics. And Ron McLean's like filling. And so I said, oh, so they're like, yeah. So now I go down to the two booth with, with Charles. They, they, they get the channels all set up. So we. Up comes the Russia, Tunisia men's game. I don't even have a roster.

You don't know who anybody is.

Easy names to pronounce, easy.

Oh my God, right? And back then this was a 13 inch tube TV. Terrible resolution.

Staring at you can't even see the numbers.

The numbers are, you know, like those tiny numbers, right? And so I think my career is flashing before my eyes. I'm going, this is it. I am going down, right? And, and so I put the headset on. I told the producer I had the headset on within 10 seconds. Ron McLean threw it to Charles. And I, I looked over at Charles, he's like thumbing through his, his, his. We have, we made ourselves a briefing binder. He's in the women's section. He can't even find the men's section. And I, and I'm now I've got About a minute, 30 to 2 minutes of content in my head about Tunisia and Russia, because Tunisia was the. Tunisia, of course, was the team that knocked Canada out for the Last chance qualifier in 96. So I had been briefed a bit on them. Anyway, we go on the air, as we're on the air, a producer throws it throws us these rosters. And I'm looking at Tunisia and I'm going, the only guy I remember, I'll never forget this, a guy named number six, a guy named Baghdadi. And he was there. He was their big right side hitter and he made most of their kills. And that was like the only guy we could recognize. But you can imagine we're, you know, we're doing that. And then to top it all off, we called that match and somehow we got through it and, and we finished the match and the producer said, no, don't go away. You're going to go to commercial and you're going to call the child and he's volleyball, beach volleyball match. I went, oh, my God. Right? And that's the way it went. And that's, that was, that was an exam that wasn't. I mean, luckily I didn't fall flat on my face, but I felt like my career was going to be over.

I can just see Charles making Baghdadi comments all the way along. Like Baghdadi being the main.

Oh, and, you know, you can imagine over and over, someone makes a kill shot to the baseline. The ball, we can't even tell if it's in or out, right? We have to wait for the score to change or for the side out. And I'd say to Charles, Charles, that was awfully close at the baseline like this. And then we'd have to wait. We'd have to wait for the little, you know, score on the top right corner.

It sure was Mark. It was almost right on the line. You just have to literally talk about it without saying it's one way or the Other. Wow.

Oh, my God. Yeah. And, you know, during that whole thing, you know, Keith Pelly, who headed up the whole Olympic Consortium for Vancouver in London Olympics. Keith Pelly was one of our boxing producers at the time. And he could hear all the traffic going back and forth, the chaos on talkback as they got us into the tube booth and this was going. And next thing you know, he's standing behind us in the tube booth. And I took my headset off and I said, what are you doing here? He goes, I had to see this for myself, you know. He said, we're over there in the box, and we could hear all this craziness going on and you guys being thrown in. And then he came in to watch. He thought it was gonna be a car wreck. I'm sure you have to.

You have to become a bit of an expert bullshitter at the same time.

My God. Yeah. You know what? That's where you learn to like that. You're right, Kerry. That's where you start to learn how to, you know, to finesse the broadcast, to buy yourself time, you know, to save yourself. Because that was.

Think. Think quickly on your feet.

Oh, my God. Yeah. You know, that day ended at 1:30 in the morning with the final match from the Omni. I'll never forget it. Oh.

You probably could change a few shirts with all the sweating and all the.

Oh, yeah. And of course, Charles is, like, flipping out. He can't believe what's going on. And we're both trying to stay calm. And. Oh, I think later that night, we have. We both had a bit of a laughing fit on the air. We got a little bit giddy. Charles, actually, he took a nap at around midnight when they went away from our volleyball match to some other sport. He said, wake me up when they come back. Oh, my God. Yeah. No, it was a wild experience.

Well, kind of going from that wild Olympic experience. You're a veteran of 14 Olympic Games now, and Kari and I were dying to hear from you or try to extract from you your insights of elements that you've seen throughout the Games. Things that are happening that are leading to peak performance. The things that people don't see on TV that are happening, you know, out of. Out of the camera's view that, you know, that you've been closer to than maybe anyone else in Canada for so long. Is there. I mean, it's a really broad general question, but does anything come to mind that you've seen that you've. Just a common trait or commonality amongst across sports? Yeah. That lead to these great performances on those biggest stages.

Right? Well, you know, I have, I have witnessed, you know, athletes, you know, preparing, you know, being with them, them on route to Olympic competition. Michael Smith, who is my partner in athletics, you know, is a three time Olympian, one of the country's great decathletes. I remember following him for a documentary in his early years and watching him come to Gotsis, Austria, which before they had a world championships in track and field, it was the unofficial decathlon world championship. This small little town with a stadium of 2000 where the likes of Daley Thompson and, and Michael Smith and, and all these great athletes perform world record performances. And I watched Michael go there one year as a favorite and he was in the fourth event of day one, the high jump. And he no heighted and he, his decathlon was over. He was the huge favorite to win. And I watched him walk out of the stadium, he was completely crushed. And then I watched him, you know, take that lesson and come back and a year later win the silver medal at the world championships in Tokyo behind Dan o'. Brien. And I thought, wow, that, that's, I mean, think of one at one sport where you have to be good on in 10 different events over two days, you know, grueling, grueling schedule. I watched him take that as a young man, as a learning experience and not let it psych him out because something as technical as a high jump or a pole vault, you know, I've seen the pole vault destroy many great decathletes in competition because it's so technical and the same with the high jump. So that was an example, a really good example of somebody learning from a preparatory experience at a very high, high level and then coming back and delivering another one. I was at the, in 2008, before the Beijing Olympics, it was my first ever Olympics calling track and field. And they sent me to Singapore about 10 days in advance of the Olympics where the Canadian track and field team was staging. And they used Singapore because the weather conditions were very similar to Beijing. And so they, they, they also brought the athletes in in dribs and drabs. So you would be brought in only three days before your event to the Olympic city. And they kept everybody in Singapore. It was a way to kind of like shield them from all the distractions, the media, whatever. And I watched Byron Christopher, the great 400 meter runner for Canada came there and he was a medal favorite, ranked in the top five in the world I think at the time. And we kept asking to get an interview with him there because we were shooting footage and getting interviews with all the athletes in a very, you know, relaxed setting. And they kept putting us off and putting us off. And I said to his coach, we had one day left in our assignment, and I said, look, give me 10, 15 minutes, let's get it over with. And then CBC is not going to even need him when he gets to Beijing. And I said, this is the least, you know, stressful environment you're going to have for him to sit down and do this interview. And he was really, he seemed to be intimidated or nervous about sitting down, doing an interview. He just didn't want that, that, that talk about, you know, you're one of the favorites, you know, you have a chance to win a medal here, you know, all that kind of buildup, right. He kind of wanted to put himself in a bit of a bubble. And so ultimately he, he didn't give us an interview. And we got to Beijing and he was out in the first round, in the heats. He didn't even get out of the first round heats. And I, you know, to this day, I can't. It was really hard to understand. And you know what, his career was pretty much over at a young age. And I, he was so stressed out. And, you know, in an event like, like the 400, where it's such a grueling sprint that if you're not totally relaxed and totally confident and in that special place that, yeah, you come apart in the last, you know, 100 meters. And that was just an agonizing thing to call as a broadcaster, but just to witness having seen what had happened in the weeks leading up.

And do you think that's just coming down to over emphasis on the control and the almost trying to act as though the pressure isn't there by staying in this bubble and pretending it's not real?

Yeah, I think it was that it. Yeah, I think like, you know, the coach was very protective, right. And I kept, I, I just, I, I, I, I leveled with him, very, very straight. I said, look this, I know what's going on here. I know he's under a lot of pressure. But I said, believe me, take my word here, this is the best place to do this because they're going to be looking for him in Beijing. People are going to want a statement, right? He's going to have to maybe do a, like, as, you know, athletes do these team news conferences, they arrive at the Olympic city and the press chief will announce that, and then all of the Canadian media will want to be There to talk to him. Right. And so this was one way to at least get the television thing done and maybe get that under his belt. And I think he. I think he was in a bit of, you know, he's trying to, like, deny that this pressure was there. And his coach was a little too protective and not saying, you know what? You need to do this and get it over with.

It seems to me, just having worked with a number of different types of athletes, that a lot of the individual sport athletes can end up having that isolation, but then also not having the. Without having as many of the teammates to bounce jokes off of or kind of. What's the phrase?

Delight the mood.

Well, lighten the mood, but just. Yeah, just kind of diffuse some of the tension with a banter with other people around, just having that constant dynamic. Because, I mean, you think of a sport like track and field and they can't. Their event can get delayed and delayed and delayed, and they can't. They can't warm up properly. They can't necessarily. They go through their routine, but they have to wait and then, oh, now I can warm up and go through my routine. No, I gotta wait. And that stress and that pressure that whole time, and they're in their head so much of the time. So it's, you know, between the individual sport athlete versus the team athlete, that team athlete always has that dynamic, the chemistry of the team, the kind of banter back and forth, the, you know, breaking the tension with somebody's ant or who knows what. But it just seems like the individual sport athletes don't always have that.

Yeah, that's a good point. And you don't have somebody with previous experience to kind of mentor you. And you might listen more to a fellow athlete than a broadcaster like me. But here's. I just thought of something that was really interesting that really plays to this team role and volleyball in particular. So when I was working in Winnipeg, the women's national volleyball team was based at University of Winnipeg. Mike Burchick was the head coach, and they qualified for the 96 Olympics in Atlanta. And so, because I was in Winnipeg, we covered the women's team a lot. And I got to know all the players and the coach. And so Cal Bottrill, who's one of this country's great sports psychologist. Yeah, Cal. I got to know Cal really well. And so the day before, the team was leaving for Atlanta and they were going in earlier than I was, because they were going to do some. Some acclimatization, some preparation there and get acclimatized to the area. They were having a big team meeting in one of the lecture theaters at the University of Winnipeg. And I said to Cal and to Mike, the head coach, could we come with our cameras and capture this moment, you know, where you meet with Cal and you, you kind of go over your preparations. And they said, that'd be great. So I'm sitting in this team meeting with a camera rolling, and Cal gets up there and he's so positive and he goes, well, here we are. You've made it. You know, you're brilliant. You guys are have. You've accomplished something you'll never forget for the rest of your lives. And so now we head off and how's everybody feeling? And the next thing you know, the captain and several key players started crying and saying, we're burnt out and we have no confidence. And this team is a shell of anxiety. And I'm going, oh, my God. I looked at Cal and Cal's eyebrows are way up. And he looks over at us and he goes, oh, boy. This is like a major, a major session for a sports psych now to try to fix these fragile athletes. And it was like, was so. It was so unvarnished and so real and so raw. And they just, they broke down in this session. And the background is that. That the head coach had. He was actually fired not long after that for being a little too, well, being abusive verbally and physically with these athletes. And he had crushed their, Their. Their spirit. And I was just. I couldn't. So we had this great story and, and we had meetings with the producers, and one producer said, let's not destroy the Olympic, you know, this, this myth of them coming. And the other producer said, wait a minute. We're not broadcasting myths here. We're telling real stories.

Yeah. Yeah.

So we did this piece and it was quite powerful. But the team, I think they won one game at the Olympics, and it was quite a glimpse into the pressures and the team dynamics.

It's interesting, like you're just describing that from several quads ago. And at the same time, this is the stuff that's. Not only that was going on throughout Paul's career, my career, but it's still going on now. And it's such a sport. I'm totally generalizing here, but such a sheltered world that's largely based around tradition. And there's still obviously up and coming science and new technology news and all sorts of things like that. But at the same time, the way athletes are coached is still, still so behind how human beings thrive in interaction or in relationships. And it's this thing that, you know, just a few weeks ago I talked to some national team athletes. I'm not going to say what sport, but they're a team sport and similar types of things are coming out. It's a similar type of theme or thread that ends up still repeating itself. You know, it's not the same coach, different coaches, different scenarios. But there's something that is pervasive through sport in that it's, you know, breaking down and building up and breaking down just like the physical realm that I would deal with. But at the same time, if it's done in a way that doesn't take into account individual personalities or human relationship or what, what all those athletes are giving up on so much that they're, they're so unfulfilled in so many other areas of their lives that then they do eventually break and they don't build back up and they won't, they won't perform, let alone feel fulfilled. So, yeah, it's, it's a tough, it's tough to get to the top in, in sport. I'm sure you've just seen things like this in various realms.

Yeah, it's such a loss, you know, it's such a shame that great athletes, you know, aren't delivered to their pinnacle moment in sport properly prepared or in the right frame of mind. And I know that we have, you know, a lot of great coaches and a lot of great mentors in Canada that are really trying to find, you know, the best practices. Right. The late Andy Higgins in track and field was somebody who I listened to for hours and found that he really knew how to treat a human being and get the best out of them and, and, and help them cope with any weaknesses they had, whether it be psychological or, or physical. And yeah, it's, you know, when you see some of these, I always tell people, like when you watch those eight finalists at the start line of the women's or the men's 100 meters, you have to marvel that they even got there. Because, you know, you think about not just the physical micro tears that happen every day when they explode on a track, in training or in races, and the wear and tear on their bodies and the time zones and that fear that they must all have inside them when you line up shoulder to shoulder with all the pressure in an 80,000 seat stadium that's gone silent. You know, for that, for the gun to go off and just think about that, but just the fact that, you know, just that they got to that start line and overcame all of those barriers is an incredible achievement, let alone winning a medal.

Do you have any favorite stories of triumph or comeback that you. That come to mind right away?

Just trying to think now of a great comeback story in the Olympics or even any sport.

It doesn't have to be the Olympics, but anything that just has been a favorite story that you covered or experience that you had in your career because you've had such an amazing career.

Well, you know what? Actually, this goes way back, and it goes way back to when I was just starting out in the radio business in the 1980s, when I was working on the inside track. I managed to get an interview with Muhammad Ali at a hotel in Miami. And so that was somebody that, you know, is revered worldwide, one of the most famous human beings of all time. And his ability to come back and come back and come back right from, you know, when he lost his title for refusing to, you know, go into the draft in Vietnam, and when he lost his title to Joe Frazier, you know, and this guy, he won the heavyweight title, came back three times in. a time when the heavyweight championship of the world was, you know, one of.

The greatest, really meant something prestigious.

Yeah, you think about the depths, you know, the Frazier and Ali and Foreman, the hype. Yeah. And Mike Weaver and all, you know, the Rumble in the Jungle and all those great bouts. Right. And I got a chance to talk to Ali for this documentary. And the documentary was about this great prize fighter, the greatest of all time, who was gifted as a speaker. Right. Never formally educated, but gifted. He could. He could speak with any world leader. In fact, he was courted by world leaders. And here we were in a hotel room talking about how boxing had ruined his brain and how this.

This.

This guy who could, you know, float like a butterfly and sting like a bee. Sting like a bee, turn the light switch off and be in bed before the light went off. You know, he had these great lines how he. He couldn't. Could barely speak anymore. He was slurring and he was drooling. And it was a very painful interview, but it was. You know, there's somebody who had triumphed over racism, triumphed over, you know, great opponents and kept coming back. And when they said he couldn't come back, he came back again. And for me, that was a profound moment in my young career to talk to somebody who I had so much respect for, and then to hear him talk about how he stayed too long in the sport. And that's another thing you hear in Sport about athletes who don't know when to leave. And he was one of them because the money was too good, and he had too many people who depended on him to live and to make money. And it was just a shame. So that's the great comeback story over and over that people know. But meeting him and getting a chance to interview him and to hear him talk, you know, what was really amazing was that what he wanted to talk about after we got through, you know, taking too many punches to the head and what it had left him, doctors believe that was the trigger to his Parkinson's. He wanted to talk more about young people and particularly in spreading his faith of Islam. But he was, he was. He said, you know, boxing. He was done with boxing. That doesn't matter. What I'm concerned about are the young people of this country. Right. And I thought that was interesting that, you know, that there's another. There's an example of an athlete who takes his or her experience of getting to the top and tries to spread the good points from that or the learned experiences into the world, not just into athletics, you know.

You know, that makes a question come to my mind as you being someone who is continually interviewing these high performers and many of them, of them who have something to give beyond their sport, do you struggle with or how do you cut through the. I'm going to call it crap, but the standard answers, the, you know, the classic hockey responses of, you know, we're taking it one game at a time and going to work hard in the corners and just try to be first to the puck. Like, how do you, in your position specifically get to the good stuff to get. Get somebody to share something that really means something or matters or is, you know, not just the autopilot, auto recording answers that you hear 95% of the time. Do you have? I mean, that. I think that's something that makes the difference in somebody who lasts in journalism and somebody gets the real story and what's really going on. Do you. How do you do that?

Well, I think the. The best practice there is to be a good listener. And people often fall back on pat answers and cliches because they're nervous or they're not sure where the questions are going to go. And if you listen well and make good eye contact with the person you're interviewing and show some empathy and win their trust, because once you've won an athlete's trust, then they will feel like they can open up to you. And if you don't win their trust, then they're just going to be guarded and give you the standard answers. And sometimes it takes an hour to get couple of three minutes of really good content. But you have to be patient to wait for that moment to ask that question. That's really going to dig deep into their soul and hopefully evoke a really honest and candid answer. And I have found that the interview might be, you might be 15, 20 minutes into it before you can start to feel this athlete trusts you. Then they'll start to give you open up about themselves and be honest. And you know, quite frankly, in today's world it's getting more and more difficult because athletes are managed to the point now where, you know, getting those long term interviews are getting more and more rare. And I think what's really interesting now is that the development of these podcasts and like yours and segments on mainstream media where athletes are now doing the interviewing, ex athletes are interviewing athletes. And it's kind of like the athlete's perspective and I think there's some value there so that these athletes who are competing today say, you know what, this person knows what I'm going through, therefore I can trust them and open up. And that's great. And I think if that, if that is successful, then it's, it's worthwhile. What we have to guard against is, as you were saying, Paul, making sure that they, you know, you don't just do a, what I call a softball interview, you know, that you, you actually ask the tough questions that need to be asked. And if someone's, if it's, you know, depending on the story and the athlete, if it's a controversial athlete who's done something wrong, then you have to have the wherewithal to go at ask those tough questions. And if you're not getting a straight answer, say that. But for the most part, it's all about trust.

Thank you.

That's great insight.

Yeah, we noticed that in talking to people as well. It takes a little time if we don't know them already.

But.

You'Ve touched on some things that we wanted to ask about as well, which is, you know, you've had a really extensive career in the time that you started to where things are now. Do you see changes or differences? You alluded to some in terms of the interviews and how athletes are connecting. But what else have you noticed in the differences between maybe how athletes used to be versus now to or what the public or the fans are looking for versus now? What are some of the differences or career that you've noticed between the Younger athletes that are coming out now versus the younger athletes from say 20 years ago, right?

Well, I think now, I mean, the athletes today are being exposed in ways that they never were even 10 years ago. With the growth of social media and digital media, everything's instant now. You're, you know, your response can be tweeted or put out on Facebook or Instagram within seconds of you saying it, right? And you're getting, and the athlete is getting feedback right to their phone. And so people have access to athletes in ways they never had before. And the level of scrutiny now is so much more intense, not just from mainstream media, but from any kind of media that's online. Any, you know, and fans via social media. And so I think athletes today have to be more keen, careful, especially when it comes to taking selfies and, and you know, you know, where you picture yourself and what you're doing and people can form opinions of you and then people can start telling you what they think of you. And I, you know, there are athletes I know that, you know, have been advised to, you know, tone down their Instagram, for example, because you know they're going to get unwanted outside, you know, opinions and pressures from, from fans. And, and it can, and you know, I know as a broadcaster that, you know, the Twitter verse can be very cruel and you can, you know, I've been in doing, you know, broadcasting hockey games and you know, your phone's going off and you know, it's just people out there wanting to, you know, say something to you that's usually not very nice and, and you have to, you have to deal with, you have to deal with that now as an athlete for sure that you have to really protect yourself in terms of your, your own image.

Do you think that there's obviously that huge downside to social media, but amateur athletics, you know, you look at track and field in any of those types of sports in Canada simply aren't on the radar for most Canadians.

Right.

Three years, 11 months at a time, honestly. And so it might be the ultimate double edged sword in that social media and you know, YouTube and all these different platforms and avenues to promotion of these sports on a much smaller budget because the barrier has always been money. To have a sport on tv, you need money and you need advertisers to get eyes on it, to make it work. That's why, you know, volleyball simply isn't on TV in Canada. There's not enough eyes watching it to support it year round. But now through all these other channels that they can be streamed and everyone who wants to see it can. So that's the huge upside. But it comes with that massive dark side, as you're alluding to here, of the additional pressures and comments and the trolling that goes on of the athletes in their everyday lives and everything that they say, uh, do you, is it worth it? Do you think, do you think that if you could wave a wand and do what you would with social media, would you make it disappear and go back to how it was and. Or does the good outweigh the bad? Is basically the question I'm asking.

Well, I think you're right, Paul. Like, you know, there's certainly a lot more out there if you, you know, if you want to spread live stream sporting events that, you know, before you had to wait for, you know, Sports Weekend back in the day and you get your hour or two of a volleyball match from, you know, or, you know, from a tournament where you could see all whatever, 15, 16 games, you know, live streamed. But one of the problems is right now is that the growth of digital media has sucked a lot of advertising dollars away from television. And as you, as you mentioned, you know, TV costs money to mount projects with, you know, trucks and cameras and, you know, all the people behind the scenes, not to mention the people behind the microphone. And so I know some networks now are really having a hard time with budgets because the ad dollars just aren't there. They're going to the online world. And so that means that, you know, instead of hearing you and Charles Parkinson call a volleyball game, they have some anonymous single voice from, you know, who's been hired by the people putting out the feed to, you know, to call the volleyball game. And that person has no connection to the Canadian athletes, has no access to the Canadian athletes. You know, it's, it's a real crying shame. And that's, and that's what's going on right now, especially with amateur sport, Olympic sport in Canada. It's, it's really hard to, at least the, at least the visuals are out there and you're getting a guide track of an international announcer who's, you know, been tasked to call every single game, every single event. But it's not, it's not having a Canadian network, you know, have the, you know, the facilities to do it the way we used to.

Yeah, it's, it's interesting because a lot of the athletes that we've interviewed on this, on this show still speak obviously of money troubles being amateur athletes in Canada. And you know, if you're a snowboarder if you're in skeleton, if you're, you know, doing these things that aren't the big four sports in Canada, everybody seems to be struggling even in this age of social media, where it's easier to promote yourself and try to attract sponsorship. So it's.

Yeah, if they're smart on social media. If they're smart on social media, they're making their own, they're conscious of their posts and they're making their own brand in a way that, that might attract a sponsor or might attract, you know, funding dollars of some sort. In that sense, we'd like to kind of wrap things up here a little bit in a way that gives a little more insight to you. Is there a question that you wish we'd asked or is there something that is unique about you that most people don't know?

Well, I guess the one question that I would ask myself is how do you get ready to call 47 events at a world tracking field championship with all of those people from various parts of the world? Right. Some people do ask me about, you know, all the names and numbers and what I would say is that what you see on tv, what you hear on tv, and Paul, you would know this, you know, from your, your background in broadcasting as well is that there's a lot of preparation behind the scenes that goes into every broadcast, weeks and weeks, in the case of the Olympics, months and months before you even get there. And that's just in the, in the build up to a major sporting event at research and putting together a binder with all the information that you need to go to air. Because I think, and I think this probably has an application to athletes is that the proof is always in the preparation. And so when you go on the air prepared, you feel way more confident because you may not use or you will not use everything that you've prepared to use, but you know you've got it and you perform better, you're more confident and your viewers get a better broadcast.

Yeah, I'm really glad you brought that up, Mark. And I actually wanted, how did my notes to mention it here and didn't, but you were the first person I had the chance to do a broadcast with. I remember that it was, it was the ultimate introduction to the broadcasting world because I got to work alongside you, but more importantly, see how you prepared. Because just like you're saying there it really is the key. Having those 10 to 15 really cool stories about a team or players in your back pocket makes you feel so much better when there's that, like you alluded to in the story in Atlanta, where you need to fill some time on air, that you've got a couple things you can just go to that you're comfortable and there's no stress. But if you don't have those, then you're literally searching for words and it's not a good feeling. So, yeah, the preparation is. And I learned from you and how you, you know, you had, phonetically speaking, spelt out every last name of every player from all these different countries. And just the organization that you had was just a sight to behold and really a great first lesson on the right way to do things in the business. So I'm really thankful I've had that opportunity with you, and I'm glad that you brought it up to hammer home that point for the listeners about preparation being so key.

Well, thanks for saying that, Paul. I remember that day quite clearly, and I remember knowing it was your very first broadcast and how, how cool under pressure you were, which, you know, I kept thinking, I mean, this, this comes from all of your athletic experience, your great championships, knowing how to, how to deal with that kind of pressure. And I was always, I always wished I had, you know, your volleyball knowledge, you know, because, you know, the game, you've played the game, you know, you know everything about the game and you know, these athletes. And so it's, it's kind of like I was. I always felt like I was trying to play catch up. Well, it works. Well, you did a great job that day. You know, you're on camera, you're, you know, fitting into the cadence of a broadcast. And as, you know, the producers basically, you know, once they, they say go, it's. It's go time. And you, you jump right in there. And it was, that was impressive to watch.

Well, thank you. And, Kara, you've got to have a few more questions here for Mark so we can.

Well, yeah, and, and just. It just, I, you know, I'm in awe of all the different sports, Mark, that you've worked with, because it's just exactly what you're describing with how intimately politic all knows volleyball. But it's the getting the feel for all these different sports that really takes something. And so we really want to acknowledge that and also share with our listeners something a little more personal about you. So maybe if you could share a little bit about what you're looking forward to, maybe a little about your family, and then if you've got a favorite book or movie or something like that, that's there so people can kind of get the personal side of you.

Right. Well, so I'm married to Carol and we have three children. Our son, Dane, and our two daughters, Blair and Jasmine. They were both born in Winnipeg. So there's another product of that trip to Winnipeg. We grew our cold winters.

Those long, cold winters.

Cold winters. It's a dry cold, though.

Yeah. Bright. It's sunny.

Yeah. So. Yeah, so. So my wife is. Her background is physiotherapy and she's become a practice lead and sort of helping to develop rehab for certain specific injuries. She just recently worked on shoulder injuries and she's got, you know, I always learned so many things about. About shoulders and, and, and all that through her anyway. And so my, my children. My son is in the political world. He works as a political staffer for a member of Parliament. And our middle daughter, Blair is just beginning a music career. She. She's a person that went, you know, she went to university, studied psychology, didn't like that. She got headhunted to be a model. And she went around the world for a couple of years to Paris and Milan and, you know, Sydney and Tokyo and modeled for two years and then, you know, decided she wanted to be. To use her brain. And her passion has always been music. And so she's released her first single in August and she's really working hard right now with. In the music business. And then our youngest went through university at Guelph in the sciences. In nutraceutical sciences, and she's now working with a health food organization in Toronto. So, you know, they're all sort of on their way right now. And I have gotten actually quite involved in the political world myself. I'm on a board of directors for a writing association. And in fact, every night this week I've been out canvassing and I really find that it's such a complete departure from broadcasting, but it kind of fulfills my passion for being, you know, doing my civic duty and being, you know, being somebody who cares passionately about our country and not leaving anybody behind. And so I found it that's sort of like the ground zero of democracy is when you knock on somebody's door and sometimes, you know, sometimes you get an earful and sometimes you have great discussions and. But you learn so much about, you know, about Canada by listening and meeting people of every walk of life. And so that. That's, that's what I'm doing in between contract work now and broadcasting these days. So it's. That's kind of neat. And the other thing that's kind of. I got into, I started covering rodeo more. I've done this Calgary Stampede for a long time for CBC and then somehow I got myself into pro bull riding.

Oh my gosh.

I know. And it's so like, it is like a crazy sport. It's a whole other world and these guys are so brave and, and I've never, honestly, I don't know if I've seen a tougher athlete than 130 pound guy that gets on a 2000 pound bowl.

Haven't they all broken every bone in their body? Basically, Honestly, because I've, I've read a few articles about bull riders and I remember the one guy listing off the. Just the breaks that he had and it was literally, it was everything. It was everything. But the scare is the face, all the facial injuries.

Oh, I knew, I knew an orthopedic surgeon who worked in Calgary with, with the Calgary Stampede and it's. Yeah, it's not pretty.

I know. Well, you know what, there was a, there's a cowboy from Arkansas named Chase Outlaw. Now what a name. And you mentioned Paul. Facial fractures. So Chase, a year ago this summer got his eight seconds on a bull down in the United States at a big, big event. And then as he was about to try to get off, he got headbutted by this bull. And so he had 30 facial fractures. His nose was gone. And so what they did was they spent, he spent 12 hours in surgery. He was in surgery within an hour of that accident. And the mri, you should see the mri. They took a piece of bone from the back of his skull and they made a new nose and they, they screwed that in. He had 68 screws in his face and 12 pieces of titanium and he was, and, and this is the capper. He was back on a bowl two and a half months after that surgery.

See that makes me want to vomit because if you touch your face or anything like, you know, there's still residual pain and there's so much like.

Yeah, Chase the Face Outlaw. Wow.

Yeah, good.

And you know what? The last time I looked he was number two or number three in the world standings right now. There's my comeback story.

Yes, there we go. We got one.

Yes, there's your comeback story right there because I thought you'd save yourself there. But for the grace of God go I. I'm never getting on a bull again. Thank you for letting me still be alive. And he's back on a bull.

That's the interview that you want to do. His 10 years post retirement and see where things are at, because, man, I don't know. I don't know what his future holds. Holy cow.

Yeah. You wonder, you know, like, how. I mean, concussions, like, what's happened to that brain, let alone all this, all the. All the. The bone matter around his head.

You know, maybe that influenced his decision to go back.

You know what? You know, he. You know, he said. He said he had to get back on because he didn't want to leave that way, and he had the courage to do so. And he said. He said, here's how he sees it. If I could survive that, then nothing's going to kill me.

That's a good point. That's a very good point.

And these guys. These guys keep getting on board these bulls. And I'll tell you what, when a bull gets you off, he wants to get you on the ground.

Yeah.

If you get bucked off the horse. Yeah. And stomp you or. Or gore you or whatever. And. Oh, my goodness. I mean, so that. That's sort of a. That's a sport that I've come to fairly late in my career, and it's. It's very, very fascinating. The people are extremely, extremely honest, hardworking, and brave. I've never seen the likes of which in any other sport. Really.

That's amazing.

Yeah.

And you. Any books you'd recommend that you're enjoying?

Well, because I'm a. I'm a political junkie right now. I'm reading a lot of books about Donald Trump. Yeah. So one I'm reading is A Trump Ocracy by David Frum, who is Barbara From Son, who was a former speechwriter for George W. Bush.

Wow.

I've got that one and a couple other ones called Red Notice by Bill Browder. He was the businessman in. In Russia who lost his business. And he's the one guy that Vladimir Putin. Well, no, not just the one, but a very prominent American that they'd love to arrest and get him back because he got involved with. You know, he tells the story of the oligarchs of Russia and what's going on there. So I'm kind of really into that world right now.

Oh, that's deep. And very fascinating, too. And you have a charity or two that you like to get behind. What might those be?

Mm. Well, my wife and I, we were. We've supported two children so far in World Vision, so that's been one of our main charities. And I'm also involved with the Terry Fox organization. We have a boy out here who died at the age of 21, he had the exact same cancer as Terry. And he actually was on the front page of the Globe and Mail and on the news, on the national, on cbc. They, they, they thought they had it beat. They thought he was going to be the first one that they could finally say, we've beaten the Terry Fox cancer. And they rebuilt his leg. You know, Terry, they had to cut his leg off. In this case, they basically took all the bone out of his leg and replaced it with, you know, titanium artificial bones and kept the flesh.

Wow.

And this boy, he made a comeback. He was a mountain biker, a really good competitor. And then ultimately it took his life the same way it did Terry. And so I, you know, that that was hit really close to home. And so we've been involved with them and the heart and stroke folks as well.

Wow. Well, we, we can't say enough how, what an impact you've had on sport and how much we appreciate that and, and also how enjoyable this, this little chat has been. So thank you so much for coming on with us and, and we can't wait to air this so that people can really hear a little more about what you've done and who you are.

Well, Kari and Paul, thanks so much for having me. I'm sorry if I was a little long winded today, but I really enjoyed the conversation.

It's been fantastic. Thank you.

Thank you, Mark.

Thanks again. Bye now.

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