Your family moved around a lot when you were younger. How did that affect you?
Maybe it's why I like traveling so much with bobsleigh -because I spent so much time traveling with my family... I was lucky. I think it was tougher for my little sister because I got to kind of do the important years in big chunks. Junior high and high school I spent in Calgary so you get to make that friend base and it's comfortable - I played on lots of sports teams that I had kind of grown up playing on and stuff... My parents took that into consideration a lot when they were deciding what to do with us so we were pretty lucky they realized the importance of our school upbringing with our friends and everything.
You were a triple jumper at Texas. Did you ever think about pursuing the Olympics?
No, I wasn't good enough. I'm realistic enough to know I wasn't good enough. But I love sports and I loved competing and I love to train. And being a part of that track team in Texas I was very proud. My teammates were amazing and getting to work out with them and cheer them on and to be a part of it and have the coaches and the facilities and everything, it was a really great experience. And for the first time in my life I learned how to train hard and to really know my role on the team and to really learn how to be a better athlete and better teammate. It was a great experience for me all around. I had a blast.
How did you make the transition to bobsled?
Yeah, not a lot of people grow up being like, ‘I want to be a bobsledder when I get older.' Most of the time you're doing a sport and you either don't quite make it to an Olympic Games in that sport or you get bored of it or you get injured and the bobsled like pounce on you and they're like, ‘You should come and try bobsleigh, it's really fun.' And you're thinking, ‘Who does that?' But it was sort of like that with me, too... I was like, ‘Women do bobsleigh?' I didn't even know... Next thing I know I'm at a camp in Calgary trying it.
When did you first think you could become an Olympian in bobsled?
I don't think I really believed I was going to go to the Olympics until somewhere partway through the Olympic season in 2006. I hadn't been driving for very long... I only had two seasons under my belt when I went into the Olympic Games. I didn't think, ‘Oh yeah, I'm going to be an Olympian'... The Olympic year I actually tried to not think about the Olympics. I just tried to think about each race and trying to learn and be a better driver and all of a sudden in January I was like, ‘I'm qualified for the Olympic Games' and so it was a pretty amazing experience... I think at some point in time in your life, lots of people have Olympic dreams and love sports and want to be a great athlete, a famous athlete. But at some point in your life you come to the realization that you're just not that good. To fall into a sport that it turns out that you are just that good - wow, I feel really lucky.
How did you react to finishing fourth at the Torino Games?
Finishing fourth at the Olympics is the worst position to end up... I thought, ‘This could be it. That could be my only chance. I might never go to the Olympics again'... I can think of a hundred things that I could have done just differently that would have put me on the podium for Canada and for my teammate and I was just - it's devastating. And you think about it, well I thought about it pretty much everyday for like a month and didn't want to leave my room. Cause you just are like, that could have been the one chance in your entire life that you got to do this amazing thing and you blew it. And then you regroup and you start again and there's other goals that come into play. I want to leave a legacy for women's bobsleigh in Canada. I want to make history in my sport. I want to be the first Canadian women to win the overall World Cup, and to win a world championship medal and to win an Olympic medal and you have all these goals and you just start working and then you find yourself in a better place."
What do you think about the Olympic track at Whistler?
The track in Whistler is going to be really unpredictable. It's very fast. It's really exciting. It's going to have great events and I think the weather plays a big part in how fast the track is, the humidity and the temperatures. The facility's amazing. We've had a lot of extra runs so obviously we're going to have a home field advantage, which is an incredible opportunity...I love the track. I've crashed a couple times on it, but for some reason we're all a bit mental - like that fear that you have somewhere inside of you when you stand at the top knowing maybe something could go wrong. But hopefully something goes right. You're looking for speed you know - it's a cool feeling - and in Whistler your going to find speed. A lot of it.
What is it like to compete against Kaillie Humphries, who used to be in your sled?
Kaillie slid with me as a brakeman for a couple years and when she switched to driving I remember thinking, ‘I've got to get in the gym because she's going to be a fast pusher.' We're going to have to keep up with her at the start... I think the ideal situation would be to be able to stand on the Olympic podium next to one of your teammates. She's such a hard worker and she's a great athlete and we're both working really hard to try to make that happen. It would be an amazing thing if it did - to go from no Canadian woman has won an Olympic medal to having two pilots manage to pull it off.
Compiled by NBC Olympics
