Catharine Pendrel Interview

Today we talk to Catharine Pendrel, the Canadian Bronze Medallist in Women's Cross Country Mountain Biking from the 2016 Rio Olympics. Catharine chats to use about her entire Olympic journey, from her exciting debut performance in Beijing 2008, the disappointment following the 2012 London Games, and just how close the dramatic race to the finish was in Rio against her Canadian team mate. We also get Catharine's answers to the famous Team Canada "Hi, My Name Is" questionnaire.

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EPISODE TRANSCRIPT

Please note this is an automated transcript that may contain errors.

COLIN HILDING: We are back for more Off The Podium as we continue our series and wrap up our first round of interviews that we have with Olympians, past and present. And today, I'm happy to be here to talk to another Canadian, who are the athletes, of course, that I was following in the games, being Canadian myself. And I found it personally exciting to have this guest on the show today, Catharine Pendrel, who won the bronze medal in the Women's Cross Country Mountain Biking back in Rio. Just because she had a very interesting story to start to finish in her entire Olympic career. I mean, she's had Pan Am Games and World Championships, Commonwealth Games, but as far as the Olympics goes, it's been a very dramatic and up and down journey for her. She competed all the way back in Beijing, had a completely wildly different experience when she competed in London, and then a big comeback in Rio this past year. And this bronze medal really was one of the most dramatic finishes that you could imagine. The final medal for the Games for Canada, which eventually did tie the record, and we do get to talk to her and get her to take on being that final medal for the Games, the one that tied our record. As well, just as we did in the Evan Dunphy interview in the beginning, we go back to one of our favourite segments that we had during the Rio Olympics, which was the I Am Canadian Questionnaire that some athletes got to fill out that we read on the air every single day. And Catharine didn't get to participate in that, so we get her answers to that, that questionnaire, all the absurd questions, as well as the more athletic centred questions. And one of the most interesting things is that finish for the Games in Rio and how close it was with her own teammate coming into that final bronze medal position. And she even gives us a little bit of a tidbit on what happened off camera that we didn't get to see, a dramatic moment that happened right before that, as well as just how close this race was to being an even more disappointing finish than what she experienced in London. So here it is, our interview with Olympic bronze medallist and three-time Olympian Catharine Pendrel. Hello, and welcome back to another interview brought to you by Off The Podium. And I'm pleased here to bring you another Canadian interview, since those are the ones that I was most interested in during the Olympics. And very special interview today, because I'm happy not only to be talking with a three-time Olympian, but an Olympic bronze medallist from the women's cross-country cycling, but somebody who also was the final medallist of the Games, who helped Canada set a record, which I'm sure we'll get into at some point. So we're very pleased to be joined today by Catharine Pendrel. Thank you for joining us here this morning. Thanks.

CATHARINE PENDREL: Happy to be here.

COLIN HILDING: And I guess, first of all, just start us out. We're coming right now from maybe February in 2017. I mean, the Olympics are a couple of months removed. Is this a bit of an off season for you, or where are you at right now in your season, your career or training?

CATHARINE PENDREL: I mean, that differs for each athlete, kind of where they are in their career and their progression. But for myself, I've been to three Olympics. I'm not sure yet if I'll go to Tokyo, but I'm not counting it out. So right now I am focused on having a great 2017. Just because it's not an Olympic year doesn't mean that there's not a World Championships to win or World Cups to win. So I'm in the thick of my winter training. I'm actually down in Sedona, Arizona right now, just trying to log some more base miles and some mountain bike miles when it's pretty snowy at home.

COLIN HILDING: Yeah. Well, that's the other thing that I think we talked about at the beginning of the Rio Olympics. So I think most Canadians maybe have, I wouldn't want to say low expectations of Canada, but it's not exactly like we have a summer environment 24-7. I mean, if you're in BC, it's probably a little bit better not counting this time of year. It's probably been worse there in BC than it is in Winnipeg this time of year, at least for 2017. But how hard is it to train for something like a summer sport where you may only have six months of thawed weather throughout the year?

CATHARINE PENDREL: Sure, yeah. And that's why Team Canada chose ice in our veins as our theme because feeling that it is winter that makes us tough. And honestly, I think it can be a real advantage because training, when it comes down to closer to race season, yes, it is about the specificity of training. But I really think that if you embrace it as an advantage, it can be an advantage to get more training variety. And especially in that off season, I'm doing all my volume on cross country ski. So I'm learning new skills. I'm giving myself mental and physical variety change in my training load. I'm doing very focused work on the trainer indoors. So yes, there are things that would be a bit better if I was outdoors, like being able to stay sharp on the mountain bike skills. But the more years that you have under you, the easier it is to just bring those skills right back up to speed pretty quickly. And yes, being BC is an advantage because in a typical winter, I can travel from my home in Kamloops four hours to the coast and get on trails. They might be pretty wet, but still rideable.

COLIN HILDING: And you said you're in Arizona right now. How much time do you spend there? Or do you kind of move around and like you said, an advantage is to be able to try out different environments. I mean, how long are you gonna be in Arizona and where is it from there?

CATHARINE PENDREL: Yeah, so I'm only in Arizona for a week. And the last couple of winters, I've tried to spend a week out of every month, actually on my mountain bike and whether that's just getting to the coast in BC, if it was good or going somewhere in the Southern US. And then I actually, I'll travel back home and then go straight to Victoria, where hopefully the snow has melted and we've got a two week training camp at the end of which we've got a race, actually our first race of the year at Bear Mountain Resort in Victoria, which stepped up in the last couple of years to be our national training centre. The first time we've ever had a mountain bike national training centre.

COLIN HILDING: Now, I think cross-country cycling, I mean, such a fascinating sport to actually watch and because there's so many little obstacles and everything like that, it's hard to imagine that this is something where somebody just picks up and says, yeah, let me enter a race like this. How do you enter this sport?

CATHARINE PENDREL: Sure, yeah, I think it's like everything you start at a grassroots level and then you keep progressing. So for myself, I grew up in New Brunswick and I did the VeloMBE Race Circuit. And from there, I went to BC and BC Cups, Canada Cups, US Cups and World Cups. So there is a progression and it's, I always feel that you should be racing at a level where you can fight for the podium because I think that's where you find the best of yourself and are gonna make the most progression is when you're challenged, but you're still motivated by what you can achieve. And so it's just a matter of working your way progressively up the ladder.

COLIN HILDING: Was this your original sport or did you get into something else? I mean, you know, like, especially here in Winnipeg, Clara Hughes is a huge deal and kind of goes from speed skating to cycling and everything. Was this always your sport that you wanted to be in?

CATHARINE PENDREL: No, not at all. I grew up riding horses and that was my thing for sure. I wasn't good at any of the school sports. So when I found that there's a sport that didn't involve a ball, I gravitated towards it. And it's like I knew that just from various things I had done, even like the Terry Fox run, that I had endurance, I could get to the ball, I could run for a long time, but I hadn't found the right sport for me. And it turned out that that was cycling and mountain biking and just the people in the sport kept me in it and helped me get to where I am today.

COLIN HILDING: Did you have an ambition at a really young age that you wanted to compete at an Olympic level or anything? I mean, before you found cycling, you're riding on horses, were you thinking, I'm going to be the next Eric Lamaze? Is that what you were gunning for?

CATHARINE PENDREL: Yeah, it was Ian Miller, Captain Canada. He came to my pony club when I was quite a young girl. And that was kind of my first meeting with an Olympian and another person from New Brunswick had made it to the Olympics and eventing. And, yeah, so I would have loved to have gone to the Olympics in horses. But kind of the sooner, closer I got to being ready to go to university, I realised that a sport that I could take with me to school much more easily was going to be ideal.

COLIN HILDING: Do you remember the first competition or event where you competed in and whether you won it or not where you thought, you know, this is what I want to do, this is what I want to commit to?

CATHARINE PENDREL: Oh, I mean, I think it was just a given that I wanted to commit to horses because it was just my life. My mum had bred horses. I grew up on a farm. It was just what we did. In cycling, it was probably, I knew that I always wanted to progress to whatever the next level was, but it was probably going to the Canada Games and feeling kind of intimidated by all the bigger provinces with more cycling infrastructure. And actually going and being pretty competitive there and realising, maybe I could be good at a national level.

COLIN HILDING: You mentioned with the Canada Games, I'm super excited because here in Winnipeg, we're going to get the Canada Games this year. The one you competed in, where was it at?

CATHARINE PENDREL: It was in London, Ontario, and way back in 2001.

COLIN HILDING: And was that your first major event you competed in?

CATHARINE PENDREL: Yeah, I would say so. And it was an interesting one because back at that time, even though I was a mountain biker, we had to compete in all the road events. So I had to do three road events that I was just trying to get through and stay upright. And then we got to the mountain bike race and it was like, okay, this is my calling. Let's go.

COLIN HILDING: I mean, I think a lot of listeners, there's so many different variations of every sport now. You mentioned like there's the road races, there's cross country, which you do, there's the track ones. What's the major difference in the cross country that you could let people know about who maybe haven't watched the sport before?

CATHARINE PENDREL: Sure, I guess. So cross country mountain biking, there are mass start events. They're 90 minutes in duration. And so we'll do typically about six laps of a four and a half kilometre course. They've become quite technical in terms of not only are we climbing and descending, but there's often jumps and drop jumps, gap jumps, rock gardens that we're descending. And so definitely it's just a combination of so many different elements and terrain that is a really dynamic sport because every venue you go to can be completely different. And it's assessing what the new venue is and then just trying to find your best on that course.

COLIN HILDING: That's another thing I think growing up watching the Olympics, I never realised is how many differences there could be even if it is just a regular track. But I remember watching Cool Runnings the first time when I was a kid and the fact that they had to memorize the turns and everything is something that never occurred to me when I was younger watching bobsledding. And in cross-country, it's got to be even more complicated. Yeah, definitely.

CATHARINE PENDREL: I mean, there's so many elements to racing and competing. And I think that's what makes it so exciting and gripping and why we all tune in.

COLIN HILDING: So how much advance notice do you get before an event where you can see what the course is going to look like?

CATHARINE PENDREL: Typically, we arrive about three days beforehand. So we'll get up to three days on the course. And often that'll include you travel to Europe and you have your day of recovery and then you hop right onto it. So whether you've travelled 40 hours to South Africa and you're learning a course, or we do get to do one World Cup a year in Canada.

COLIN HILDING: And we mentioned at the beginning of the show here that you're a three-time Olympian now. I mean, we'll kind of go through, I guess, the three Olympic experiences because they were all very different. The first one you competed in was Beijing back in 2008. And your position, if I remember right, was you were top 10 finish in that one, right?

CATHARINE PENDREL: Yeah, I was fourth in Beijing, nine seconds off bronze.

COLIN HILDING: Okay, so fourth in Beijing. So it was top 10 in London then you were in, right? So Beijing, coming in, I mean, you had probably had like a world championship or something before that. You know, what was your best placing before you got to the Olympics?

CATHARINE PENDREL: My best placing before the Olympics was actually the last race. I won my first World Cup. So, but it was only my second year of doing the full World Cup series. So for me, it was like, okay, that was a really good race, but, you know, to do that again at the Olympics, that is a whole other ball game. So for myself, I was going in, and Team Canada's goal for myself was to do a top five. And I was actually surprised that they thought that I could do that well, because I was still kind of finding my groove. And my teammate, Marie-Lynn Primal, she was a silver medallist from Athens, and she was expected to get the medal. And I just kind of got to ride under the shadow of her success and just went there focused on doing the best that I could on the day. And a lot of people think that fourth is the hardest medal or the hardest position to get, but for myself, it was actually fantastic. I had this amazing life where I've erased, where I've never felt as focused. And it was just an amazing performance and really motivated me for not only the next season, but the next quadrennial. And knowing that when I got to London, I felt that I would be ready to really go and get a medal.

COLIN HILDING: And did you have expectations going into that? Like you said, Team Canada, they wanted you in fifth place. Like that's interesting just in and of itself. When you go into this, obviously we watch on TV and Ron McLean or Brian Williams, they'll say, yeah, we're hoping for a top 10 finish here. But is there an official person who sits there and says, this is where we want you to be? Can you work towards that? Sure.

CATHARINE PENDREL: I mean, every sport has to submit to own the podium or medal potential. So every sport organisation has an idea of what their athletes are capable, and you have to, and helps determine our funding. So, you know, you want to give an honest reflection of what you do think is possible without overselling yourself. And so I think just setting realistic expectations because having expectations helps performance. If you don't see it as a pressure, you know, if you can see it as people believing in you and that you can achieve that.

COLIN HILDING: Coming out of Beijing, I mean, I think that's gone down in history as being what most people consider the most spectacular games, you know, just for the opening and closing ceremonies. Were you there for both the opening and closing?

CATHARINE PENDREL: I've never made it to an opening ceremony. Never? No, I've always not even with Commonwealth Games or Pan Am Games. Mountain biking is typically the second last day of the games. So we miss out on that, but I have been to all the closing ceremonies.

COLIN HILDING: Of the three closing ceremonies you've been to, was there one that stood out for you? Was it Beijing or was it the...

CATHARINE PENDREL: It was definitely Beijing. Yeah, because you're just so new to the whole experience, and I had had this great race that I was really proud of, and I could share it with my coach who was also there. It was his first Olympics, and so it really felt like this journey we had been on and the start of something just really new and exciting. And when you're down there, you're on the floor with the performers, and they pull you right onto the floor with them at the end of the games. And so you're really, you're a part of it. You experience it completely differently than people do on TV. On TV, it can often look more spectacular because you see all the fireworks and things. But when you're inside, you can really feel it, and you're sharing it with the other athletes. And that's just something that's just so unique and special.

COLIN HILDING: And then moving on from there to London, I mean, you had a four-year gap in between there, and you had a ton of success, from what I understand, just between there. You were the World Cup winner in one of those years?

CATHARINE PENDREL: Yeah, so going into London, I was the reigning world champion, I was the World Cup leader, and I had three World Cup wins that season. 2011 and 2012 were probably my best results. So I was definitely going into London with the expectation of winning a medal, and definitely with the media pressure of were anything less than fourth in Beijing be a disappointment? And I absorbed that mentality too much, I guess. You know, more, rather than going there and just doing what had helped me get to that point in my career, focusing on just doing your best on the day, stay in the moment, and value your performance. I started only valuing a medal performance and kind of seeing that as the only valuable outcome of the Games, and became a much more serious athlete, much more everything has to be perfect to go right. And it definitely didn't work out as well. I had an OK race, but things just kind of fell apart, and the way I would describe it is my body just shut down on me in the race, and I'm sure there are physical and psychological connections. It's definitely, they're not separate things that you can tease out, but in the moment it felt completely physical, and I couldn't believe when I crossed the finish line that that was the performance that I had worked towards, and that I had to wait four years to, if I was lucky, to have the chance to go back and have an Olympic race that I was really proud of.

COLIN HILDING: That's the thing that I find the most fascinating about the Olympics is just right now watching some of the winter sports. I mean, I'm a huge fan of the moguls, and every single week you can have a different winner. I mean, you get some people who just excel in their first place every time, but you get these events, and you think about the fact that the Olympics is every four years, and it can change from one World Cup event to another. I mean, how random can the Olympics be and that you can go into it, and it just, for whatever reason, it's not your best performance, like you said. And now you have to wait four years. I mean, the pressure of the Olympics, I mean, what is that like compared to something like a World Championship or a Pan Am Games or Commonwealth Games?

CATHARINE PENDREL: It's totally different. It's incomparable, at least for myself, because there's just so much more attention and focus and long-term planning for the Olympics that it gets built up as this central event. And, you know, maybe if you're a rower where you do very few events per year and you're used to that schedule of, okay, let's focus on making this one event the best. But for myself, just the way that I tick and the way that my sport is set up is where more multiple events a season and many chances to do your best. And that was the hardest thing, because I had been one of the most consistent racers in the world, and I expected that consistency on myself, and I didn't realise that one event could kind of get the best of me on the day. And so that was a really tough lesson, but I think it helped me in my career in the long run. I think it helped me in Rio in huge measure, because a lot of things were going wrong in my race in Rio. I had a crash in the first minute, and then my gear stopped working, and I had one gear until I got to the tech zone, my mechanic fixed it. And it would have been one that if you were focused only on a medal, that you could easily have shut down your race and say, okay, the day is over. But from London, I learned just how important, especially in those high pressure events, it is to be focused on the performance you want to have, and you can always have that performance, that best performance on the day. It may not end up in the result that you wish for, but you can have that performance. So it was just a change of focus. It's like, okay, these things are not going right, but I can still make the most of today. And so when I cross the finish line, I'm not thinking, I can't believe I have to wait another four years. I can just do what I'm capable of doing, and hopefully that turned out well, and it turned out really well.

COLIN HILDING: Changing a mindset, is that something where, as soon as London's over, you're immediately like, okay, I know what went wrong, and maybe it was partly mental or whatever, or is it something that comes as the next season starts, or you gain your confidence back slowly through different races?

CATHARINE PENDREL: Sure, yeah. I don't think you ever fully know 100% what went wrong in London. I'm still not sure if I went in with the... I don't think I had my best physical form, and there can be a lot of factors that go into that. You know, I think there's a physical component, there's a mental component, and they're so intertwined that it can be hard to tease it out. But you look at the things that you can change and work on and to hopefully give yourself a chance to have a better performance the next time. But underperforming does shake your confidence for sure, and so it's kind of... You have to rebuild yourself back up to the racer that you want to be in. That can take time, definitely, but who is actually watching the Sochi Olympics and seeing a world champion and super consistent racer in skiing just have a bad day that I realised that that's how a lot of people saw my race for me. It was this huge thing that I felt was such a disappointment to everyone, particularly myself, but to most people it was like, oh, she had a bad day, that's too bad. I was hoping for more for her, not of her. It just really helped put things in perspective of, it's a competition and it was very important, but it's not everything. Just pick up, move on, and do things as well as you can the next time.

COLIN HILDING: Now, when you finish an Olympics, how long of a wait is it before the next season starts?

CATHARINE PENDREL: Oh, you know, you have some degree of flexibility, but for example, this year we'll start with World Cups in May, but we're about almost six months out from Rio now, but I will have some Canada Cup and US Cups before that, but typically we start a little bit later the following year. I think as much to give the officials that have invested so much in the Olympics a little bit of a more time to regroup as for the athletes.

COLIN HILDING: During your off season, is this like a full-time training thing? I mean, that's the other thing that I think a lot of people don't realise, how much dedication goes into this. So throughout the year, how much of your time is spent just in the sport and preparing for it?

CATHARINE PENDREL: Yeah, I'm training six days a week, pretty much 50 days, 50 weeks of the year. I don't take a huge off season, partly because I love what I do. My husband also rides bikes, and so it's as much a lifestyle as it is a work and a passion. But definitely I take my fall after the competitive season to still be very active, but less structured in my training. And that gives you the mental break. But you're still kind of, my coaches say, keeping the top spinning and just touching on all the systems that you need to have at the ready for when you do start back into heavy training.

COLIN HILDING: I think the other thing that's different for every athlete is the level of support or financial support or assistance you receive. I've never really been able to wrap my head around how athletes receive the support they get. How does it work for somebody like you?

CATHARINE PENDREL: Yeah, it's completely different for every sport. I'm very lucky in that I'm in a sport that is at amateur professional blend, and so I have become a professional bike racer. So I am able to earn a salary. Pretty much every athlete that competes at the Olympics in mountain biking is also a professional racer because once you get to a certain level, you get that recognition. But it is a difficult thing because typically in sport, Sport Canada provides carding to athletes that reach a certain performance level, but often it can be little support until you make it, and then you make it, and then there's support, and then you can get support from many different avenues. So definitely they're constantly streamlining how they want to get support to the athletes, and some people, it's just the monthly stipend from Sport Canada and their sport organisations creating opportunities, and other athletes do have more marketability in their sport, and they can maybe pick up a clothing sponsor or shoe sponsor or something else that helps them continue on in the sport.

COLIN HILDING: Now you mentioned your husband's a cyclist as well. Is he competitive?

CATHARINE PENDREL: He's a math teacher by trade, but he is a coach. So he, along with teaching, he coaches seven athletes and two of which are on the national team.

COLIN HILDING: And do you guys ever compete? Like, is there ever just a Sunday afternoon where you're like, let's go for a race somewhere in the woods?

CATHARINE PENDREL: Uh, no, not really. He's definitely instrumental in my training in terms of, he's got a really good eye for technique and as a teacher, he's pretty good at conveying information too. So he's been really helpful on the technical side because I do, my coach is based in a different city, so he creates my training plan, but my husband's the one with kind of the daily eyes on how my training's going and the little things that I can be doing to fine tune. So it's more of a collaboration than a head to head. But yeah, if we're in the same race where they put men and women in together, there's definitely some more just big talk than the actual going at it.

COLIN HILDING: I have like, well, about a year and a half ago, I'll probably mention this in every podcast just so I could feel like an Olympian, but about a year and a half ago, I got into running like 5K, 10K, half marathons, and now all of a sudden my wife's wanting to get interested, and I've seen other people where they'll run with somebody new, they'll go nice and slow, and she asked me, it's like, would you run with me? I was like, no, I'll run ahead and then I'll come back to find you. I think I'm just a little bit too competitive just to not let it be a competition.

CATHARINE PENDREL: Exactly. And that's the thing, there are stage races where, multiple day stage races where we could compete as a team, like a co-ed team, but I kind of know that it would be something that we do once I retire because I'm not sure that I would be able to dial back my competitiveness.

COLIN HILDING: We have to jump into the Rio Olympics now. It's funny because as a Canadian, we'll talk about this a little bit later on, but as a Canadian, maybe we get a little bit jaded when it comes to the Summer Olympics. We perform well in the Winter Olympics and then there have been some disappointments in the past with Canada's performance at the Summer Games. Rio really just, I think, blew every expectation out of the water. Coming into this, you said that with London, there was maybe an expectation you were going to get a medal position. Was there anything like that this time?

CATHARINE PENDREL: Yeah, I think definitely this time I was more under the radar because my results had been good. I was still World Champion in 2014. I had actually won the World Cup before going into Rio, but there were also some younger, newer people to mountain biking that were really coming in and standing out. So most of the focus was on other women, but I would be considered to be in the mix, but not quite the same level of, not an assured medal like I was presumed to be in London.

COLIN HILDING: And when the race started, you did mention that there was a bit of a mishap right at the beginning. Do you want to talk a little bit about that, explain it to people who haven't seen the race?

CATHARINE PENDREL: Yeah, so because our events are mass starts, and we have to do a bit of a circuit so that the packing gets spread out more before we enter narrower trails. So we did this small loop, and then we're entering the first full lap. We go around a corner, and just natural, if you're driving a car, you slow down when you go into a corner, the pack slowed down, my wheels crossed with somebody else, and I was on the ground, and I was I think fifth from last. And so then you go into a climb, and I worked my way up as quickly as they could, just trying to navigate traffic. And then before we got to the five minute climb, my gears stopped working, and I had one gear which wasn't a very good gear to head up this five minute climb with, and it was definitely pretty tough. But I knew once I got down to the bottom of the descent that we have a tech zone where two times a lap you pass through a tech zone, and a mechanic from your nation can work on your bike. So I was able to go in there. My mechanic got my bike fixed really quickly, and I was back out. But by the time I completed the first lap, I was a minute and 15 seconds down or something like that.

COLIN HILDING: How long does one lap usually last for?

CATHARINE PENDREL: Yeah, they're typically aimed to be about 15 to 17 minutes a lap.

COLIN HILDING: When I was talking to Evan Dunphy a couple of days ago, I thought one of the things that makes this interesting and the same thing with your sport, being that it is an endurance race, it's not like this one long track. You have the opportunity to really pass the same crowd over and over again. With this, maybe you're going too fast to really notice, but does the crowd factor in at all? Do you have the chance to kind of hear the cheers and see some of your supporters along the way?

CATHARINE PENDREL: Typically, yes. In Rio, I actually thought that my husband didn't make it to the race and he had gone con traffic because I can always hear him on course and I could not hear him. I couldn't find him after the race. It was so sad that he didn't make it, but it was just he couldn't get through the crowds and the security to get to where I was. So pretty much the only person that I could actually hear on the course was my coach, and he knew that getting information to us could be challenging, so he went to the furthest point on the course where he knew the least spectators would go, and he was there to be giving us feedback. So the whole race, he was giving me, he's like, okay, this race, you brought back a minute 40 gap. You can do this. Keep going. So he kept motivating me with experiences that I could use to make me feel that having a good race was still possible.

COLIN HILDING: And with this race particular, you mentioned like how there was problems with the gears right near the end. It's interesting watching it on TV. I remember, especially with these longer races, maybe CBC will tune in and out, you know, you'll pick up another van, come back and everything, and right at the end, what made this so dramatic was I think Canada was waiting for at least that one more medal so we could tie the record that we set in Atlanta. And what it came down to is you're in third place and your Canadian teammate, Emily Batty, is like right on your tail. For Canada at this point, we're excited, I think, because we're like, well, we know it's going to be one or the other, but maybe because we had that story, you know, from you in Beijing and then in London, like this comeback story in a way, there probably was maybe a little bit more support behind you. What I found most interesting was that at the very end, I mean, it just seemed like this mad rush. I mean, I watched it the other day again with my wife, and I'm telling her, like, just watch, like, the last 30 seconds, and you would think if you're competing against somebody from your own country, you know, it's not going to be as competitive, but it totally wasn't the case. I mean, it seemed like that was the most competitive 30 seconds of your life.

CATHARINE PENDREL: Oh, yeah, it was incredibly intense, and what you didn't see on the coverage was that it was that close because I had actually had another crash in the last 200 metres of the course. You know, I was right before you come into the stadium, there was a jump, and then there was a rock garden. And coming off the jump, I, like, I was going into it, and I was just in my head, I was thinking, I've never entered it like this before, and it was a really awkward jump. And then I just was sideways in the air and down on the ground. And all I could think is, oh, my goodness, you just threw away a medal, get up, get up, get up. And so I was in full panic mode, and, you know, then you have no momentum to get this rock garden, and I came into the stadium, and I had had 25 seconds, and now I look over my shoulder, and if I don't give everything that I have, I'm going to lose a medal. And yes, it was an incredibly intense moment in just pushing myself as hard as I could to get to that finish line after working so hard to make this race what I wanted it to be. And then for Emily, who, you know, everybody dreams of that Olympic medal, and so she's coming in, she thinks it's gone, and then all of a sudden she sees that, hey, wait, maybe this is possible again. So as much as your teammates, you're also there as individuals, and everyone's trying to have their best performance on the day. So it's not like a team in basketball where you all share the medal. It does come down to individual performances. So yeah, it was 100% being given by both of us.

COLIN HILDING: And I mentioned right at the beginning that this basically tied Canada's record, if we don't count Los Angeles, which I mean, you have half the nations competing, a little bit different. But record was set back in Atlanta, you know, 22 medals, and it was your medal that tied that record. When did you become aware of that? Or was it something going into it that you were thinking, was it just I could win a bronze medal, I could win my first Olympic medal? Or at any point do you think this is going to be the one that ties Canadian's record?

CATHARINE PENDREL: I didn't know that until after the race. You know, there's little things that you can use as motivation, but you don't want to get too fixated on medals either because it can distract you from what you really need to do and that's the performance in the moment. But yeah, definitely really happy to contribute to that because we had such a successful games, and I know that how we perform affects all the sports. The better we do, the more funding it is, the more opportunities there are to grow our sports. So I was one of the projected medals that didn't help us raise our total in London. So it's pretty nice to put a stamp on things in Rio and be like, yep, okay, I got the job done, guys. And let's celebrate as a team. It was such a phenomenal games from start to finish. We didn't arrive in Rio until the second week of the games. And just being at home and watching how well everyone's doing, particularly the women, was just this momentum that you wanted to do your part to keep rolling. And I think it is, even though Canada historically has been a winter nation, I think you're just seeing so much variation in what sports people are putting their kids into now. It's so much easier to access different resources and to learn about different sports. The ability to be exposed to different things is just so much greater. So now not everyone is putting their kid in hockey and hoping that their kid is going to be the next NHL star there. They're seeing that there's other options that could be equally gratifying and investing in those. And I think that's going to help us continue to see success.

COLIN HILDING: I remember back in 2000 in Sydney, I think it was Karen Coburn won for the trampoline. And at the time, Canadians were almost laughing like the trampoline is a sport. And now Rosie Lennon has made trampoline like the hottest sport in the country. I mean, we could be at this point in four years where there's this huge surge in cross-country cycling. And Catharine Pendrel is the reason why.

CATHARINE PENDREL: I mean, World Mountain Biking in Canada has actually had a great history of success. We've had two silver medals with Alison Sider and Maria-Lynn Permal. We've never not won gold at the Commonwealth Games, which was a little bit of pressure going into the last one. But yeah, but then I still have... I was travelling through an airport with my Olympic medal, and I was going through Texas or something, and they pulled it out of my bag. They're like, Oh, what's this? I'm like, Oh, it's a medal from the Olympics. And they're like, Oh, mountain biking is an Olympic sport? So you definitely get those good reality checks every once in a while.

COLIN HILDING: You mentioned a while back about how the expectations change from one games to the other. And I think coming off of Athens, I just remember, I mean, there was huge disappointment with Athens, maybe a little bit with Sydney as well, just with Canada's performance. The On The Podium thing really took off from there. And you've kind of been right on the tail end of experiencing the success that we improved from Athens to Beijing and then to London and then to Rio. I mean, what have you found that it's been like for the country support and government funding support and everything from one to the other? How has that changed in your three Olympics?

CATHARINE PENDREL: Sure. I mean, it's all performance related. So if you're not performing at the top level, you don't necessarily know what wasn't there beforehand. Even though I made it to Beijing, it was very much September of 2007 that I realised that, hey, I can be in the Olympic pool for 2008. So I wasn't really connected to how all that sport funding interplayed. I had gotten my first card in 2007 to help with my training and living expenses. So for me, because I've increased my performance, the support definitely feels like it's increased. I'm not sure if you talk to all of the different sports, how different that experience would be, but definitely I feel like Cycling Canada has done a really great job since 2008 in restructuring and creating this performance environment that has helped us across the disciplines. We've been seeing great success on track cycling in our women's monobike in particular, and the road cycling are getting greater depth. So I think there have been some really good positive changes, and I know that we will do surveys on the podium so that athletes from all the different athletes and coaches and staff from all the different sports can be getting their feedback on how the funding cycles have helped or hindered their performances. And I know they're re-evaluating that going forward to see if things are on the right track. But I definitely think that you're seeing that the influx in support and funding has been beneficial. We're getting more depth in a greater variety of sports, and so, yeah, I expect we'll continue to build on that success. But also, as you know, sometimes it's just one day, too. And sometimes you can put all these resources and everything into an athlete or a sport, and sometimes things just go wrong on the day. And it's also understanding, having a bit of a longer-term vision of that the success will come, but sometimes it doesn't always come the day that you want it. And that's very tough in a performance-on-demand environment, but it's part of the process, and it'll continue to be fine-tuned every quadrillion.

COLIN HILDING: And I have to ask pretty much any of the athletes who are in Rio. There was so much bad publicity that seemed to surround the Rio Olympics, and a lot of it, I thought, was just the media needing something negative to jump on. You get the unfortunate Ryan Lochte's out there who really aren't helping matters. What was your personal experience in Rio? How did you find it as a host nation?

CATHARINE PENDREL: My experience there was really fantastic. An athlete is getting messages from their Olympic federation, like the Canadian Olympic Committee beforehand, telling us the real concerns about Zika or not, the real concerns about the status of the village or not. So I knew going in that the Canadian Olympic Committee had sent in staff that looked at all the wiring and the plumbing and everything, and that the village was going to be great for us, that Zika wasn't going to be a concern. And so I went in there very confident. My family stayed outside of the village, and they felt really safe and had a great experience there. So, you know, I think the Olympics has this power to attract the world's attention, and some people use that to try to get messages across and create some dramas and news stories. But by the time you get there, people are pretty excited to host, and it's a really great experience that you find that a country really comes together to make sure that it is an amazing experience for the people that are there.

COLIN HILDING: Now, one thing we just have to go into is kind of a quick fire set of questions just in the closing here. I don't know if you are familiar with it. The Olympics, Team Canada, they had this Hi, My Name Is questionnaire they gave to several athletes.

CATHARINE PENDREL: I'm not aware of that one, actually.

COLIN HILDING: Okay, it's actually quite funny because they gave a couple dozen athletes this questionnaire that they filled out in their own handwriting, and some of it includes pictures and stuff like that. We'll skip the pictures part, but you weren't on this, so we get the opportunity. We went through this every single night during the Olympics on our show, and now we get to update it with some new ones here. We're recycling Hugo Barrett, who is a men's sprint cyclist from the Olympics, his questionnaire here. So first question, the first Olympics I remember watching was?

CATHARINE PENDREL: The first one that really stands out is watching Shonda Crawford win her ski sprint.

COLIN HILDING: Yeah, if I could be any superhero, I would be.

CATHARINE PENDREL: I'll go with Wonder Woman, come on.

COLIN HILDING: My favourite ice cream flavor is?

CATHARINE PENDREL: Oh, chocolate chip mint.

COLIN HILDING: This is so funny. I think the whole thing with the Olympics is let's encourage people to be healthy. And then people get a laugh because we have McDonald's as a sponsor. And then these questionnaires, half of them are about junk food. It's just so funny.

CATHARINE PENDREL: It's because we all love it.

COLIN HILDING: Yeah, you can burn it off in, what, about five minutes at your level.

CATHARINE PENDREL: We're all real people.

COLIN HILDING: If I were a baseball player, my walk-up music would be... Your cycle-up music.

CATHARINE PENDREL: I'll do another one, Bites of Dust.

COLIN HILDING: The best nickname I've ever been called is... Thanks for If I weren't an athlete, then I would be...

CATHARINE PENDREL: A physiotherapist.

COLIN HILDING: Is that what the future will hold if we don't see you in 2020?

CATHARINE PENDREL: Possibly. You know, once you haven't worked a regular 9 to 5 job, and you're 36, it gets harder to embrace that idea.

COLIN HILDING: My guilty pleasure snack is...

CATHARINE PENDREL: Oh, so many. Chocolate. Chocolate covered almonds.

COLIN HILDING: My favourite song lyric is... Another one bites the dust again.

CATHARINE PENDREL: I kind of like cheesy 90s music, so Pump Up The Jam might be a good one for me. My brother would definitely agree.

COLIN HILDING: What would the coolest... okay, this one was supposed to be a picture, but if you could describe, like, just what the coolest Olympic medal would look like, what would it look like?

CATHARINE PENDREL: The one that I have. It's beautiful.

COLIN HILDING: Hugo, for some reason, drew what looks like a sun with a smiley face. I don't know what that's supposed to be. The most recent TV show that I binge watched is...

CATHARINE PENDREL: Oh, Grey's Anatomy.

COLIN HILDING: You know, I watched that show in the early seasons, for whatever reason, maybe because there was no bins watching at the time when it was on TV. And now everybody I know is telling me to get back into it, like, what, 12 seasons in? Is it really pulled up?

CATHARINE PENDREL: It's 12 seasons. I don't know. You just get addicted to the characters, and when you have to spend a winter riding a bike indoors, you know that you will never run out of material if you have 12 seasons.

COLIN HILDING: My favourite video game is...

CATHARINE PENDREL: Well, okay, this is Dating Me, but I don't really play them so Tetris back in the day.

COLIN HILDING: It's still probably more popular than Night of the Wild.

CATHARINE PENDREL: It's still addictive.

COLIN HILDING: And final question, I can't live without...

CATHARINE PENDREL: Good coffee.

COLIN HILDING: It wasn't chocolate for once.

CATHARINE PENDREL: That would also be there, but if I had to choose one.

COLIN HILDING: Just wrapping up here, I mean, you said you're still up in the air about where you're going to be for Tokyo, but you are competing. How can people follow you right now to see where you're at, where you're competing, where you're training, and what you're up to?

CATHARINE PENDREL: Sure. Like every athlete, I'm on social media, so I'm Instagram and Twitter is cpendrel, and I'm on Facebook as Catharine Pendrel mountain bike. And yes, those are probably the best ways to follow along.

COLIN HILDING: And if you were to compete in Tokyo and you do upgrade to the gold, would you at least promise on this show that you would live tweet an episode of Grey's Anatomy here on Off The Podium?

CATHARINE PENDREL: Sure.

COLIN HILDING: If it happens, we'll cover it. We promise.

CATHARINE PENDREL: Perfect. I will do that. And definitely that is, you know, you're super satisfied with your bronze, and then but then you do start thinking like, oh, but what if it is enticing to go back to Tokyo and see if you can one or two up it?

COLIN HILDING: Yeah, I mean, that's probably where Michael Phelps was at. I mean, everybody said he was retiring last time. He said he was retiring, and he came back, you know, you just you I would guess as an athlete, it would be hard to walk away because you always feel like, can I do even better even if you've won the gold? Can I beat my own record and so on?

CATHARINE PENDREL: Yeah, and sport is just so much a part of your life that it's hard to imagine not working that hard for something or, you know, in that something that you really enjoy also.

COLIN HILDING: And if Tokyo doesn't happen, then, you know, 2020, you got your own physiotherapy clinic, Emily Batty. She wipes out, she needs a little bit of help recovering from an injury, then she knows where she can go.

CATHARINE PENDREL: Well, you know, I would love to, even if I'm not competing there, I would love to be in Tokyo as some part of the support staff and just have a lot of Olympic experience and I would love to see another Canadian be able to experience what I did in Rio.

COLIN HILDING: Yeah, and we can hit 23 medals next time. Who knows?

CATHARINE PENDREL: Exactly, or more. Let's go for more.

COLIN HILDING: But if you're in Tokyo, then we know we're hitting 23 medals.

CATHARINE PENDREL: Yeah, that's right. All right.

COLIN HILDING: Well, it was a pleasure to have you on the show today and to talk about all three of your Olympic experiences. So thanks for joining us.

CATHARINE PENDREL: Thanks Colin.

COLIN HILDING: Bye. And thank you again to Catharine Pendrel and to all of our other guests. As I said earlier, this is our first round of interviews. We had Evan Dunphy started off for Canada, and then Ben had a couple of Australian interviews with Lydia Laszlo, Kim Brennan, Tom Burton. And we do have more that we're hoping to bring you pretty soon, as well as a preview of the 2018 Winter Olympics. For that, we will be bringing Jared back as well. You haven't heard from him since Rio. So all three of us do hope to have a preview episode of that soon. And as I said, stay tuned because there will be more interviews to come. We have a few that we're lining up and we're hoping to actually talk to some of the Winter Olympians that might be appearing next year. So that's something to get ready for. We do continue to encourage you to like us on Facebook and subscribe to the show. And thank you once again for joining us on Off The Podium.