Player's Own Voice

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.

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 wrestler has definitely got her eyes trained on Paris 2024, and it’s time to say ‘en garde!’ to every opponent she’ll meet en route. Chatting on a wide range of subjects with Anastasia, Di Stasio also shares her perspective as a proud Canadian who is half Italian and half Cree. Food for thought: as a younger wrestler she sometimes felt that her Italian last name crowded her own comfort in talking about indigenous experience in this country. With the passage of time, that feeling has evolved, but throughout her career Justina Di Stasio has delightfully, authentically never swayed from representing exactly who she has been along. One of Canada’s greatest wrestlers, who just happens to also bring two sets of cultural knowledge to the International stage

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. What's interesting to hear now is how his easy leadership is also expanding into areas beyond competition. Madell did architecture technology studies and that, plus his natural tendency to creativity, plus a long interest in better accessibility for all, leads him toward helping firms improve all manner of public structures. From little coffee shops to mondo condo, there's infinite room for truly inclusive improvement. But first, Madell has a whirlwind of wheelchair rugby teams and tournaments to attend to. Anastasia is keen to hear about Team Canada's battle plans for the upcoming Para Pan Am games in Santiago, Chile. According to Madell, Canada is up against new and better competition all the time. The country that invented Wheelchair Rugby (In Winnipeg in 1977, fyi) can no longer count on international podiums in the sport. And that's not because Canada is getting soft. Many more countries are in it to win it now, and even an ultra competitor like Madell agrees, that's a good thing.

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 closed, and Llanes, now with 30+ years of perspective on the sport she never stopped loving, brings veteran leadership to the Canadian national wheelchair basketball team. One of her most pressing challenges? Finding the balance between old school hard discipline, and newer ideas of safe sport, and making that work for a team which combines younger and older athletes, all of whom expect to win international medals at the highest level. Catching up with Anastasia, Tara also explains how uniquely inclusive wheelchair basketball can be. The rules mandate a broad mixture of ability classifications on each team. The meshing together of players with varying degrees of activity limitation brings a whole layer of strategy into play, but the real magic happens when athletes maximize one another's abilities to find that winning playmaking combo. Llanes is already rubbing her hands in anticipation of the Para Panam games this November… and Canada's national public broadcaster will be delivering comprehensive Paralympic Games coverage across television, streaming and digital platforms in English and French in 2024.

Here's an odd factoid about one of the best voices in basketball. Chuck Swirsky does not care for his own name. He was 'Charlie' til his very first day in college radio, when the anchor struck him temporarily speechless with the intro 'Sports, with Chuck Swirsky'. To his enduring regret, 'Chuck' stuck. Forty years later, Mr. Swirsky is still setting the record straight, and still delighting basketball fans. 'The Swirsk' was the Raptors' first radio play by play guy. By 2001, he had the TV job too. It's impossible to separate his calls, with all their knowledge and exuberance, from memories of Toronto's early days in the NBA. Swirsky introduced countless Canadians to Vince Carter, Tracy McGrady, Damon Stoudamire, and all the brighter and lesser stars of that new team with the purple dinosaur jerseys. Swirsky became an author last year. "Always A Pleasure" details a life in love with sports and sports commentary. Commentary about commentary sounds like a meta experience, but Swirsky turns everything into a good story, and he's the first to laugh at his own inevitable missteps as a rookie reporter. Do fans need reminding that it has already been 15 years since Swirsky got the offer he couldn't refuse, and moved back to Chicago and his beloved Bulls? He is both Canadian and American, but Chicago really is home. Swirsky's strange way of celebrating a Raps win "Get out the salami and cheese!" stayed in Toronto when he moved back to the midwest. Out of respect for his fellow Canadians, as Swirsky explains to Anastasia, that peculiar custom had to remain in the place where it began.

Like the game titles themselves, esports athletes can generate shocking income and audiences. At the highest level, it's gaming in name only. Everything else about the pursuit of esports mastery is hard-nosed, serious business. Elite esports players' training regimens certainly rival those of "real world" athletes. Strength and balance work, hand-eye conditioning,  nutritionists,  psych coaches,  esports stars make use of all the above. It's hard to avoid the conclusion that pro athletes are pro athletes, whether the rectangles they compete in are made of grass or glass. Konrad Wasiela is uniquely suited to comment on the busy intersection of traditional and e-athletes.  Formerly a CFL cornerback, Wasiela's 'come to esports' moment was a visit to a live gaming event. He walked into a sold-out stadium, and saw 60,000 people cheering. Amazon had just paid a billion bucks for 'Twitch' the game streaming service. Wasiela added up the mega millions that Intel had poured into this tournament, and took note of Puma and Nike sponsorships in the space.   He quickly resolved to launch his own company to get in on the action. ESE Entertainment does several things in the esports space, but it's mostly about pushing new players and audiences to egames. Anastasia probes Wasiela on the many ways esports are played and promoted by real world athletes, but Wasiela flips that question: his interest lies in the ways traditional sports are starting to depend on their virtual counterparts.   Simulators from esports are already used heavily by every F1 driver and team.  As more coaches and more sports make the jump into using applications from esports in the locker room, game film might be going the way of the horse and buggy. And that's just one way esports are changing the game in real life. Esports are already spinning collossal sums of money. The consensus seems to be, they have only just begun.

Excellence was always expected of Waneek Horn-Miller, and her three sisters. Their single mom led by example in committing to activism, feminism, and indigenous rights. From childhood, the message was: whatever you do in life, be great at it, and don't just do it for yourself, do it for the next generation. More than thirty years after she first came to international attention on the front lines of the 1990 Oka Crisis, Horn-Miller continues to honour her mother's teaching. In 2000, the water polo player helped deliver the best Olympic results Canadian women have ever seen. In the years since, Horn-Miller's advocacy has effectively kept important, difficult issues on the table. Two core concerns are abuse in amateur sport, and the role of sport in truth and reconciliation. For Horn-Miller the effort begins at home, raising well-rounded and athletic daughters- and radiates out to coaching at Water Polo clubs, and further afield, to helping the Assembly of First Nations develop an Indigenous Sport, Fitness and Wellness Strategy. While those long-term causes keep Horn-Miller focussed on lasting results, she's also having a blast at this very moment, coaching contestants on Canada's Ultimate Challenge, CBC's new big ticket reality program. Horn-Miller sets the bar high for herself in this role, urging her athletes to compete according to principles that are long understood among Mohawk people- even if they may be new values for western contestants to consider. It's a challenging task, but Waneek Horn-Miller excels at it.

From day one of her athletic career, Camryn Rogers has bucked expectations. As a pre-teen, the first event she tried was Hammer throwing, and it was love at first hurl. Adolescence is when many girls leave sport, sadly, but a 12-year-old Rogers became enthralled with throwing "this thing that looked like a murder weapon," and she committed there and then to becoming as skilled and powerful as possible at the discipline. Eleven years later, it is hard to keep track of how many records Rogers has broken, how many 'firsts' she has landed for Canada, or how many young athletes she is inspiring. Rogers, now 23, is still very young for a Hammer thrower. Anastasia asks the reigning Commonwealth Games champion about her game plan for the next 11 years. Hammer is front and centre, of course, but while Rogers was busily landing all of the top ten throws in the history of the NCAA, she was also getting a B.A. in political economy and a B.S. in society and environment. So yes, Canada's best Hammer thrower has every intention of breaking more records, and she'll be continuing in grad school at Berkeley, thinking about a law degree while she's at it. The great thing for Rogers lately is that there has been a change in the fundamental questions she asks herself as an athlete. Prior to her impressive debut at the Olympics and silver medal at the World Athletics Championships, her question was 'Can I get there?' It's a new line of questioning now: 'How far can I go? Where can I go from here?' Like throwing itself, where subtle changes can yield major results, that small shift in mindset is all the motivation Rogers requires. The world is her 4-kilogram oyster. Let's see how far she chooses to throw it.

The Coach of the Canadian National Women’s Soccer Team is not one to rest on her laurels. While the rest of the country was still celebrating the team’s historic Gold Medal at the Tokyo Olympics, Bev Priestman was looking ahead to a couple of hard years of coaching work. In her mind- a huge win doesn’t teach players very much… but a single loss in a hard-fought series of games, like the CONCACAF World Cup qualifying tournament, that’s where the improvements happen. Priestman says that playing a brave style of soccer is what got the Canadian team to Olympic gold. But keeping that fearless attitude is more of a challenge once a reputation is established, and more scrutiny piles on to a high seeded squad. Priestman tells Anastasia how she makes good use of her experience in three soccer strongholds- England, New Zealand, and Canada. She picks up on national strengths wherever she works. In Canada, she thinks mental toughness is our X factor. Maybe it’s something about a culture that shovels snow in the dead of winter? Priestman says Canadians are uniquely willing to believe they can compete with anyone on the world stage. The challenge, heading into the World Cup, is going to be managing a sustained effort. Whichever team is most fresh gets the glory in the finals, according to Priestman. Canada has no problem attacking from the outset of a tournament. And we have great depth in the roster. Closing strength? It will be the coach’s job to make sure that’s in place at the end of the World Cup. Don’t worry. Bev Priestman is working on it.

These are trying times for athletes, coaches and national sporting organizations in Canada. The incidents of abuse and maltreatment in amateur sport seem to be neverending.  Hockey dominates the horrible headlines, but very few sports can claim a problem-free record. Olympian Alpine Skier Allison Forsyth has turned her own experience of sexual abuse at the hands of a coach into a positive movement for change. Her career is dedicated to educating all involved, correcting transgressive behaviour, and improving the prospects for Safe Sport. Her advice for parents and athletes is clear and direct. Her warnings to coaches are blunt. And she has run out of patience with senior managers of organizations who fail to see the urgency of their situation. Forsyth has an athlete-first attitude, and that includes a deep awareness of the psychological complexities involved in high performance coaching. As an Olympian speedskater, Anastasia has lived the dynamic. Coaches become quasi-parental figures. Athletes become the sum of their results. In the pressure cooker of high performance, what are the warning signs? When does gruelling exercise become unacceptable punishment? When is a raised voice a red line? Complex problems don't necessarily have complex solutions. As Forsyth explains, three very familiar words- Equity, Diversity and Inclusion, go a long way toward putting an end to the abuse.

He has been a well-respected, hard working film and television director for thirty years now, so it’s probably time to stop asking ‘Beverley Hills 90210’ questions in conversation with Jason Priestley. Luckily, the lifelong hockey buff is more than happy to chat about another 30 year old bit of business, everyone’s favourite Toronto Hockey gargoyle- Harold Ballard. Priestley has just released ‘Offside’ his documentary about the man who literally lived in Maple Leaf Gardens...and tried to cheat anyone who stepped foot in his house. In a world full of brilliant subjects for sports documentaries- why spend time on a criminal, racist, sexist, homophobic weirdo (who also ruined a hockey franchise)? The answer- as Priestley passionately points out- is that the bad stuff is all most people know about the guy- but in deep private, Ballard was an incredibly generous philanthropist. He gave money away like it was going out of style, and kept it under wraps because he wanted everyone to think he was a hard ass. To his credit- Priestley never puts his thumb on the scale. He gathers all the contradictions he can about Ballard, and leaves us to decide what to make of the man. Meantime- Anastasia also puts the former race car driver to work solving an old tv puzzle. Why is it so hard to show speed on the screen? Watching F-1 or speedskating or Tour de France- you can never tell how quickly those people are moving. Priestley has a deeply detailed answer for that too. Budding cinematographers- take note. It’s all about low cameras, moving ground, and reference objects on screen. Other seemingly random, but definitely entertaining topics of discussion? What the great one, #99 did for hockey culture in Los Angeles. How the million or so Canadian expats in that town fight over slots in the beer leagues. And why actors want to be athletes & vice versa.

Mimi Rahneva is having a wild ride this world cup season. The Canadian Skeleton racer has won, been on the podium, or just barely missed a top three in almost every race so far. What makes that truly special is that this is the Bulgarian-born Canadian athlete's ninth year on the circuit. Gone are the days of blowing away the competition with explosive starting power. So why are career-best results, coming to an absolutely slower athlete? Chalk one up to experience. It turns out that what seems like an eternity, a half-second lead in the first 50 meters, can evaporate over the ensuing minute, when it's all about avoiding micro mistakes. Milimeters add up in a 150 km per hour acceleration to the finish. Skeleton is a beast of a sport, a five second detonation from standing start to hurling headfirst downhill. But that hyper burst start has to immediately give way to calm, cool stillness. Try finding your zen state when your face is a millimeter away from ice, flashing past you at Ferrari speeds. Rahneva and Anastasia discover something in common. They are both in love with their somewhat fringe sports, (Bucsis is a two-time Olympian long track speedskater) and they both love the challenge of persuading curious youngsters – and especially young girls- to give their sports a try. But that's where the similarity ends. As Rahneva says- Canadian kids see what she does and their first reaction is terror! Maybe it's a cultural thing. Some nations- like Germany and England for example, get kids on sleds at much younger ages than Canada does. Which makes for better driving skills at younger ages. Canada tends to wait a few years, then focus on faster starts for older kids. Which brings us full circle to Rahneva, bucking those national strategies with her slower-starting ways, making skilled drivers in other nations sit up and take notice. Go figure.