A funny thing about great athletes. They tend to keep on surprising us, even after their competitive careers wind down. And so, catching up with Tessa Virtue again, five years after she unlaced the skates and five years after she last came on the podcast, we learn that she has combined her high performance sport experience, a masters in applied psychology, and an MBA to build a unique business advisory role for herself at Deloitte ..read more

Though she is still only 25 years old, Jessie Fleming has already enjoyed a full decade of being named player of the year, top college player, Top Canadian, CONCACAF All Star, and enough adulation to convince a less modest midfielder of her own greatness. But that is not Fleming’s way. She has a ‘do the work, and do it well’ attitude that has carried her to the apex of soccer, and at the same time, helped her become a well-rounded, highly-educated, self-aware young leader. Anastasia connected with Fleming shortly after she signed a deal to move from the English Super league’s Chelsea to the Po ..read more

Swimming is notoriously practise-heavy. The daily accumulation of laps and dryland workouts can nudge elite swimmers toward becoming mono-focus athletes. So it’s delightful to meet Canada’s male swimmer of the year, Josh Liendo, and find a well-rounded young man tearing up the record books. He is now a world champion and an NCAA champion, but the move from meters and long courses to yards and shorter laps can throw young swimmers off. Anastasia wants to know, how does Liendo account for his very successful transition to the NCAA and beyond? He thinks he helped himself by setting few big person ..read more

John Herdman, the most successful head coach in the history of Canada soccer, came to Toronto FC at the tail end of a miserable season for the club. When great athletes rack up terrible results, he diagnoses Sports trauma. Herdman has been there before. He works with a team of people and trusted methods to break that bad spiral. The worst thing about trauma for Herdman, is that it brings laxity, teammates giving each other permission to deliver less-than-best efforts. There are many ways to approach the problem, but the one thing he won’t tolerate is shaming. Herdman goes back to his own child ..read more

In sports, as in High School, there’s the popular crowd and there’s everyone else, and crossing between those two worlds is not easy. Nick Wammes and Sarah Orban, track Cyclists on the Canadian National Team, are doing their best to rig the vote in that popularity contest. The pair of them, partners on and off the track, lean hard into social media, to draw attention to their discipline for those 206 weeks of every four year cycle when their sport is not enjoying Olympic audiences. It’s a blurry line- showing the world as much as they can from inside the velodrome, the gym, and their personal ..read more

Luke Prokop was only 19 years old when he made pro sports history. A year after the Nashville Predators picked him in the 2020 NHL Draft, Prokop told his team, his sport, and the wider world that he was gay. He is the first player under NHL contract to do so. This season, he has also bumped up to playing plenty of AHL games, making him the first out gay player at that level, one step away from the top team. So- how’s it going, in a sport that has never been at the forefront of inclusion? So far: Excellent! No stupid chirps from opponents, nothing but support from within the organization, and a ..read more

In February of this year, Laurence St-Germain delivered a fantastic wake up call to the world’s best skiers. She won the slalom gold medal at the 2023 FIS Alpine World Ski Championships in Courchevel and Méribel, France. Established greats like Mikaela Shiffrin were both startled and delighted to see the friendly Canadian win her first podium on an international circuit. Other nations can be forgiven for not seeing this one coming: it has been 63 years since the last Canadian woman won the slalom world championship. Alpine history buffs take note, the previous Canadian champ was Anne Heggtveit ..read more

Justina Di Stasio has to be one of the greatest wrestlers that Canada has not yet seen at an Olympic Games. She’s excelled at major international tournaments, time and time again, but when it comes to getting on the Canadian Olympic team, the BC veteran has hit a roadblock in the form of her Gold medallist teammate Erica Wiebe. Canada can only send one wrestler in their weight class…so that explains the history. But Di Stasio is not one to brood on the past. She’s taken the last eight years as a series of chances to learn and improve and refine her technique. And so now the Coach/Teacher/74kg ..read more

When a team athlete is named MVP over and over again, that's saying something about their ability to lift everyone's game around them. Zak Madell, one of the world's best wheelchair rugby players, has owned that MVP distinction almost since the day -a dozen years ago- he first got into his notoriously rock 'em sock 'em sport. Madell is as effective an advocate for the power of sport as you'll ever meet, loud and clear and persuasive on the many ways that sport, adaptive or otherwise, has enriched his life. Seeking out, encouraging, and drafting new players is an ongoing passion for Madell. Wha ..read more

If Tara Llanes was in the branding business, her personal motto might be "Once a baller, always a baller". As a kid in California she loved basketball, and she played a high level game until BMX caught her attention. And then a professional Mountain Biking career took hold. But just when Llanes began to feel like she had done all she could in cycling sport, a crash left her paralyzed from the waist down. As her rehabilitation work continued, she developed a passion for wheelchair tennis. Friends told her that she could improve her tennis game by practising seated basketball. And so the circle ..read more