The Bigger Picture
This post was originally featured on the Whistler Sliding Centre blog in a two-part series – with the forward written by Meghan Kines of Whistler Sport Legacies. Sometimes, things just click. For whatever reason, the pieces fall into place, the puzzle comes together, and the results are brilliant. This seems to be the case with […]
Where the Lines Overlap
New York, Utah, British Columbia, Germany, France, Austria, Switzerland, and Russia. 14+ weeks, 10 races, 7 countries, 2 team events and 2 medals : my Rookie World Cup season in the bank. It has been tough to grab a firm hold on the rational perspective required to move towards this Olympic goal with my heart […]
Connect The Dots
Tossing and turning, I catalogue the thoughts in my rolodex-style psyche; closing my eyes, I wait to exhale. There’s a real shift in focus as Russia invites the world to their backyard to challenge for Olympic Gold. Less than a year before what has already transformed from, as I’ve been told, what was literally empty […]
Top of The World
Draped in crisp, white satin sheets – larger than life mountain ranges surrounded our winding route to Switzerland. Through Germany and then Austria – every crevasse and peak glimmered with crystal clarity in the picturesque afternoon sunshine. I don’t think I could have asked for a better location to host my very first World Championships. And […]
Reign Over Me
A very small but dark area of space exists in my psyche – right between my desire to perform at my highest level imaginable and my ability to execute that performance on-demand. It is my belief, that all elite level athletes possess this dark area. Much like a room with no light, it can be […]
Water Works
The rain falls heavy into a rushing creek outside our hotel window in another foreign country – and for a moment I can hear nothing else…. It’s almost surreal, the life I find myself leading; maybe because it has all happened in such a relatively short amount of time … but, here I am – […]
Higher Ground
Like a mess of moments – learning a new track can have a tricky way of cluttering up my brain. Memorizing the corners, building a game plan, reviewing video, reviewing more video, and trying to ignore/handle the pressure I place on myself to “know what to do” sooner rather than later. I remind myself once […]
Push the Positives
Third-last sled off in the second heat; Bobbhan Winterberg and I were once again clicking. I flew across the finish line and up the outrun – my heart pounding behind my rib cage. I arched my back and dragged my toes along the short walls to slow down – bouncing and skidding around. But what […]
Moments of Greatness
Whistler – deemed (appropriately) the fastest, most technical track in the world – a true test of a pilot’s ability to react and respond. So, despite the fact that many of my Canadian counterparts have hundreds and hundreds of runs on this 2010 Winter Olympic venue, and the reality that MY first time sliding The Whis […]
One-Hundredth of a Second
One one-hundredth is faster than the blink of an eye; it’s faster than a flash of lightning … and it’s the smallest margin of time measured in our (and many different types of) sport. We will scratch and claw and even obsess … all for that practically unseen extra moment of time. There are many […]