Player's Own Voice

Tested is a new podcast series from CBC and NPR that asks the question, who gets to compete? Since the beginning of women’s sports, there has been a struggle over who qualifies for the women’s category. Tested follows the unfolding story of elite female runners who have been told they can no longer race as women, because of their biology. As the Olympics approach, they face hard choices: take drugs to lower their natural testosterone levels, give up their sport entirely, or fight. To understand how we got here, we trace the surprising, 100-year history of sex testing. More episodes of Tested are available at: https://link.chtbl.com/7kwp72pO

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.

At just 25, 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 Fleming has a ‘do the work, and do it well’ attitude that has carried her to the apex of soccer, and helped her become a well-rounded, highly-educated, self-aware young leader.

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.

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. But he reminds everyone that TFC is the only team in the history of MLS to win the triple crown: the Supporters’ Shield, the Canadian Championship and the MLS Cup. Why wouldn’t you be optimistic ?

Nick Wammes and Sarah Orban, track Cyclists on the Canadian National Team, are doing their best to win their sport more love. The pair are partners on and off the track, and they lean hard into social media, to draw attention to their discipline for those 206 weeks of every 4 year cycle when their sport is not enjoying Olympic audiences.

Luke Prokop was only 19 years old when he made pro sports history. A year after the Nashville Predators drafted him, 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. He has now 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.

Laurence St-Germain just 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 France. The great Mikaela Shiffrin was both startled and delighted to see the friendly Canadian win her first podium on an international circuit.

Anastasia’s long-running passion project returns with Hilary Knight, captain of the US national hockey team, world and olympic champion, the face of the American women’s game, and from a Canadian perspective, public frenemy #1. Knight dekes around all the old Can-Am rivalries talk and focusses instead on the game-changing debut of the PWHL.

Tammy Cunnington has made the most of a roller coaster experience in para sport. As the child of a very active Red Deer AB family, she just barely survived a freak accident at an airshow in 1982. By the time she rehabbed sufficiently to get back into sport, at 8 or 9 years of age, wheelchair basketball became her passion. She was a big part of successful national teams, but by the time she was 19- the team culture drove her away. Bullying, being othered, it just added up to no fun. The more we learn about all the ingredients that need to work together to make safe sport happen- the more we understand how easily potentially great careers can fall apart. So almost ten years after retiring from competitive wheelchair basketball, Cunnington felt the need to get back into stronger shape. Trips to the gym became mastery of all three disciplines in triathlon, and even though she didn’t really love time in the pool…great coaching and her own determination eventually made her a powerhouse in Paralympic swimming. Where did Cunnington find the drive to excel again, since swimming itself wasn’t really her thing? In part, that was about being older than the average athlete. She knew that her age was working against her, so she trained with that much more intensity. And as every successful athlete knows- there’s no substitute for hard work. Looking back on the competitive years now ( Cunnington retired after the 2021 Tokyo Paralympics) she realized that part of her enduring success was based on not being relentlessly upbeat. When she hits setbacks, she gives herself permission to be bummed out for awhile, take stock, and carry on. The flipside of that pragmatism is that she has also learned to leverage the career highs. Intentionally summoning the memory of a winning race and a cheering crowd can give Cunnington that little extra squirt of confidence that can make all the difference as she rolls into a job interview, speaking gig, or yet another of her famously intense workouts . Chatting with Anastasia today- she makes a highly persuasive case for the power of not always positive thinking.