EP68 Kaillie Humphries - Bobsleigh Olympian

This is episode 68 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.

Being trained typically means you rely on someone to take you through each workout. Being coached means you are ready to do it on your own but want the guidance from an expert to efficiently get to your best results while staying accountable. If you're ready to be coached, then contact us for an assessment in person or online and we will make a customized training program for you to get to your goals.

To say that Kaylee Humphries has dominated the bobsleigh scene for the last 10 years internationally would be an understatement. Just check out this track record. Since 2008 in the World Championship, she's locked down two gold medals, three silver medals and four bronze in the Olympic Games. Well, it's a 2010 gold medal in Vancouver, gold medal in 2014 in Sochi. Oh yeah, and a bronze in 2018. Pyeongchang. She has been absolutely unstoppable. She's been the flagship, the figurehead, the face, the one for bobsleigh Canada for a decade and now she's on the outside and now she's joined the US Team. What the hell happened? Well, we're gonna figure it out. Today we've got Kaylee on the show and we have an in depth, long chat with this superstar to find out how she got in the game, how she progressed to be the best in the world, and all the drama that has ensued since. It's a great conversation. Break it up, get to it on your run, on your drive to work and make sure you listen to this entire story about Billy Humphries, the adventure. You don't want to miss it.

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

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Hello everyone. Welcome to the Empowered Athlete Podcast. I'm Paul Durden, joined by my lovely wife, Kari Schneider, and the incredible Kaylee Humphries. Welcome to the show, Kayleigh, and thank you so much for making the time to allow us to delve into Your career, the good, the bad, the ugly, the highs, the lows, and there's been many. It's been an incredible career, and we're just thrilled to have you on the show. Thank you so much for joining us.

No, thanks for having me. I appreciate it.

This is an incredible time in your life. I can only imagine that when you had Olympic dreams as a child, you could never in a million years have predicted, say, the last 10 years.

Definitely not. I mean, my goal was just to go to an Olympics. The goal, you know, it developed very quickly, and the ability or the want to win gold always was slightly there. It became a lot more realistic the closer to making an Olympics I got, but definitely to the magnitude that it has taken off. I owe a lot of that to.

My team, to the support staff, my coaches, my therapists, my family, the people that believe in me.

I definitely did not do it by myself in any capacity. And so I think their belief in me, my belief in myself, and the.

Ability for all of us to work extremely hard and. And be very passionate about what we do, I think that has definitely elevated me to this level so consistently.

The Olympic dream, though, was it originally? It wasn't in bobsleigh. It was skiing, was it not?

It was skiing. I remember watching.

Tell us a little bit about what just kind of sparked you into getting competitive.

Yeah.

The first Olympics I remember watching was the 92 Olympics. And what drew me to it, we were all kind of in a living.

Room area, me and my family, and we had met Mark Tewksbury before, and my parents had known him, and he had come in, and so we were.

Watching somebody we knew, and I remember.

Watching him, and that was the year he won gold.

And just his face and how excited he was and the environment that I was in kind of fostered that feeling for the Olympics as well as the feeling for winning and being the very.

Best that you can be and competition and sport.

And growing up, I was always very active.

I played tons of different sports.

Badminton, volleyball, track and field, soccer. Ski racing was the first thing that.

I really fell in love with, though.

I was nine years old when I started, which in the ski world is a bit late, but it was about nine. My parents were very supportive of it. My dad was one that taught me how to ski. And then eventually, you know, got me into the ski racing, competitive side of things.

And I thought, this is it. Like, this is what I love. I'm meant to do this. I'm gonna go to the Olympics. That was not the case.

I had crashed A couple times. And I just, I was getting a little scared every time I would get.

Out on the track. I had broken a couple bones every single fall. You know, there was that doubt, there.

Was that fear, and I didn't have.

The fearlessness that those top level athletes did. I wasn't able to turn it off.

And I just wasn't that competitive. I was never going to be on.

The national ski team.

I grew up with athletes that ended up making the national ski team and going to the Olympics, the 2010 Olympics. There was at least three or four of my ski racing buddies that I went to high school with, that I grew up ski racing with. We were all at the Olympics together, which was really cool, although I know.

For a different sport.

But it definitely did not start in bobsleigh.

Ski racing was my first love. And when I was 16, I realized.

It wasn't gonna happen and I wasn't.

Having fun in the sport anymore.

I wasn't as competitive as I wanted to be and, you know, I just didn't have it. So reality came in, little gut check and had to pick a different sport. And we trained a lot at Windsport in Calgary.

Did you get longer?

Sorry to interrupt. Did you see this? This is a question that I'm finding relevant to young athletes right now. Yeah, just before you, you transition to bobsled, did you stay in skiing longer than maybe you wanted to because of maybe a fear of letting down coaches or family or. Because clearly when you, when you go that far and you've done all that, you, you're that young, oftentimes by the time you realize you don't love it anymore and that you're, you know, it's not fun anymore, then by that time there's been so much support. Young athletes at that age are often staying in it longer because they're worried about letting their coach down or letting their parents down or letting somebody down. Was that the case for you or did you kind of transition out of it pretty well?

I transitioned well, but I probably should have ended it about two years earlier at the same point. I don't know if I would have found bobsled had I ended it a couple years earlier.

I think the transition point just happened to be at the right time.

I was still very young to transition into bobsled.

Junior in bobsleigh is the age of 26, and you can't compete internationally until 18.

So at 16, 17, I was still too young to even really do bobsled, but I was a year away, so there was a Bit of a fostering period. At the end of the day, though.

With skiing.

I retired, quit, moved on when I felt ready to. I didn't ever feel like I let anybody down because I had multiple conversations. The biggest person that fear would have.

Come from would have been my dad.

He had invested so many mornings, early mornings, 5am, 3am driving me to the.

Ski hill, time away from work. He was a gatekeeper for most of my races, and he volunteered a lot.

I would have let him down.

And it wasn't until having a conversation.

With him that I knew it was okay to walk away. I'm close with my parents, which was huge. And every year, I mean, he would always come to us, which took the.

Pressure off of me, but he would always come.

And his motto, if I pay, you play. But it was a conversation at the start of the year that you had, are we investing in this? Yes or no? Is this.

Are you still having fun? And whenever things get hard, he would always ask, are you having fun every time?

And I could say no sometimes. And I never let him down. It was like, okay, well, what are.

We going to do about this?

There was always a plan from him. And so he really taught me how to navigate the system a little bit and. Or just check myself and make sure.

That sport is supposed to be fun.

And if I wasn't having fun, why? And the times when he'd be like, fine, then just quit. And if you'd be like, no, I'm not gonna quit, dad, you know, then he'd look at you, go, okay, then move on. Then what are your options?

And you'd be like, okay, fine.

So, you know, it helped having a very supportive dad that understood the essence.

Of sport, that took performance away from it and allowed the stress or pressure of performance to be on me. I was putting it on myself.

Nobody else was gonna put it on me. But realistically, it took about two years.

To get to that point.

I wasn't successful for the last two years of my career, but I kept.

Doing it because I believed in the dream.

And this is what I really wanted. And I did invest a lot.

I was going to the National Sports.

School at the time for high school.

My parents had paid for me to go to a special sports school. Like, a lot invested in there, and.

I wasn't just gonna walk away from it, but at the time when I knew it wasn't right, I knew it wasn't right. And I did have my parents in.

That safe place to go to.

And then we came up with a plan and my dad was actually the.

One that took me to the talent ID camp for bobsleigh.

He helped me look it up online because I was like, I don't want.

To be done with sport, but I'm just, I'm not having fun seeing more.

And more, you know, I don't want to stop sport, but I don't know what to do.

And so I come up with a couple options.

Like you, you had a. Typically those talent IDs, they're, they're like almost like a combine. Was it one like that or what? Like the.

It was a combine, yeah.

After I retired. So I quit skiing in like April. And then mid summer was when I found bobscye. So it was a couple months. My dad wanted me go back to university or to go to university post kind of. He said, well let's, you can either stay at the sports school, let's go back to a regular high school and then let's set you on the university path. That's not really, let's just put it that way. That did nothing.

I value school and education 100% and I am so thankful to have this board school that allowed me to graduate and get a high school diploma.

And I did end up taking a university class, but that was never, it didn't excite me.

It wasn't one of those.

I swear that's what he did. It's like national team.

I did four classes.

See, you got three more than me.

I did one like years later, six years later.

But it just didn't, it didn't excite me. There was nothing about it that I.

Was like, oh yes. And, and I.

School just, it caused me like anxiety almost.

I wasn't taking away from what you really want to do. Like you recognize that I want to do this and all this distraction is doing is having me do less of what I really want to do.

Want to do? Yeah, 100%.

So we decided kind of mid summer that I'd stay the rest of the year at the sports school and I'd kind of try and accelerate my graduation date. It wasn't the six year plan as.

It would have been for being in ski racing and I needed to kind.

Of do summer school and really invest.

To graduate in the three years. But we were gonna focus on that and then look for a different sport.

And I've always been very strong for a female.

I've always had very big legs.

So picking a sport where I thought, okay, what are my, what is my.

Skill set and what excites me to Watch.

And, you know, what do I think.

I could be good at? And I always loved roller skating as a kid, and so I thought, speed skating, this is it.

This is what I'm gonna do. And then training at Wins Ford, I.

Had seen some of the bobsledders, and.

They were really nice people, really strong. And so at that point I was like, oh, maybe I could do bobsleigh too. The bobsleigh track is there, so that in Calgary, the bobsleigh track from the.

88 Olympics was there.

So I knew about the sport.

Of course. I had seen cool runnings. Everybody's team running.

I was like, oh, this is what I'm gonna do.

Bobsled.

Yeah, bobsled. And so it was. We looked up both sports and the first talent ID camp, it was like just like a combine test event. They hold them all over Canada for.

All different sports every year.

And the first one to come up was bobsleigh. And it was about four days later. And so I was like, well, I'll try this one. Let's do a series of tests. Let's see if I'm good, if I'm not good, you know, let's look at the speed skating one. And so I went to the bobsled one.

When you were alpine skiing, you were around that, say, 16, 15, 16 age. Were you lifting then too? Yeah.

Yep. Not nearly as heavy as bobsleed required.

But I definitely was lifting. Yeah.

Yeah, okay.

Yeah.

There was a lot more cardio as well involved. You know, reps of.

You don't like cardio just the way you said that. I'm detecting something there.

Okay. I'm spoiled on Bob's life. I run 30 meters. Like, cardio for me is 100 meter sprints.

Like, that's far now.

Or I jog real slow for like 30 minutes. And then my muscles are like, no, you're good.

Like, shut down and I'm walking.

You know Cassie Harish, you remember?

Yeah.

So I dragged her up some really awful steep hills in Mexico for some hill runs. And I think she's hating me ever, ever since then. Like, it's just like, no, this is not.

This is not me.

It's not what I do. Why would we even do this? This is ridiculous.

Yeah.

The competitive side of me thinks I got this.

I could do this all day long.

And then I start doing something. I'm like, nope, there's zero chance. You have not trained for this. You cannot accommodate this.

This.

No. And so it. It takes me a minute. Having last year off, I really had to kind of switch focus a little bit with training.

And I worked on some of my weaknesses, for sure.

Um, I have a capacity.

Ski racing gave me the capacity to do endurance.

So for some reason, last year, I was training with a professional tennis player.

For a period of time, and she.

Does way more cardio than I've ever done in the last 16 years of my career. But I noticed training with her, there would be a period where I'm really strong and powerful and super fast, and.

I can explode out and I'm like, yeah, I'm good.

And then I die real hard, real fast at, like set 10. All of a sudden they plateau a little bit, and. And then from 15 to 20, I.

Can really take off again. And I think a lot of that is just from training for ski racing for so many years.

I have that capacity. Once my body figures out, okay, we're.

In this for the long haul, it starts to transition. And I can usually finish pretty strong.

That, and I think my mental game is pretty strong too. So I can. I'm like, okay, I'm close to the end.

You can do this final push.

Call that the home run response and heart rate monitoring.

So I got a good home run response.

I learned that one. But it still dies so hard in the middle. And that's just. That's the way I've trained my body. It's a machine, and I'd have to. It would take years to train it differently, and I'm okay with that, and I look forward to being able to do that post bobsleigh career.

But did you crush the combine when you first. When you first tested when you were young?

I didn't crush it, but it was.

Good enough to get invited to the national team.

So I showed up. It was a series of sprint tests. So you do a 30, a 15, a 30, a 45 meter, 60 meter.

You just run 60 meters and they time you every 15 meters.

I showed up. I had never really run in spikes before.

I didn't come from track and field.

So I just ran it in flats.

And running shoes, where most people were.

Coming from track and field and had.

Spikes on hundredth of a second.

Yeah, every little bit. I just didn't have the knowledge. But at that point, my dad had to come.

I was 17 years old.

My birthday was in September. So it was like, right on that cusp. He had to sign a waiver because.

You need to be 18 to participate.

So he had to say, he agreed to let me participate. I was good enough to get invited to the national Team definitely didn't crush it out of the park. But I showed promise for somebody so young. I had enough speed and I had.

Enough strength that there was potential to invest in me. And that's what they saw.

And so, yeah, from there, that following year, I did bobsled only for a couple weeks, and then ended up getting in a bad crash. It broke my collarbone and it put me out for the rest of the season, which good and bad. I couldn't have competed internationally anyways. I was still only 17, so there was definitely like a learning development period.

Of just get into the sport, get into a sledding Calgary, let's get you sliding down. You just can't compete on the world stage yet at the same point, I don't know if I would have been good enough to compete on the world stage.

So it allowed me a year to figure out if I really loved it and.

And if I wanted to do it.

And especially getting injured, that fostered that. Is this something you really want to do? You did it for two weeks, you learned a little bit, and now you're out. There's a lot that's going to be.

Required to do this sport. And are you vested in it, yes or no?

Well, what about that fear factor? Because that ended up being a thing in skiing. So what allowed you to get over the crashes and have the ability to go fearless down the track?

In bobsled, you have no choice. In skiing, you can slow yourself down.

You can hold back.

Yeah, you can hold back.

You cannot hold back nothing. In bobsleigh, once you're in, you are going and you sort it out or you don't and you crash. And the fear of crashing and that fear of getting injured, that fear of, you know, risking somebody else's life when they're in the back, the fear of getting crashed, that scares the crap out of me. And still to this day, it motivates me so hard, especially when you get.

To a new track.

I get so fearful of, like, making mistakes that it forces me to focus extra hard.

And I've learned how to harness that.

Where it's not a fear that cripples me. It's not something I seize up with. It's something that I recognize allows me.

To be more focused, more intense, and.

Then I can perform better. But there is no holding back. A bobsleigh, once you go, you're in, you're going. You don't pull the brakes at any point going down the bobsled track, so there's no slowing yourself down. You can bang into a bunch of walls. But A, who wants to do that? And B, it's more dangerous because then.

You put yourself in bad positions.

So it's nicer, it's smoother, it's faster, and it's more safe when you drive good lines. So I had to learn very quickly how to overcome that fear and make it not something scary, but make it something that could benefit me to have.

Good, clean, smooth lines down the track. And ski racing helped me develop, when I did become a bobsled pilot, how to look for lines, how to understand, how to pressure to look far of.

Where I was going.

I had to do it in skiing with gates.

And so in bobsleigh, I had that natural ability as soon as I became.

A bobsled driver to do it.

But I spent my first three years.

In the sport as a brakeman. So the person at the back just.

Would you, would you. Would you consider yourself an adrenaline junkie? Like, if you didn't bobsled, would there be the need for something that was like highly stimulating?

I don't think so. Only because I'm a fairly laid back person. I hate roller coasters. I'm not a.

That's hilarious.

Like, I refuse to go on them.

Even little rides that. It's the drop feeling I hate so much.

There's no way does that.

Yeah. If it never does at speed I could do all day long. Put me in a race car with somebody, you know, get me somewhere in a microphone. I get super excited with speed and going faster and pressure.

But I don't.

Paul, he's. He can't stand a roller coaster or anything. I mean, you.

I love roller coasters. It's spinning. I hate spinning rides.

But then he's, he's like, he's become a pilot and so they have to do certain drills and I'm like, how did you not barf?

Yeah, I know.

So it's just. Yeah, just different. But I, I don't think I seek out thrill.

I enjoy a moderate amount of it in my life. I'm definitely going to be more adventurous than most people. I enjoy all types of sports. I'm willing to try most things.

I just also know what I like and don't like. And I am very adamant about those things.

And there's certain things I just will never do. Bungee jumping.

Nope.

I'm good.

Never on my list. Skydiving.

Never.

Those things won't happen. I have no thrill for them and no reason to like some people.

I just do it once. I'm like, nah, I'm good. I know I will hate it, and there is no point in doing it. Roller coasters now are the same for me.

Like, I will not enjoy this so.

Much that it will destroy the rest of my day and I will hate it for you.

Yeah. Then it's. Then it's like, oh, no, it's not worth it for me.

Yeah.

I could go in the swings. The swings are fun.

It elevates you up high. You spin around nice and slow.

Paul wouldn't do that. Paul's like, no, not going to happen.

Swings or no.

Yeah, no, not going to happen. So what happened for 2006? So you ended up having the hope for the Olympic dream at that time.

Yeah. So 2006. I spent from 2003 to 2006 for.

Three years as a brakeman.

So I trained. I was the fastest girl in Canada on the back of a sled, arguably.

One of the fastest in the world.

Over the course of that three years, getting closer. I was getting higher and higher to.

Inevitably ranked one of the top in the world. And in August, with the Olympics in.

February, my ego cashed a check that it couldn't. Couldn't handle. I decided to go to World push Championships.

And I thought, I want the title.

For sponsors, to be able to get.

Sponsors, to be able to put it on a resume.

I want to have the title of world push champion.

I want to be the best in the world.

And at that time, there was a.

Push.

Like a push competition that they would hold once a year all over the world. And it was just like pushing on a bobsled track on wheels, kind of like a roller coaster, but you push down and it comes back up. And they had it in Mexico. They host it in different parts.

And I thought, I want to be world push champion.

And so I went. I was in the best shape of my life going into a couple months.

Before the games, and I was warming up in this little, like, rugby field.

And I tripped on a garden hose. Why it was there, don't know. Watering some plants or some grass and literally it was like a little garden hose. And I thought, I'll just hop over and somehow hop over, not looking at my feet. I ended up tripping on it and rolled my ankle instantaneously. Like, by the time I rolled it.

And it looked down, it was the size of a baseball in my ankle. And I was like, oh.

So got off of it right away. I ended up tearing all the ligaments.

And muscles in my ankle.

So that was eight weeks in a cast, no walking Then it was eight weeks in a boot walking. So pretty much I was off till Christmas. The Olympics, two months away. So everything I had built up for three years, everything I had worked for, instantaneously went away. And that was really hard to take the thought of, I'm going to come back.

I'm going to get to this Olympics. This is what I meant to do. I'm so close to the Games and.

I was one of the best in the world. Like, I'm going to come back is.

Going to be my strong point.

And I pushed myself. I got back, did all the recovery and rehab as fast as, you know, as fast as I could, as fast.

As my body would let me. I came back at Christmas.

So this is now two months before the Games.

The Olympic team gets named. A month before.

So I had one month to prove my worth.

We did some push champs, and I.

Ended up coming back being the second.

Fastest girl in Canada.

I was very proud they were sending.

Three girls to the Olympics. I was proud of myself, was doing.

Push offs against a couple of the other girls.

Was testing individually.

And so that's how I know my rank. Everything goes by test individual, like push.

Times and test times.

It's numerical. It's not like numerical.

It's not judgmental. It's no points. There's no style points in this.

It's a number.

And at that point, I was ranked second in the world.

And Canada was sending two teams to the Olympics. And I thought, okay, you know, I really want to be in that number one sled again.

I am where I am, but I've got some time. So I get named to the Olympic team.

January, the Olympics are in February. I come back strong.

Within kind of that one month period. I knew, you know, there was still a lot left to do, but I was on the right path.

And I get named to the Olympic team.

We, you know, go to the Olympics. We do opening ceremonies. And after opening ceremonies, bobsled doesn't start.

Until the beginning of the second week.

So we have five days right at.

The very beginning where we can't do anything.

We can't train on the bobsled track because luge and skeleton are on the track. And so you're just in the village waiting for your events to start. And so we decided to go. Instead of just waiting in the village.

We decided to go to St. Moritz.

In Switzerland, which was a couple hours.

Drive from Turin, Italy.

And we were gonna, you know, go and slide and do some bobsled stuff for those five days and then come.

Over and do the bobsled week as per normal.

At that time, we were also going.

To do a push test because we.

Wanted the fastest girls to be the.

Girls racing, representing Canada at the Olympics.

This was my time.

I thought, okay, this is when I'm really going to build it up and, you know, prove that I'm one of the best girls.

I ended up doing a series of push tests. I did not push as fast as Heather Moyce. She was the number one ranked girl. But I pushed faster than our Canada 3 girl, in essence, at the same point, I had never raced with the other pilot. And even though I had pushed faster.

I hadn't done any races. And they decided after the push off.

That the Canada 2 team was cemented based on relationship and the Canada 1.

Team was cemented based off performance. So that left me out how, like, really?

I know that revisiting stuff like that can be painful, but, like, at the time, were you crushed? Like, what was destroyed?

I was destroyed. My parents were coming to the Olympics. They were already in Turin, Italy.

They had flown over, they had gotten.

At Airbnb and were living with, you know, this French couple just outside of Italy, and they were coming up to watch me compete. I thought that there was no way.

I wasn't going to be racing, you know, building up into this.

I had overcome adversity, and that was my story, you know, and here's where it was all going to be happy at the end.

No other options. There were no other possibilities. It was. This is what was happening. And plus, it was your Olympic dream. You're there, you're realizing it.

It was my Olympic dream.

I had overcome adversity. This was going to be my serve. It was going to be good.

You know, I'd seen other people do this. I had worked hard.

I didn't understand how we could have.

Two very different teams choose two very different options at the same point.

It's, you know, the choice of the head coach.

He chose to make one team very.

Happy, and he chose to stick with.

High performance on the other team.

And was frustrating because on one end, it was performance based and I hadn't achieved the goal.

It was my own fault.

At the end of the day, you know, an injury occurred, and that was a choice that I made. And so I had to live with that. And whether I would have beat her or not had I been healthy that whole year, who knows?

No one will ever know.

At the end of the day, though.

You know, Heather outperformed me, and she was the best person for that number one position, and then you have another.

Team who chose friendship and teammates and teamwork. And I didn't understand that either because.

This was the Olympics and it was about performance.

It's not recreational sport.

I understand that there's, you know, there is something to be said about teamwork and, you know, liking the people that you're with. But when there's a performance aspect, that's something that didn't make sense to me.

If we're supposed to be trying to be the very best that we could be.

So question from a layman here. As you're describing the scenario, I find it really hard to imagine. I find it hard to imagine that with the pressure of an Olympic Games and the pressure to perform, that distraction and instability would be a negative. So I'm struggling as to why there's any testing to decide any positions within five days of the competition at all. So that I don't understand. But wanting to hear from you, spin forward to, you know, you've won in Vancouver or Sochi, you're the premier driver in the world. How do you feel in that position? If you have a new pusher who has a great time, maybe in that one test five days before, but you've never raced with that person, you know, spinning around, looking from another angle, what do you feel is the best way to handle it? Because, yeah, it doesn't. There have to be some connection with. I totally understand the metrics of the high performance. You're the fastest pusher, you're the second fastest pusher. We're going with the fastest pusher. But is there any chemistry? Is the. Where does the relationship play into it and how do you feel being on the side of your spot, being cemented and not knowing what's going on behind you?

Yep, there is a team dynamic portion for sure. I find in. In bobsleigh, four man bobsleigh, that team dynamic is huge. Getting four big guys into a little sled very quickly. That team dynamic, to be there in.

Two men, it's less important.

It's nice. And I've had that team dynamic. Heather and I had it in 2010. Great friendship, you know, we had both wanted to be their common goal. We were the best together as a.

Team as well as individually. Everything all came together and 2010 was an amazing time because of it.

But I've also raced with girls that.

I personally don't get along with.

I've raced with teammates that I wouldn't choose to be friends with.

We don't really talk or hang out. We're two very, very different people.

Sure.

But we do our jobs very well and we trust and respect that. We will do our jobs very well out of pride for our country, for.

Our nation and performance.

And when you can come together and.

Have that respect and trust that regardless.

Of personality differences, it's about performance, that's all that you really need.

That's a huge point because just from my experience playing professionally in the volleyball world, you're playing with people from different cultures, different backgrounds and just there are 12 or 14 people in the team and some people you just don't like.

You just don't like.

But, but exactly the point that you make about the respect and the respect of the work that they're putting in. As long as that's being met, you can still have a fantastic working relationship.

Yes.

And it's so important. The way you phrase is beautiful. Just how that's how it's got to be.

It's how it's got to be. And I learned that it wasn't something that, you know, pre 2006, I would.

Have ever been open to the idea of.

I was young in some aspects. I was ignorant to the fact that, you know, there is a team dynamic portion.

I was just based on performance.

But it, you know, 2006, had it not happened, looking back, I would have never become a pilot. It definitely forced me to take a moment.

2006 was hard.

There was a lot of good that.

Came out of it though. I got to go to an Olympics.

Yes, I was an alternate.

But I got to see what it was about. I got to experience the village performance. I watched so many other athletes perform.

From other countries too.

Some of the best are male bobsledders. Andre Long, Pierre Lueders. I watched them perform. Pierre won his silver medal in 06.

And you know, his mental state, what he was focusing, what was he doing to prepare at the same point, you know, I would go home almost every day. There was a period of about three days when I didn't go back to the village.

I went back to my parents house.

And I cried for hours and hours and hours. And it was so hard because I was so close. I was at my dream, but there.

Was nothing I could do to actually live it.

And at the time I wasn't thinking ahead. There was no like, well maybe it.

Was my dream is just crushed and I'm living this right now. And that's all that I can focus on. After 2006, I went home.

There was about a three month period where I was like I'm done, I'm out. I hate everybody.

I hate everything. I am mad at the world.

I didn't achieve my goal and my.

Dream and it's everybody else's fault.

Looking back, after about three, four months, I think I sat down, had a.

Conversation with my dad again and he was like, well, what are you doing now?

Are you just done with bobsleigh?

Is this just it?

I'm like, well, I don't know, I need time to think about this. And he's like, okay, so took a.

Little bit of time and you know, again, you know, what are you doing? Are you, are you done with bobsleigh? Like, what are you going to do? Are you going to let somebody else dictate what, what it is that you want to do?

My ex husband at the time competed for Great Britain. You know, he was coming over to Canada. Was I going to go back to school at this point?

I was 20 years old. Was I going to give university a try? Was I going to try a different sport? Was I going to compete? What was I going to do? And.

I realized I wasn't going to put anybody else or give them the power to make decisions over me and my career. At the same point I felt very incomplete and like, I wasn't done with.

The sport and I wasn't done with my career and this wasn't going to be the end of my story.

So I decided to do a driving school. It's like a two week, they just kind of send you down in a bobsled and they teach you what to do, which is just kind of, they push you off and then crash or survive. There really is no way to like teach. Pull left, pull right. And I did well.

I did really well.

And being able to get back in the sled, being, being able to go.

To that driver school to learn and to start again with a new challenge.

It pushed me mentally as well as physically. But I was with other people that.

Were learning and this sport became fun again during this driving school.

And that's when that was the most important part for me of, I do really love this. I found the fun again. Who knows where it'll go, what'll happen? But at the end of the day I'm having fun and I want to.

See where I can take this.

So.

So I'm going to give it some.

Time and let's see if I could be good as a driver now. I had a lot of people in.

That four year period from 2006 to.

2010 tell me not to get My hopes up. They say it takes eight to 10 years to build a good bobsled pilot. The Vancouver Olympics was only in four years.

There was no way I was going to make.

Was the long game. Sochi was going to be my Olympics.

Eight years later, what were you believing?

I didn't know what to believe, but I knew other people's limitations or other people's limitations.

They're not mine.

I wasn't writing it off, but realistically, I had to prepare.

If it was gonna take eight years, Sochi was gonna be my games. It didn't mean I couldn't make it to 2010.

I didn't shut that door. I just didn't build my hopes up super high that I was gonna be the best. Could I make it? I thought so, but if I didn't, I wasn't going to let myself down. But I wasn't going to shut the door and not try.

I wasn't going to not work hard.

Because other people said, well, there's no.

Chance of you doing it.

So every day I got on the track, I focused.

I did the very best that I could. And that was my four year plan.

Learn as much as I can. I had already gone to an Olympics.

I had been to a world championships.

I was a breakman on World Cup. So I had competed without the pressure.

Of putting, performing as a driver.

I had seen all of it, been through all of it.

I just had to learn how to drive a sled in those pressure situations.

And as I went through, you know, 2007, 2008, there were certain races I failed hard. You know, I'd have one really good.

One and one really horrible run.

I'd be ranked really high, like second or third, and then I would drop.

Off and finish seventh.

And I'm like, what is happening? I would again look to other athletes.

That were the best. Andre Longa from Germany, Pierre Lueders.

There were so many other athletes.

And at the same point, we had a number one pilot, Helen Upperton.

So the pressure on me wasn't there at all.

It was on her to perform. She performed in 06, came fourth.

She was a favorite going into 2010. Everything was built up around my teammate, which allowed me to kind of fly under the radar a little bit and just focus doing and learning as much as I could.

There were no expectations put on me and I didn't have any on myself.

But I knew I wanted to at least get to an Olympics and try. So the whole goal was just trying to get to 2010 and have that.

Be an experience and actually get to an Olympics.

I could not have imagined we would.

Have won that race at the same point.

Peer Lueders, one of the top bobsledders in Canadian sport, but in the world. I had really looked up to him. He had kind of taken me under his wing and helped me. As I was starting to learn, I.

Bugged the crap out of this poor man.

Every question I could possibly ask all the time. And I know he's like, I just.

Want to perform, but he was so great.

And anytime I would come with a.

Question, he would answer it. He would help.

Pierre really allowed me to ask as.

Many questions, even at the top level that he was at.

And so that was great for me because I had an expert in the field close to home, who I could then resort to and look up to.

And ask questions of, why do you do things this way?

And he would do something, and I.

Would try it and be like, well, that doesn't work for me.

But I could adopt it. At the same point, I wasn't learning, you know, how to be high performance as a pilot right from go.

I didn't have to make things up. And guess what?

I could go, well, you know, he does this between runs so he doesn't get stressed.

I'll try it.

Does it work for me?

Yes or no?

But at least I'm starting at a higher up position.

You're trying what the best do. You're not trying trial and error on your own whim. You're trying what the best do, what the best do.

So I'm closer to, okay, if I got to chop and change a little bit, 10%, that's fine. But this is a common theme that.

Most of the top people do.

They all, you know, do it this way. They all do it, you know, bobsleigh this way.

They treat their equipment this way. This is how they align their runners. This is.

They're always seeking the best in this capacity.

They get their own therapists, their own coaches. They make sure things are handled.

So I had and saw what they.

Did, and I just emulated that for a period of time.

And so 2010 was amazing. It was 2010.

It will still and always be. People ask, what's your favorite? And I still.

I mean, it's like picking your favorite kid. But at the same point, 2010 was. It was pretty good. That will and always be my favorite Games. A, it was a Canadian Games.

B, it was my first Olympic medal. Just everything about that Olympics went off so flawlessly and effortlessly, and it was so unexpected.

But nice.

It just felt really good. There weren't many challenges. Everything just kind of worked all at the same point. And so, yeah, 2010 was amazing.

The goal of 2010 going into it was just performance. Not to achieve a result, just to be able to get there and not screw up. That was the whole, like, vision and purpose until we got there. And then once we got there. The Olympics has this magical way of making you believe that you can be.

Anything you want to be.

The hard part about 2010, though, was.

When the luge athlete died.

That was the first time the world.

Got to see just how dangerous bobsleigh and luge and skeleton can be.

All the athletes know of it. In 2005, I competed with a girl at World Championships as a brakeman.

And two weeks later she was learning how to drive and similar situation got launched out of the track and ended up passing away.

So it wasn't the first time I.

Experienced it at the same point. The sport can be and is very dangerous, and we are all very aware of that. I think that's what brings bobsledders from.

All over the world so close is that level of anything can happen at.

Any moment, and you have to be 100% focused on what you're doing. When you're on the bobsled track, if.

You have a lapse in judgment at 140km an hour, you can launch yourself out.

And you are not surviving that. There's no way.

And so everything, 100% focus all the.

Time, and it's on safety as well.

And so 2010, the world gets to see exactly how dangerous things are.

And that put a lot of doubt and a lot of fear in people's minds.

I was so fortunate to have Pierre there. The men bobsledders compete before the women by three days, three, four days. So Pierre got to get on the bobsled track before I did. So that five days when women's bobsled can't do anything after opening ceremonies, Pierre.

Was on the track. And the first run, he was experienced.

He had been to the Olympics, you know, he won gold in 98. So right up till 2010, he had.

Been to five Olympics. That was his fifth one, I believe.

And, you know, he. I was living in the same house as him because we were all.

Team Canada was divided in condos. And he got on the track and I was like, pierre, like, what's going on? What's happening to this track? People are freaking out.

Right now. I'm starting to freak out and, like.

Doubt the Track, doubt my ability.

I. I've only been driving for four years. What am I supposed to change? I don't even know what I'm doing, really.

It's only been four years.

And he slid. The first inning was like, nothing is.

Wrong with the track.

Everything's fine. The athlete made a mistake, which happens. He goes, it's the same track you.

And I have been driving for so long. And having that confidence in him and.

Having his confidence in me going, you'll be okay. Just do what you've been doing, allowed.

Me to not panic as much, because I could have gone way off the rails.

And his confidence in me to do what I did. As soon as I got on the track and I took that first run, you know, it was like, okay, he's right. Sounds good. Just keep doing what you're doing.

I'm gonna be safe.

I'm gonna be fine. We've planned and prepared and trained on this track.

I had over 300 runs on that track.

Then I had to really focus on.

Me and learn very quickly how to.

Shut the world out.

2010 was the first time I really.

Had to shut the world out because there was so much chaos and panic from every athlete on every level, from the track crew, from the coaches, from everybody, and from the world looking in.

Going, what's wrong with your sport?

I really had to learn how to.

Shut people out and just focus on my performance.

And I think because of all of that chaos, it really allowed me to focus, and that's what made 2010 possible. I was solely focused.

Heather and I were solely focused on performing individually as well as together.

We really came together at that games. She did her job, I did my job. We had been to 2006 together, although very separate, kind of fighting each other. 2010, we were there together as a unit, but that wasn't new for us. She, you know, she brought the confidence from the pushing side of it, and.

At the same point, she entrusted me, I entrusted her.

We both showed up to do our.

Job, but we both wanted to be.

There and perform for each other, for the country, and just do our best.

And when we focused on being good.

Individually, then we could also focus on.

You know, coming together as that team unit. And so that's what 2010 and the kind of the mental process was mostly about.

And after first run, I found myself in a position. I was winning the race. I had never been in that position before.

And I was like, okay.

And then your mind starts to wander. Second round, I'm like, just keep doing.

Keep Trying to get better. And at no point did I settle.

A lot of people.

The Olympics is special, and it's two days of competition.

Four runs, two runs each day.

All four runs count.

So most races throughout the season, it's one day. You do two runs in one day. That's the race. So we have one time in the year where it's two days back to.

Back, all four runs count. So you have to be consistently the best.

Tension, too, for not only the audience, but also for the athletes as well. Attention is building to see what's gonna happen.

What's gonna happen.

You gotta go home and sleep. You gotta prepare for day two. You gotta perform back to back days.

And be good on all those days.

And so after day one, I was winning the race. Chose not to focus on times.

It was important to me and the coaching staff that they didn't tell me how much ahead or behind or the position I would be in with the time.

I didn't know this was a.

But you'll know from running last that you're.

I'll know I'm in first place in what position, but I won't know if it's by a hundredth of a second.

Or by three seconds.

I have no idea. And I chose not to know that.

It was a strategic plan my coach and I, Stephane Bosch, came up with.

It wasn't the first time we had tried it. We tried it during World cup races. But what I really liked about this.

Plan and why we needed to make.

It happen in the Olympics in 2010, the pressure to not screw up or the pressure to perform when time is close, it stresses you out real hard, especially when it's hundredths of a second. What is hundredths of a second?

It's the width of a hair when you're standing still and you're like, how do you measure this much? You know, four runs in three days of competition, and your livelihood is based on this much.

You know, it's so hard to wrap.

My head around, and I didn't want.

To be thinking about, okay, go faster, go faster.

Get a time. I needed to focus on what I was doing on my job.

Bobsleigh required it. I required it of myself to perform. And Heather needed me to focus on.

My job from a safety aspect as well as a performance, and I owed that to her.

And I couldn't be distracted by anything else except for every single corner trying.

To do it the best to my ability.

And so that's what we focused on. As soon as I jumped in that sled, after pushing, it was like, push as hard and as fast as you can.

Jump in corner one. Okay, here's the line. Do it.

Corner two.

After run one.

What mistakes did I made? What was good? Okay, what can I make better? How do I continue to get that.

Same feeling of what's good? And that's all that I focused on. I didn't want to know anything else.

Nothing else. Just tell me when I need to be at the start line, and I'm going to do the job that I.

Have to do, which is driving this bobsled track to the best of my ability at that point. So having that team, having that support.

Allow me to just focus on driving.

A bobsled and pushing as fast as.

I could, taking out a lot of.

The noise, minimalizing the distractions.

Having that support crew helped build that.

Confidence in me to go, nope, you're fine.

When I wouldn't necessarily have it. All of those things allowed me to be the best athlete and allowed me.

To be the best teammate so that we as a team could succeed in 2010. And that's what we did.

And being able to be up there as well with Helen, kind of Canada being gold and silver was awesome. That was super cool. It just showed the depth of our team that year, the teamwork that had gone in from coaches. It wasn't easy. We definitely had a bunch of squabbles on the team that year, but everybody, you know, checked the ego.

Everyone did the jobs that they were there to do.

Everyone found comfort with, you know, with the sport, with performance, but also kind.

Of with each other.

And everyone had a different level. I brought that rookie new energy. You had Pierre his fifth Olympics. You had Helen, who, you know, she was taking the brunt of the pressure and the stress, and she did perform with all of that, having come forth at the Olympics before. And I looked up to that.

So it was a great learning example for you going forward and furthering your career as well with what she was able to do. But I'm ask the intensity of the despair from 2006 and the intensity of the elation of 2010, which was one. Did one override the other? If you look back, if you could compare in some sort of weird emotional realm, like did 2010 just did that emotion dwarf 2006, or was 2006 just so intense that, you know, you'll never forget that. Which was more formative, the win or the missing of what you were aiming at?

They were both formative. I have now been to four Olympics.

And I have had to learn that every Olympics is very different and unique, and I don't judge them off of each other. I'm a different person at each Games. Each Olympics has taught me something different.

As you're growing, as I'm growing, as I'm learning, and that's in life, not just within sport. Sport has taught me that that happens in real life. So when I look at life, I can understand it through, you know, what's happening within sport. But you grow, you learn, you have.

Relationships, personal and professional. You develop as a human being.

And sport has, you know, helped me along the way.

And I've had different milestones with each. And each has been so formative to me, growing as a person, as an athlete, that one doesn't outshadow the other.

For the, for the learning that you just mentioned, and about five minutes ago, you mentioned watching peer leaders and these other top performers, but you said you watched what they did for what they had around for therapists, the coaching they had, the. All the components of their team that equated to success and that you were trying to model and do all those sort of things. We've got to talk to you about how that support structure worked for you and how you had to fight for certain things that you felt were critically important for you to perform and to repeat for the first time in history as the gold medalist in your sport and to win that third Olympic medal. And what. When did you realize that things maybe weren't as they should be or as good as they could be? And when did you have the confidence to say something? And can you just kind of walk us through that? A little general question, but I realized.

The value of my team after 2010, and it was a battle to get them involved for 2014. Who's your team?

Just so the listeners really understand what it takes.

Steve McMillan was my start and strength coach, so he's responsible for my sprinting, my weightlifting.

I started working with him in 2007.

So having him on board, involved, he's been there for all the highs, the lows, we've really developed together, coach, athlete, relationship.

But I admire him and respect him so much from a coaching perspective, and there are so many things that he brings. Gordon Bosworth, he's an osteopath, he's from the UK.

I had met him previous to 06, but he's one of the best therapists.

That I have ever worked with in my entire life. This guy is a magician and a freaking genius when it comes to the body and performance. I was lucky in 2010, Gordon was.

The head of Speedskate Canada and the medical department. So even though he came from the UK and I had worked with him from 2006, he was involved in the Canadian program in 2010.

So I had access to him, which.

Was fantastic, but I didn't. In 2014, he wasn't involved in the.

Canadian system, and he was operating independently and started his own company.

So getting him involved back into the Canadian system, as well as just getting him or keeping him involved with me specifically knowing he had to focus on.

His business back in the uk, that was a challenge.

There were a lot of people. Stefan Bosch, my pilot coach, he started.

In 2008, so 2010.

But then keeping him as a coach.

On the Canadian program going into 2014 was so important to me.

I had that really good athlete, coach.

Relationship from a communication standpoint with Stefan. So when he told me to do something on the bobsled track, I knew exactly what he meant.

And every time I explained what I.

Was feeling or seeing or thinking, he understood directly.

So it just flowed and we could achieve, you know, faster, better lines a lot quicker.

Having that communication style. And he's a very calm person.

So I can get very worked up.

Very fast, and I can overthink. I'm very detailed in my head.

And he brought that.

It's cool.

We got this focus on the basics.

Keep it super simple so I don't run away with all of these hundreds of thousands of thoughts. So having him involved was so important.

After 2010, so 2014, even going into.

2018, having a good sled mechanic, Mark Vandenberg. But from 2010 to 2014, he had.

Come in, he was new going into.

2018, still fighting to keep him involved was huge.

Equipment's a big part to bobsleigh, so.

A lot of these things, some of these people.

Were involved within the Canadian.

Team, the Canadian bobsled team specifically. And some people didn't want to be.

And if they didn't want to be.

Involved on the Canadian bobsled team, then.

I had to find a way to still utilize them if that's what I.

Felt was so vital to my performance.

And we had to find a way.

To make it work. And sometimes that involved me flying them.

Out for weeks on end and having to pay individually for it if and.

When they could come out.

Sometimes it involved the Canadian Olympic Committee making sure, especially in 2014, if they weren't involved in the Canadian team, could.

We get them accreditation and make sure that they could still be there at the Olympics because they were vital to my performance as an athlete.

And it was the same in 2018. So as much as I could, I.

Tried to get these people involved in.

The Canadian team because they're the best in the world. I think they are at what they do.

They've helped me be the best multiple.

Times and I have searched the world finding the best people because for me to be the best, I need to work with the best in what it.

Is that they do.

And I get that that's different for everybody.

But I wanted to make sure my teammates had access to that. So if they could be involved on the Canadian team, they did.

But if the Canadian team couldn't afford.

To pay them or didn't want to.

Or had somebody else that they thought was better, then it was the onus.

Was on me to have them involved personally.

And so it's a constant. And I think most high performance athletes find this. Not everybody that's involved in a program.

And a federation is always what's best for an individual athlete.

Can that athlete still get what's best for them? Can they not? How do you bridge that gap?

Can it work?

Does it not?

Yeah.

Well, your pilot coach example is the perfect example here, I think, of what you're talking about. That, that special connection you have, the ability to speak the same language and the type of feedback you're giving, he can translate and understand and vice versa, is going to be unique to that relationship. But the question I have about all of this is you obviously understand there's a money component to it.

Yes.

So, you know, obviously Canada Skeleton has budget, but did it feel like it went beyond the budget for you and that, you know, you've mentioned more than once working to keep these people in, working to keep them involved, was there friction or just kind of disagreement across the group about who those involved should be and it was a personal preferences or what made it not work from your perspective?

Yeah, ego.

Ego makes it not work. Real quick. Yes, there was friction. I think the biggest. Certain people were very on board with making sure I had what it is.

I needed and trusted me enough to tell them what that is.

And if it was a team person, great, fantastic.

If it couldn't be a team person.

Due to budgetary constraints or availability, then how do we get it? And then I had certain coaches that they like to tell you what's best for you, regardless of if it's what.

You think or not. As an athlete.

That's when the ego comes in, that's when the expertise of coaches comes in.

And that's when the disagreements and the issues come in. I'm an athlete and some athletes aren't.

I'm an athlete that likes to be collaborative work with my coaches. Nothing is definite or infinite or has to happen unless we all agree that it is. And everybody could, but it's more a collaborative effort. Here's what I think. Do you agree, yes or no? I think I need to be a.

Little higher in this corner.

Do we agree? Yes. Here's what I feel.

What does it mean from what you're seeing?

Okay, makes sense. Let's do this. Okay. I'm not.

That wasn't happening for you. That wasn't happening. You were being told or you were being kind of pushed into certain directions.

Some coaches are like that. And I've worked with those coaches before. I had one coach going into 2014 that started that way. Here's what needs to happen. Here's what you get.

You don't get anything more.

Here's the line. You need to drive. Well, I think differently than that. Like, I think I need to be a bit higher. Nope. And then you're lower and you crash.

Or you're lower and then you're slow.

And I'm like, you told me to go lower.

Oh, yeah.

Well.

And you're like, it's.

Your life is on the line.

My life is on the line.

My breakman's life is on the line, and performance is on the line.

And I got to a point when.

There were numerous conversations.

I've had a couple coaches, and this is where the people that I support.

And trust, that build my team are so vital to being there for me.

Because when you have a coach that you don't work with well or that.

Doesn'T understand the way you work, it can feel very overwhelming, very threatening, and.

It can be very demeaning unless you can work it out. And going into 2014, I had a coach that. He was there for four years. We started out for the first two years not, like, hating each other, not being able to work together, not being able to communicate, do this, go here. You'll never achieve this.

Don't even try this.

Here's what you get.

And I'm like, ah.

And I think he realized very quickly that if it's not something the team can provide, great.

It doesn't mean I'm going to go without.

I'm going to find a way to get it.

I'm going to find a sponsor to pay for it.

I'm going to get this person, if they're needed, to come to be here, there's always a way to achieve something. And I think he realized very quickly that it needed to be a collaborative work environment. And so out of respect for each.

Other, we sat down multiple times and had communications about this. And we both had to be open.

Into changing a little bit. Sometimes you would have to tell me.

Here'S what we can do from the team.

Okay, here's what I need individually. Okay.

And then make a plan.

And when we could come together and devise a plan, regardless of personal preference.

And what was best for performance, and we could come together built around performance.

Because we both respected it, then it didn't matter.

Ego or personality or trust, it was.

All just performance based.

And we came up with a performance plan, and both of us could operate within performance.

That language you could both speak. You could both speak that language for sure and come to a common ground on that. Was there a straw that was like the final straw that had you basically go, okay, like, I can't work within this system. Please release me. I'm going to the U.S. like, what was the final. Or maybe there wasn't one, but was there? That was just kind of like, okay, I give. I have to make a huge change. Because it's a huge change to make. Everybody has a threshold.

Everybody has a threshold.

Doesn't matter what it is in life or sport or whatever. But was there a straw? Or what was the thing that finally just was like, okay, I gotta make a massive change here?

Yep, the massive change happened August, so only a couple months ago. I've worked with coaches before that I wouldn't necessarily get along with.

I've worked with teammates I wouldn't get along with.

Respect has to always be there. And when it comes to sport, performance.

Needs to be there.

And if those needs are met from.

A performance standpoint, like I said before.

When you know you're giving everything you've got, this is all that we have can do give. Respect is there.

From a human standpoint and from an athlete standpoint, you can overcome a lot of personal differences.

For me, the Olympic year in 2018.

We had a new head coach come in.

Again, this coach and I did not work well together. And I was employing a lot of the techniques or skills that I had learned from past teammates or coaches, just.

Like anybody would do in a work environment. You know, when you don't get along with someone or they are not your favorite, how can you still work with them?

And when none of that worked, every single thing that I had learned in 14 years of sport of high performance sport was working when the people that I trusted, respected, that had gotten me.

To trust Olympic championships were being disrespected, were being mistreated.

When I was being attacked and my character and my personal character, regardless of performance, started to get attacked, I started to shut down. And unfortunately for me, I had a coach that was willing to go to the ends of the earth to get his way. And I'm the type of person that will go to the ends of the earth to get mine. And we're the same in that capacity. Unfortunately, our values and how we operate are so drastically different that we ended up coming the games, having to. I had to come up with a plan with the team that had gotten me to two Olympic medals before. So Stu Gordon, Stefan Bosch, all those people were there. The Canadian Olympic team had organized so that they were there either to be with me or to service the team as a whole. And so we'd come up with a plan that I wouldn't talk to or communicate with this head coach at all. There was to be no discussion whatsoever.

For two weeks of the Olympics because any communication could be seen as a distraction.

There was no touching of the equipment. There was not even a hello, no.

Track walks, no video review, nothing. And we had come up with an actual plan to combat this.

The issue was, throughout the Olympic year, there was a lot of verbal and.

Mental abuse that I felt on my end that was getting worse and worse and worse.

And it caused me, a month before the Games, to almost go home. I got to a point after 15.

Years in a career, that in January.

A month before the Games, in tears, destroyed after being yelled at for an.

Hour and a half on what a.

Horrible person I am, as well as.

What a disappointment to my country I.

Was that I asked to go home. And I went straight to the president of bobsleigh Canada. And I didn't want to be there.

I wasn't having fun.

To get an Olympic champion to want to go home a month before she's about to potentially make history, knowing I've given my entire life to this, and I am the most dedicated person possible. Wanting to achieve something no one else.

In the sport has ever done took a lot. And I'm a strong person, and I think of myself as a very strong person.

It was a gradual progressive, not just.

One instance, but it didn't matter what I did, what I said, who I.

Was, when my personal character started to.

Get attacked and I started to feel threatened just as a human being, when I didn't feel safe in my environment, when it didn't matter where I went or what I did, I was vulnerable.

Not just to personal attack, but to physical touch or intimidation.

When my environment felt unsafe to me.

That'S when I was like, I'm not, A, I'm not having fun, and B.

I'm not okay here.

So we devised the plan that I.

Wouldn'T talk to this coach at all during the Games, and we were going to get through the Games.

And that plan honestly allowed me to.

Be successful at the Games.

Getting back, not having communication at all kept me safe, which was great.

And I worked with Felicia and my teammates.

After the Games, there was a major depressive episode.

I was clinically depressed.

I was experiencing a lot of very physical issues that occurred. There's always an Olympic lull, as most people will talk about post Games. Everyone goes, yeah, for like a month. You know, you're really sad or you just have no motivation. But this lasted for a very long time and to such a severe degree. I was experiencing headaches on a daily basis. Couldn't leave the house, wouldn't leave the house light, dark. Motivation was not even walking my dog.

Did I want to get out and be athletic in any capacity. And I was like, something's not right. I was getting rashes all over, hives all over. And I was like, we got some major issues here.

So I sought help. I personally went to Toronto, had a.

Brain scan of an mri, wanted to.

Make sure, you know, I didn't have.

A concussion or something. Wasn't concussion based.

What was going on with my eyes, what was affecting my vision, why was I breaking out?

I had blood work done and blood tests done, and I was like, something major is happening. And that's when I was diagnosed with depression and started taking medication and, you know, came up with a plan to combat that.

And of that led to me understanding. Working with a psychologist and a sports psychologist led to me breaking down the.

Olympic season, which was when I realized.

That there was a lot of verbal.

And mental abuse to what I felt, and I needed to make it known.

And it wasn't something that I came to lightly. It wasn't something that I just was like, oh, yeah, this is what this is. It took months with professionals to get.

To this point, to understand.

And when I made it known, I was blacklisted. My funding got cut almost immediately, and I felt very alone, more alone than I had ever felt at that point. I have three Olympic medals, and I.

What was your expectation? And making that public?

My expectation was to stop it from.

Happening again and to change my environment for the next four years moving forward.

The only thing that. And the only thing that made me feel safe and able to compete at.

A high performance level was removal of this coach from my environment. Not from the team, just from me specifically.

So my intention of filing was to make it separate, officially known, so that officially we could do something about it.

For the four years moving forward.

And whether it would change for the.

Team aspect or just for me, I.

Needed to make the team aware from a legal standpoint that this was occurring so that there would be no question.

Moving forward on what it is I would need.

And what hurt the most about the reaction, because you're going into it with this intent of, you know, no one should be experiencing this. I'm just looking to separate myself from this.

Was that I was blamed that it's. It's all your fault. When you get yelled and screamed at.

And told you're a hobo person, what.

Did I do to. To deserve that? I. At that point, like, there's nothing. It didn't matter what I said.

It didn't matter what I did.

I was then blamed for, you know.

Well, you should have done this, and you should have done that. There was no support in regards to helping me through the depression as well.

I felt as most people or anybody that's ever, you know, felt really low. It's. You're not in a rational mind, per se, and you get to the point when you don't know why and how you are where you are, but you.

Feel really bad about yourself, about the situation, and you. You don't really know what to do.

And so to think back and go.

What could I have done differently? Is this my fault? What did I do to deserve this?

And then have the people that are.

Supposed to keep you safe, the federation that's supposed to help you and provide resources to help you, deny you all of those services and then blame you. That hurt the most.

Because I felt like my country abandoned.

Me and let me down. And I felt I did nothing to deserve that.

At that point, I had achieved three.

Olympic medals for these people.

I had been invested for 15 years of my life.

Time away from family, from friends.

This was my livelihood.

And I committed 100% of everything I.

Had to cost me.

Relationships, friendships. This is sport. This is high performance.

And I was always okay to get it until I wasn't okay to give it anymore.

And when I stood up for myself, when I stood up for my mental.

State to say, hey, something's not right.

I Need a change.

And here's why. You know, everybody's guard went up. Fair enough. But there was no course of action. There was no plan. I was used to, okay, here's an issue. Let's fix it and get past it. And instantly I was shut down and there was no plan moving forward, and I was abandoned.

You think that they just hoped you would quietly retire and that's done done kind of thing?

That's what they were hoping for. I think that's why they removed funding two months after I filed the complaint. Although I had a signed agreement and I paid my team fees for the year and I planned on competing, there was no acknowledgement. It was, well, here's what you're going.

To have to do.

You have to just keep. We're going to keep putting you in the position you feel unsafe with. We're not going to make any changes whatsoever. You have to deal with this. This is your problem and it's not going to change. Okay, So I have no say, no capacity, nothing.

And the answer was no.

So then I had to choose.

Do I continue down this path that.

I felt had caused major depressive episodes and that put me in a very unsafe environment on a yearly, monthly, weekly basis where I'm destroyed as a human.

Being, or do I not?

And I think they hoped that I just would retire and walk away and that I had no other options and that I would no longer be a problem.

By cutting your funding and everything. It's not like you even have this option to keep cutting, competing with Canada, even if you chose to try and endure what your coach was putting you.

Through, so you know, all the resources get cut. So as soon as your funding gets cut, you no longer have access to training facilities, to therapists, to doctors, to coaches, to medical staff, to anything, to dentistry, to the kidney. You no longer are.

You're off the island.

Off the island that gets cut. You're done.

So I endured it for a year. My funding was cut in October. For the remainder of that season, up until March, I endured it. I tried to come up with new solutions, new plans. I had reached out to Bob Sakhen and say, hey, I still want to be competing. What do I have to do to.

Get back on the team?

What do I have to do to get my funding back?

What camps do I have to attend to? And I was ignored.

For months I was ignored. Then I got a response that said, well, what do you need to feel.

Safe and high performance?

Provide a list. I provided a list. Yes. This is what I need. To be high performance. This is what I need to feel safe after it was requested. What do you need?

I gave it to them.

That list was later then used as against me to say this was her demand list. It was never a demand list. They asked for it, and I provided it. It's all things that had been provided in the past, nothing new. And it definitely wasn't just solely for me. It was to keep me safe.

And other athletes would have had access to all the same services, which is a big deal.

Just to clarify, because when you end up bringing an extra service provider in. I've always been the service provider. You bring an extra service provider in that that service provider can't get paid even close to their normal rate that they would normally get paid on the open market. They never get even paid close to that when they're working with sport federation or whatever it is, whatever team it is, national sport body. So for you to be either using sponsorship money or your own money or whatever, to bring somebody in that other people have access to is a big deal. That's a big deal for everybody. Not, you know, like, that's a generous thing.

Yeah.

And it. And that's the part I'm like, if. If other people are gonna come in.

To make me feel safe, I want.

Other athletes to have access to those people, too.

I'm gonna.

I want the best people. I know who they are. I want to bring them in, but.

I want other athletes to also benefit from their services.

And so it was important to me that it kept me safe, but that.

Other athletes also had access to it.

So it wasn't solely for me, but I wanted it on paper. I wanted all these things written.

They'd been provided in the past.

I had to fight in the past.

For some of these services, mindset to.

Kind of go, okay, this is what I have to do in order to get where I want to go, where.

I want to go.

And it was simple to me.

Like, okay, I can't even. What opened your eyes to go, okay, I got a try something else? And I mean, I. From what I understand, you can correct me here if I'm wrong, but I. You pushed the. The lawsuit in order to get it decided so you could be released.

Yeah. I realized $45 million is insane, you guys.

I know it is. That was never the goal.

No, it's action, though.

No, but time is of the essence, you know, and we know that this could drag out for two years, and then you lost the option for the next Olympics. Like, it's.

It's a dragged out for 10 years.

The biggest issue is in bobsled, as in most performance sports, when you're out of competition for a while, you need to. If you're going to come back in, there's requirements. And I sat out for a year, didn't compete. But if I sit out for more than two years, I have to redo my qualifications to be back on the World Cup. So I lose my world ranking if.

I sit out for two years.

When I left, I was ranked number one in the world. But if I sit out for two years straight, I have to then do the development circuits and build back up.

Which would take over a year to do. Or it would be a year's worth.

Of competition, which would make it increasingly difficult to come back. Could I have done it?

Who knows?

But it definitely got to a point I was like, I'm not sitting out because of performance. I'm not, not competing because of a tangible injury or something that's occurring. I don't have a team to return.

To and I'm not being given the information in order to return at this point.

So what am I supposed to do?

And there's no safe environment for me to return to currently.

So I tried to reach out, tried to ask what to do, Provided everything that they had requested, gave them time to get some of those requirements met. Was it a solid have to have everything on this list? No, they knew that as well. There was communication.

Things could have been talked and worked out. Nothing was solid.

It was just a list that here's basically what I want in an ideal world. And there was no communication. The first national team camp occurred and I wasn't invited to it. And then in August, a second national team occurred. They had known for months I wanted to be back on the team. And national team camps were occurring at this point because I wasn't given the information, I wasn't participating in the camps. I was not eligible.

For another year.

So now I'm gonna have to compete.

For an entire year without funding.

That $20,000 that the Canadian athletes get a year to compete is what we live off of. That is our life. And without having it and having to compete and give everything of my time.

And my commitment and get no payment whatsoever. Again.

That was a major issue. So I needed funding in order to still be able to leave Canada for four months and compete on the World cup where I can't have a full.

Time job and be making income, but.

Be able to pay rent or a mortgage or car payments or have food to live. And so in August, when I wasn't invited to the second camp, there was no communication as to how I was.

Going to be able to return whatsoever.

That's when I knew the September 30 deadline in order to be able to be on a team and be competing.

This season was fast approaching.

And I was getting no communication whatsoever.

From bobsleigh Canada in any capacity. Email after email after email went out.

Deadlines coming, can I be on the team?

What do I got to do?

Are you guys working on some of these requirements? Are you not? What's happening? And there was no communication.

So that's when I was speaking with.

My husband and I reached out to the American team.

I've been living down in Carlsbad in California for the last four years.

I had planned on just still living here. We were getting married. I was gonna get married and still be competing for Canada. But when competing for Canada was not an option because I was not being communicated to in the slightest. I needed to come up with another option or retire. And in the Canadian system, the way that it works and operates, there are.

Holes in the system. And unfortunately, a lot of national sport federations are allowed to police themselves. Nobody can hold them accountable. During this time, I reached out to the Canadian Olympic Committee, I reached out.

To own the podium to a lot.

Of the funding partners.

Every connection I could have possibly had within 15 years of being at the.

Top level in Canadian sport. I reached out to and I talked.

To, and nobody could speed up the process, give me an answer, or provide me with resources in order to get back competing. Because bobsleigh Canada, as the federation, has.

Ultimate power and say, and there was.

Nothing they could do to intervene, which I understand. At the same point, it allows federations.

The power to police themselves.

They can say, yes, this happens. No, this happens. They can run an investigation, they can hire people and pay people to do investigations, or not. They can take six years. They can, after an investigation, the federation has the power to go. Yeah, I know the investigators said we were all wrong, but we don't agree and then not implement it.

And I think people don't know that either.

And so of course federations are going to be very, very resistant to change athletes.

Canada is doing an amazing job at.

Trying to have a third party be somebody that deals with all complaints, whether they're abuse, harassment, physical, mental. If there's an issue and an athlete.

Files a formal complaint, it should go.

Directly to a third party. Sport dispute resolution could not get involved.

In my case until bobsleigh Canada asked them to, and they didn't ask.

And no matter how many times I said, let's go to the sport dispute resolution, the answer was no. So that was the reason for the lawsuit. I had to sue them, force them to go to court to get an answer of no, so that we could.

Then proceed to the sport dispute resolution.

Because that's what the judge required us to do. And that was the next step. So everything was strategic. It was political. Sports should not be this way. It got real messy. This is a very bad breakup.

And that was not the point of it. I just want to be competing.

I want to be able to be the best athlete that I can be. I don't think any athlete should have.

Limitations put on them, whether it's performance or not. Sports supposed to be fun, and it.

Shouldn'T be as hard as it is. And yes, there are standards that are met. There is high performance, there is pressure. But most athletes put pressure on themselves more than any country, any coach, or.

Any federation could put on them. So when there's added pressure and stress from family, from coaches, from friends, that.

Is exacerbated 20 times inside of an athlete's mind. And I've been fortunate to have amazing coaches that have taught me how to deal with that, but have helped release.

That, that pressure and that tension. And I've had a very supportive family.

Which has helped me through a lot of this.

But for me, the biggest thing was.

Getting back to competing.

I'm not done.

And I don't think it's right or.

Fair that somebody else gets to dictate when I do retire, when I, you.

Know, have to hang it up. And I don't think I should be.

Bullied into not saying my truth.

I don't think I should be silenced when there's an injustice because somebody doesn't want to deal with it or because.

Nobody wants to acknowledge it and it should get brought up.

And I'm not going to shy away from. Hasn't been easy, and I knew that. At the end of the day, though, if I don't speak up as one.

Of the top athletes in my sport, who's going to.

Because anybody else that's below me doesn't have that voice. They don't have necessarily.

The support structure would have been silenced far earlier because they either wouldn't have had the clout, they wouldn't have had the medals, they wouldn't have had the experiences, strength. But now where you are, how does it feel to have made this the US Team? Like what? What Is this, like, right now, Matt?

Give me an Olympic final any day over US Team trials. I won't lie. I was so stressed at those trials. Just because everything rides on me making that team, whether I, you know, whatever.

It was, everything was built around me making that team.

It has been a great transition, and I'm sure people don't want to hear this from Canada, but US has been fantastic.

They've been so welcoming, so respectful.

It's been a collaborative effort. I haven't been given anything, and there's.

Been no payment whatsoever.

So, contrary to popular belief, I'm not being paid to do this.

This is a choice.

And I had to earn my way. I wasn't provided equipment of any capacity. I had to buy a bobsled that cost me $70,000. I had to show up to team trials with my own equipment.

I had to.

You know, I wasn't given. I was lowest on the totem pole.

And I had to earn my way onto that team.

So as hard as it was, I respect that process. I respect them for standing up for their current athletes, for making me go through that process.

And I think that's where the respect on the team has come in.

Because I wasn't just given a position.

It wasn't based off past performance.

It's not gonna work if it wasn't.

Yeah, just like everybody else in that day. And so that's really built the respect and the relationship with the athletes on.

The team that I do have now, and I'm thankful for that.

And the coaches have been fantastic in making sure that, you know, the environment is conducive, that it's respectful and fair for everybody, you know, and that everybody is communicated to in the fashion that suits them, you know, and not everybody's going to be happy, but that's not what it's about. As long as it's fair, it's equal opportunity. And that you have a chance to showcase who you are as an athlete.

That's all anybody could ask for. And that's the environment that I'm in now.

So I'm very happy with the environment and the team. It's been weird. I won't lie. There's been certain things that are just.

Very different at the same point. Bobsleigh's. Bobsleigh.

So I know what I'm doing, the people I'm around, I've known and been friends with or teammates with, I've competed.

Against for a very long time. There are milestones.

But being an American living in the States, I've done that since a kid, my grandfather was American, my great grandmother was American, I've traveled, so those parts aren't weird for me. Definitely milestones. The first time, you know, you get to do something is like, oh, this is a little different. You know, first time putting on the Team USA jacket. The first time you stand on top of the podium, gotta sing a different national anthem. You're like, this is different. But my teammates are so supportive, which is great.

We all sang the anthem together when we got to stand on top of it a couple weeks ago.

The first time I'll get judged on the world stage in the World cup again.

That'll be a new milestone.

And when is the next World Cup?

The first World cup is December 7th.

7Th and 14th in Lake Placid, New York.

Those are the.

The first two World cup races.

So are you. Are you nervous in a different way?

Yes and no. I was more nervous for team trials because the USA team trials happened at.

The same time as a North American cup race.

So it was kind of like a dual purpose. And there were people from Canada. I had to come face to face with the coaching staff and the teammates.

That I had been on the team with for a long time.

And so it was certain teammates were fantastic and other ones super awkward and weird. At the same point, though, I was more nervous just for making the US Team. It's a bit of a relief now that I've made the US Team and I'll be on the World Cup. Now I can get back to performance.

Which is something more that I've known.

It's not the first.

Just get back to doing what you want to do.

Get back to doing what you want to do. I've already gone through those milestones already now, so I'm not nervous to do it. I want to just be able to get out there and compete and have.

The opportunity again to get back on.

The World cup and to, you know.

Be the best athlete that I can be and continue to challenge and push myself.

And so I'm looking forward to it.

That's amazing. Amazing, amazing. We kind of want our listeners, and us, too, to get to know you a little more personally as well. Do you have a legacy overall that you want to leave? If you were retiring, you're clearly not going to retire for quite some time. But when you do, and it's on your terms and you're seeing it out the way you want to see it out, what kind of legacy do you want to leave behind for young athletes for just your career? What does that look like.

I want athletes to know.

Or to be in a positive, safe.

Environment. I want athletes to have fun within sport. The legacy I want to leave is one free from abuse and harassment or punishment.

And I want them to have the.

Strength and the courage to be able.

To speak their truth in whatever capacity that is. Most importantly, I want opportunity for younger female athletes so that when they come up through the sport or sporting system that things are greater, opportunities are available to them.

And.

I want people to believe in themselves and to know that anything is possible and that with hard work and.

Determination, you know, they can be the best in the world and to not.

Let somebody else dictate their life. That, you know, you have the power.

And the influence and the voice and you know, the skill set in order to be the best that you can be. For me, the biggest part, I think.

Throughout my career is not comparing myself.

To others and not letting anybody else define me or my journey. And I want other athletes to believe and to know that that is possible. And not even other athletes, but other women, other females. I want you to know that that.

Is possible and can happen in any capacity. Whether you're a doctor or a teacher, it doesn't matter.

You can be the best and whatever it is that you want to be.

And to work hard at that and.

To challenge yourself and it's not going to be easy, but it doesn't mean that it's not right and you know.

Have fun, it's your life, live it.

Is there something about you that you know, despite having a fairly public profile, that most people don't know about you that you would want people to know about you?

I think a lot of people see me as strong. I definitely have a very good resting, gym, hard focus, intensity, face. But I'm actually a big softy when it comes to most things. I, I take things to heart.

I am a very detailed, very personable person when you get to know me. And.

I think a lot of people.

Don'T necessarily see me that way.

I don't show a lot of it, I guess, or enough of it. But that softer side is there and I do require it, just like I.

Do my intense, more focused side. But it is there. So yeah, I think that's part of my makeup.

But I want people to not forget that I don't do things on a whim or just because everything has a.

Plan and a thought out process in detail and I enjoy what I do. I don't like roller coasters. I'm a homebody.

I'm definitely More of an introvert, I think, than people seem to understand as well. I don't. Yeah, I like being at home with my husband and my dog.

I enjoy just chilling and watching movies.

I'm not a big thrill seeker. I get enough of that in bobsleigh. I'm good if I don't have it in any other aspect of my life.

I think your dog just being a dog person and knowing dogs, I think your dog sensed when you were getting a little stressed about what we're talking about and then your dog comes in.

Yeah, she does. And I've noticed that as well. She's very, very good like that.

She's very smart.

That's why the door is closed. Because if they hear my voice going, then they're both gonna be in here.

Yeah, I've noticed that. She's very good for that. And I'm very thankful that we have a dog that is very in tune to that for my husband and I. And.

It'S been something that is very enlightening, to say the least, because somehow she senses it and then it makes.

Me think, why is she coming over? And then I'm like, okay, here's what it is. It makes you think internally.

It does, 100%.

And I'm like, okay, here's where we got to go with things or change.

Focus or, you know, switch conversation or.

Just take some breaths.

Are children in your future?

We plan on having children, yes.

When? Don't know. It's not like I'm getting any younger, but both Travis and I really do want children.

And so that'll be.

That was kind of in this four year plan initially, but is no longer just built around the fact that, you know, there's been a lot of stress shift in the last five months that we're gonna get through this part and have things a bit more concrete and.

Settled and sorted and not so brand new on everything. And then we'll revisit that moving forward at whatever time.

Do you. Do you have some favorite music that you listen to? Getting in the right state for training or for competition? Do you have some favorite music?

Music's great for doing that.

Country is always a favorite of mine. Growing up in Calgary, Alberta, yeah, country I've listened to my whole life, so that will always be my go to. That's a big part of my repertoire. But I do listen to a lot of other things, you know, hype up for race day. Anything you can, you know, dance or move to. Beyonce's great.

Put on Eminem.

Like, it really depends on what I'm seeking from the environment for cool down after a workout or if I know it's the day before race and I can't get too excited.

I won't put on anything fast or.

Hype because it, you know, it builds you up and I'll stick to more like singer, songwriter, acoustic style stuff or.

Like some slower country stuff.

But yeah, it totally depends. I enjoy most music. The only type of music I would say that I don't understand is like house or techno. That's the only type that I. I haven't learned to appreciate.

I just, it does nothing for me.

But all other types, that's.

I like the top 40s and.

Well, we can't thank you enough. We're so grateful that we could share to our audience and to other people your story so that not only do people really understand you and how hard you work and how incredibly devoted you have been not only to your country and your sport, but also just to the cause of being who you are, being respected for who you are and as a human and as a woman and as an athlete. And we really, really appreciate your sharing all of what you have with us.

Well, thank you and I appreciate the opportunity to be able to do so.

Thank you so much for listening. To get more support in living your best life, find us in our free Facebook community Empowered Top Performers. We're on Instagram, Paul Durden and powerconditioning. Please share this podcast and rate us. A five star review would mean the world to us. That is how we connect with and support more people to excel in sport and life. Take what you learned today and try it. Progress is perfection.

Sa.