Jason Myslicki

0:27Well Jason, thanks for doing this. Yeah, thank you. Appreciate it. So we're at the top of the ski jump tower here at COP and Calgary, and you're saying this one's not even used. This is the one everyone sees from afar. Yeah, it's very unfortunate. This is an awesome ski jump. I love this jump. I always had some great jumps on here, and no, we don't get to fly off it anymore. It's closed. They have the zip line set up here to simulate what ski jumping is like. Oh yeah, for. Go down the cable or whatever, but that's about the extent of the use on this guy. Have you done the zip line? No, I haven't. Yeah, no, I barely come up here now that we can't fly off it. I'm just wondering if it does simulate it well enough or if it's nothing like. I've done some others around the world and there's no relation. No, really. But don't tell.

1:13We won't tell anybody. We're not on camera anyway. So Nordic combined is your event, two very different sports put together. It just seems like an odd combo. What got you into it? Yeah. Which one did you start with? I'm odd too, I guess. It's nothing but oddness with this sport. I started as a specialized jumper. Well, you know, originally in Thunder Bay, we try and get kids from a coaching perspective as well here. All kids that enter the program, we get them skiing, jumping and cross country skiing just because it's good for skill development and all this. But I specialized pretty quick and was a ski jumper for close to a decade. And then now I added cross country skiing to the mix.

1:58I've been doing that for almost a decade. What's the easier half for you? Well, it depends on a, I mean, it's definitely easier to take the elevator up here and fly down than it is to, you know, race 10k and vomit till you're fairly standing. Wow. That's a good picture. Yeah, I'm sure. I'm sure there are a couple of good ones. Have you been doing that exactly? Jumping can be really tough mentally. You know, if you're jumping really well, you can keep going, going, going. But when you're struggling with ski jumping, it is very difficult. It's like, I don't know. I'm not an expert golfer, but sometimes you can just hit the sweet spot and it goes. Fair enough. And some days it works and some days it doesn't. So jumping is kind of like that. How does someone get into ski jumping in Thunder Bay?

2:43I don't believe it's mountainous out there. It's mountainous. It's just not rocky mountainous. There's some what I grew up calling mountains. I still think they're mountains. But actually I started with skiing in schools and we were just skiing down Mount McKay in Thunder Bay. And the next thing I knew it, within a couple of weeks, there was an article on the front page of the paper in Thunder Bay about the World Cup coming to town and I was like, Dad, I want to go do that. And I saw that and just jaw just dropped and I was like, I've got to do that. And I kind of went from there. Let's take it to today, moving ahead, what, 20 odd years or whatever. You've retired and come back. Why the decision to get a real job and do all that stuff?

3:30Yeah, well I had to pay the bills. I had to survive. It's a pretty nice life as an athlete and stuff, but it was definitely us craving some of the other real life things that all my friends are doing. I took a step back for a while. I had some injuries that were kind of, I felt hold my progress back. So just stopped for a while, lived and outside of sport. And then I got back into coaching or into coaching. And I was really inspired by some of the kids that I coached. And even more so was I had some opportunities come because of the Olympics and speaking to the schools and stuff and just the energy that I was getting from the kids.

4:18And they're excited about the upcoming Olympics in Canada. Just definitely got me to thinking. And then the last thing was when the new jumps opened up in Whistler. And I was there coaching. I'm coaching these kids just standing on the side of the hill, just kind of sitting there cold in this winter wonderland and watching these kids have so much fun. I got to strap on my skis. So I did it and jumps went fairly well, came naturally. And yeah, I was like committed to it for a year and a half. And that was the start of the comeback. What are you most excited for this Olympics? Besides competing, of course. What am I most excited for? You're going to go see any other events. You're going to go check some stuff out. I'm going to try to. Our scheduling is kind of weird, strange for our event.

5:05We have the first event and then we have 11 days and then the second event. So it's going to be definitely a challenge not to get caught in the hype of the Olympics. We're there for the competition, not so much the games. And that's going to be a challenge. But I definitely like to get out and see some speed skating. It's pretty far though it's down in Vancouver. But I have a lot of friends on other teams with the Ariel's teams at Cypress and Biaath on cross country and Bob Sey skeleton. So I definitely want to get out there. It's going to be tough to manage that with staying professional at the same time and resting. No booze and no. You mentioned speed skating. You tried that for a little while.

5:50Yeah. Awesome. It worked. Yeah. It was great. It's a very different sport. It is. There's girls in it. There's a lot of girls. Yeah. We don't have any girls in order to come by. No, or ski jumping for that matter. But that's a whole other issue. Yeah, we see them at least sometimes. But when you go away on the Nor combined tour, it's all boys club. So speed skating is great. Obviously Canada dominates in that sport. So to be able to train every day alongside top athletes in the world and top coaches and have a lot of expertise around you regularly. That was really a great opportunity. I know there's two types of cross country. There's the skate in the classic. Is it skating for North Carolina? Yeah. I can't remember what the skate actually is.

6:36Oh, so that was kind of the same kind of motion for speed skating. Yeah. And surprisingly, I found it was the jumping that actually had a lot more similarities as far as the technique and speed. Really? Just some are in run position when we're going down the ramp and the skating position. I can't remember what your basic position is called in skating now. But they're both very similar in the power and efficiency is very closely related. Awesome. Well, while we're up here, do you want to just explain to people what we're seeing down here? Beautiful day in Calgary. You're going to see? Yeah. So we have the K-114 ramp here. And then on the left is the K-90. What's the difference? This one's obviously a little bigger. On this jump, you're looking at speeds, competition speeds between 90 and 100 kilometers an hour.

7:24Back 20 years ago, they would have had to use the top starts. But just with advancements in physical training, technology, the equipment, you're looking at the bottom starts down at the bottom of the green carpeting. And that's part of the reason why this isn't open anymore is because they need to make even lower starts to accommodate the advances. Because it just wasn't safe anymore. My last jumps from the very bottom gate were setting new world records on this hill. So there has to be some modifications to the hill. Or not, and keep getting those records. Yeah, I'm all for it. Absolutely. That's fun flying off this one. That would be where your 80,000 people were standing in that bowl. So how there's the kind of bleachers that are eroded on the right is all surrounding the entire jump before.

8:09What have been something else? Yeah, apparently this place was absolutely insane. And that's the way it will be in Whistler? About 70,000 people last. Really? Yeah, they really opened it up here. I've heard somewhere around 80,000 I believe. I think in Whistler will be about 8,000. That's a lot of people. Yeah. Oh, and for Nordic combined in Canada. Yeah. I'm used to 25, most of being parents. Not 2,500, 25 people. Most parents. Well, good luck in the game. Appreciate it. Cheers. Thank you. Cheers. Thank you. Cheers. Thank you. Cheers. Thank you. Cheers. Thank you. Cheers. Thank you. Thank you.