Jon Montgomery Interview
In the absence of Tokyo 2020, we're here to bring you a huge series of athlete interviews to carry you through the Summer. Today we speak to Jon Montgomery, Skeleton Gold Medalist from Vancouver 2010. We talk to Jon about how he was able to break into the sport of Skeleton, and what it takes to excel in this insane and unique Winter sport. Jon breaks down his Gold medal run, and the memorable celebration that made him a household name. Jon also covers his experiences as host of The Amazing Race Canada, and what it was like to participate in 2018 as a commentator for CBC. Stay all the way to the end to hear the story about Jon meeting his childhood hockey hero Doug Gilmour, which needs to be heard to believe.
EPISODE TRANSCRIPT
Please note this is an automated transcript that may contain errors.
COLIN HILDING: Welcome back to Off The Podium for our first new episode in a couple of months, maybe a month or two. First one since the announcement of the postponement of the Tokyo Olympics, and we thought we'd have nothing to cover for the rest of this year, but instead we're deciding we're going to line up a bunch of interviews for you over the next couple of months to fill the gap of the Tokyo Olympics being postponed and we have almost a dream interview here to kick it off as we're talking to Canadian Olympic gold medallist, Jon Montgomery, who won the skeleton back in 2010, but since it's gone on to become even more famous as the host of The Amazing Race Canada, and this is an interview that was too big to have just on one podcast. So just to explain a little bit, this is one interview we recorded with Jon, but if you listen to this interview here on Off The Podium, you're going to hear his full Olympic story and a little bit about his amazing race career. And if you were to listen over on our sister show, The Oz Network, you're going to hear more of his amazing race story. And still some of the Olympic stuff in here, but we're basically breaking this up into two separate interviews so you can get the full story on Jon on both shows. And as I said, this is the first of a series of interviews we're going to have lined up. We have a ton of athletes that we're going to be speaking to over the next couple of weeks, maybe a couple of months. We'll see how long this goes on for. I don't think we've had athlete interviews since 2018, and I couldn't think of anyone better that we could actually kick this off with than Jon Montgomery. You will hear a tease during this interview about one of the athletes that we're going to be speaking to coming up maybe in a couple of weeks. But if you stay tuned all the way to the end of the episode today, we will tease who next week's interview is going to be, who's another really big one that I'm very excited about. So without further ado, let's get into it. Here is the interview with Jon Montgomery.
COLIN HILDING: Jon Montgomery, host of Amazing Race Canada, and gold medallist from Vancouver Olympics and Skeleton. Welcome to both The Oz Network and Off The Podium. An interview so big, we couldn't contain it just to one podcast. Thanks so much for being here.
JON MONTGOMERY: Well, it's nice to be welcomed.
COLIN HILDING: Now, I think this is interesting because, you know, you obviously are probably more well known now for the host of Amazing Race Canada, but you know, once upon a time, 10 years ago, Vancouver, you were making your Olympics debut in a sport called skeleton, which might be the single most insane looking sport on television I've ever seen. I have to ask, you know, how you got into skeleton in the first place, where you big into sports growing up, and then how does somebody who's actually from Manitoba as well get into a sport like skeleton?
JON MONTGOMERY: Well, optically, I would have to agree that it does appear that those who are participating in the sport are perhaps a bit daft. I'll say that about the sport in terms of how it looks. In reality, it's pretty controlled. You know, you're going down a serpentine chute that only goes the direction that it goes. There's no left hand turn. There's no 90 degree right. You don't have to really decide where you're going. Gravity is gonna pull you down that serpentine chute the way that it wants to, but you do have to navigate it efficiently and effectively to be able to, well, of course, get fast times and get down relatively unscathed. But a boy from Manitoba gets involved through aspirations and inspiration. I aspired to be a Canadian team athlete in something, anything that would have me. And I was inspired by actually witnessing a race live in Calgary. And it wasn't long after the 2002 Winter Olympic Games had just concluded. I saw my homeboy Theo Flurry win a gold medal with the men's hockey team. I saw Salé and Peltier get ripped off in Salt Lake City. I saw all the craziness, like our women's hockey teams clutching gold medals. And I was looking for something, something that might host a guy like me to be able to dream big and see those dreams played out on the world's largest sporting stage, that is the Olympics. And I recognised skeleton could be a pathway to that realisation. And so I pursued it with everything that I had.
COLIN HILDING: Two things. First, you know, we're actually fingers crossed gonna have Jamie Salé on our Olympics podcast Off The Podium in a couple of weeks. So we're gonna have to let her know she was an inspiration for Jon Montgomery. Secondly, you know, every athlete we interview on here, I'm always waiting for that answer of, you know, I wanted to be on the biggest stage. I wanted to be an Olympian. And typically you just get, you know what, I fell into the sport and I just turned out to be good at it. So I mean, you might be the first person we've had on here from any country who said, yeah, I wanted to be an Olympian.
JON MONTGOMERY: Well, I think that's how people find themselves in these periphery sports, if you will, the ones that aren't your general conduit. Like people grow up skiing and become great skiers. People grow up playing hockey. And then by virtue of incredible work ethic, some raw talent, some nurturing in nature, they end up at the Olympics via professional hockey. Whereas quite often, especially in sliding sports, we refer to them as post-secondary sports because you are recruited from something else invariably to be able to apply what you used to do to a new metric that is something special. Most people don't do, like push a bobsled or learn to drive a skeleton sled or a luge sled. Luge isn't necessarily the same because those usually start out quite young, but bobsledders and skeleton athletes, you have to be 16 years old. Most of them get into the sport when they're in their early 20s after university or college, and then they continue to chase that Olympic dream. So I might be fair in the whole cosmic scheme of Olympics, but in the sliding world, I am every bit as normal a creation story as the next guy.
COLIN HILDING: Were there any thoughts that you had about, you know, if skeleton doesn't work out? Like you said, you saw the skeleton race, but if that didn't work out, would you have gone for something like lose your bobsled?
JON MONTGOMERY: You know what? Finding the sport at the age of 22 limited my ability to, I guess, find another vehicle should skeleton not, you know, prove out in the numbers. And I was basically going all in. And I think unless you go in all in, there's always going to be some element of hold back, some elements of not going for it, knowing that, well, I'll try this if this doesn't work. But when there is no backup plan, quite often you hear people making it in music. They don't have a backup plan. It is just this. They're not noodling on what I'll do, taking energy away from what they need to do to make it. And if you're thinking about what I could do if this doesn't work, you're dividing yourself. You are a being of limited energies. Well, some people say unlimited energies, but you have limited resources and time being one of them. And if you are wasting time thinking about things that aren't getting you closer to your goal that you are envisioning for yourself, you're taking away from that. And so there was no other option for me, if I'm being honest. And I wasn't thinking about it in that concept. I was looking at it as now is the time for me to do this one thing. I can't do it when I'm 60. I can't do it when I'm 50. I can only do it now. And so that gave me the, I guess, capacity and the free path to not focus on what my peers were doing at that time, which was the advancement of their careers, which was beginning to think about building a family. And I put all that, you know, on the back burner. I had to be selfish in the moment, which was my 20s, to find something that I will always look back upon fondly. And people say, sure, that's easy because you had, you know, you achieved a level of success, what you were planning, what you were striving for, what happens when you don't achieve that. And I don't think it's about whether or not you win gold at the end of the day or not. I think it's about striving. I think it's about the journey, about the process, about the discovery. That's really where you find growth. That's really where you find the development in an individual. It's through that trials and tribulations, the untold amount of hours of practice, and the failing, and the repeated failure. Because people only think about Michael Jordan's game-winning buzzer shots or Babe Ruth's epic home run tally, but they don't go to look at how many Michael Jordan missed. They don't go and look at the details of how many times Babe Ruth struck out, giving him the capacity to be clutch in those moments that truly mattered. And that's what people remember. They don't remember the failures. They do remember these sweet victories. But at the end of the day, when you ask this person, Michael Jordan or Babe Ruth, were they developed the capacity to be clutch? It was in moments of failure. Yeah. And that's where we realise growth and development. What we have to do next time to be Michael Jordan in the moment, to be Babe Ruth at the plate, and not failing, but rather being victorious. It's through the constant failure. And that's really, I guess, the journey. Yeah.
COLIN HILDING: And obviously, you succeeded. I mean, you made your way onto the Olympic team. About six or seven months ago, I actually I met you briefly in person here because you were here in my hometown, Winnipeg, and like you said, your home province. Just by freak luck, we had a massive windstorm and every year when there's the big Christmas tree lighting ceremony, it's outdoors. You know, I've got a three year old and twins who are less than a year old. Like, there's no way we're going outside. But when I...
JON MONTGOMERY: Oh my God. Oh my God. Well, you get big failure because every day when you're raising children, you're failing constantly, but you hope that your victories as a parent add up to be greater than the sum total of your daily losses. But yeah, that's life in a microcosm right there, brother.
COLIN HILDING: I mean, and victory for me was, hey, we're moving the Christmas tree lighting ceremony indoors, and hey, Jon Montgomery is going to be there. So I had the opportunity. And when you were doing the lighting ceremony, you told the story about when you first found out that you were making the team. You wanted to share a little bit of that here?
JON MONTGOMERY: True. Well, I remember exactly where I was. Spumps right there. You mentioned a part of my history, which is but a memory. And to it is still connected emotions, still connected energy. And when I think about it, I get goosebumps just thinking about it. I'm sitting on the roof of the East Parkade. I'm not sure which big department store is up on top of that roof. At any rate, it's one of the entrances to the mall on the east side there on top of the Parkade. And I was there when I received a phone call from, at the time, the director of Bobsleigh Canada Skeleton, inquiring as to whether or not I'd like to come to an early driving school. I had previously, that winter, this was 2002, done a Discover Skeleton class, like I said, one week after the 2002 Winter Olympic Games had just concluded. And I did four runs that night, never did any more sliding that season. The ice was gone. It was the end of the season, February 28th. The ice comes out in March or so. And I was thinking all summer long about this sport that I was going to, as far as I was concerned, get involved in. I just didn't know how to get involved. I didn't know the pathway. I didn't know the structure of the system. I didn't know anything about it other than I really enjoyed this experience that I'd had doing four runs from two from the middle of the track, from the track and two from the start of Lady Luge start. And I didn't know how I was going to do it, but I was beginning to structure my life. I was beginning to train my lower chain. I wasn't doing only upper body training at that time, trying to look better in a t-shirt, bicep curls and bench press, that type of stuff, walking around like a chicken. That's saying that I had a large upper body, which is also a gross over-excavation. But you get the picture, I wasn't doing any squats at that time. So I was beginning to try and think about how to engage my lower chain, my glutes, my quads, my core, that kind of stuff to be this skeleton athlete. And I got this phone call. And that basically changed the trajectory of my life. I said yes, I didn't know what I was signing up for. But I went to that early talent ID camp. I did get an invite to the early driving school. I did get my licence that winter and begin my journey as a skeleton athlete, which was crippling and painful. I was the worst of all the new recruits. I was getting my ass handed to me on a daily basis, getting beat down by that track in Calgary. And it would be two years before I would realise a rate of development within the sport that I could be proud of, happy with, that would motivate me to continue to slide. Because up till that point, it was essentially battling attrition. And all the athletes were dropping off one by one. I'd say I have 20 new recruits that came out with me that first year. I ended up participating in sliding with one or two at the end of our career. And you were basically just hanging on and taking your lumps, because it was unlike anything else that we'd ever done in our life up till that point. And I group all of us collectively in that group, because if you think about it, how can you have a previous life experience to draw upon to be able to understand what it's like to do skeleton racing, laying in the prone position, experiencing G-forces in excess of five? That's the same instantaneous G-forces of over a hundred Gs when you smash your face into the ice. But the sustained G-forces of being over five is over space shuttle type G-forces. Granted, they sustain that for minutes at a time, but we're just doing it for seconds. At any rate, you can't appreciate this force, this dynamic nature of the sport until you actually participate in it. And having watched on a sled, doing a virtual demonstration or anything is not like actually practising. And the only way that you can get better is to, sadly, get beat up in most people's cases. I found myself taking to it a little quicker than others. I was not that individual.
COLIN HILDING: But I mean, you eventually made your way there. I mean, your Olympic debut was in Vancouver, so home soil. I mean, I can't imagine also just the pressure any Olympic athlete would have, but I would think especially in Vancouver, A, it being home soil, B, the own the podium campaign or whatever it was to really have Canada come out on top must have put a lot of pressure as well. And even just in your sports skeleton, I mean, coming off of Turin, that was one of the sports that Canada had the most success in. Was it like three medals the previous Olympics? Yeah. Did you feel a lot of pressure to live up to that? Or were you even expecting to medal when you were in Vancouver?
JON MONTGOMERY: I fully expected to have the capacity to be my best. What that weighed out in terms of medals or placings was yet to be determined. That was up to other people. But I did truly believe that I could be at my best on the day that mattered most. And I suppose if I had of internalized all those things that you just mentioned, it would have been stifling. That would have seemed insurmountable in terms of pressure. But I wasn't. I wasn't factoring in that that type of a narrative in my in my head. I was looking at the Canadian interest and support. I viewed Canada's madness for the Games at that time, Canada's sort of unquenchable thirst for all things Olympic in terms of the, well, the news media coverage of the On The Podium rhetoric. All of this stuff wasn't anything that I internalized as pressure to perform. I viewed it as undying support for the Canadian athletes. And if you want to, I guess, be energized by something, consider it support. Look at other people's interest as energies that you can feed off of. And I did. And I chose to imbibe myself with a sense of vigour and purpose because of other people's interest. And I did think to myself that, you know, these people that want so badly for us to achieve success, also realise most of them in our nature that we are humans, that we are subject to brain farts and failure and not being on our best day that matters most in spite of our best efforts. And I thought that folks could see that if I did fall miserably on my face. I didn't focus on what that might look like, feel like. I didn't need to put it out there. But I did constantly visualize what execution looked like for me for not having speed that I'd never achieved and sort of hoping on a whim that I could be in, do something that I'd never done, never been, really had no hopes of achieving. I was continually focused on all those things that I could control, the execution of my game plan, being as fast as I could be, but never once dwelling on the outcome itself. Hoping, putting out there, picturing, ideating, all these things, but never dwelling. And I think that my ability to silo some of these things, to have a point of reference the way that I did, allowed me to insulate myself from feelings of utter doom and gloom scenarios, or feeling the weighty nature of other people's expectations being placed upon my shoulders. Only I can place that burden upon myself. Other people can't do it unless you let them, I guess. And so I had a healthy perspective. I don't know where it came from. I don't know why it was there. It's not like I put tons of effort into developing this mindset or rhetoric, but I guess I put value in what really some people had told me and didn't think about it. I just took them at their word that if I focus on this, all things will be much more achievable. And I didn't dwell on it. And I guess this time that's passed between 2010 and now, 10 years, that's a decade of thought reflection and introspection, has allowed me to maybe peel back some of the layers of this complex onion that is the recipe for success and attribute some of these things just by virtue of the fact that I was lucky and that I didn't overthink these things. But there is so much truth in these small nuggets, the rhetoric stuff that we say time and time again and their cliches, really because they hold value and they resonate with people on real tangible levels.
COLIN HILDING: What I think clicked with you, for at least the Canadian public, I mean, A, it was a bit of a drought. I mean, we had some gold medals in that first week there. Alex Bilodeau, obviously the big one, but it was a much slower first week than it was the second week. And then when you win the gold, I think it was your celebration, your excitement for winning, which was really unlike anything, you know, any of the other gold medallists we'd seen had done. It really helped, I guess, you to stand out among the public. And I'm sure that that is part of what led to, you know, whether it was an offer or not for you to join Amazing Race Canada. You know, did you get a lot of recognition, you know, just for the celebration and for the excitement you experienced when you won?
JON MONTGOMERY: I don't know if it's recognition so much as folks appreciated it. And I think that what they could appreciate was they could see themselves in that moment because of the way that I reacted, the authenticity perhaps of the moment, the cultural perhaps reference of imbibing with a spirit or a beverage of your choosing in Canada. If you drink beer in front of the masses, you're going to endear yourself to Canadians because Canadians love to drink beer, and they love to do it in large groups. And so if you put yourself amongst your peers, and probably what they are, I'm an average Joe, and I drink beer like the average Canadian, and now they can perhaps see themselves as rocketing down a mountain face first on a cafeteria tray with rails at 146 km per hour while pulling 5G's of pressure, because they couldn't previously see themselves doing it. Now they can. Hey, look at this dummy. He's just like me. Hey, I could be an Olympic gold medallist. I like this guy. That, I think, is some of the connective tissue that maybe endeared me to a portion of the Canadian population. Otherwise, it would have just been another tally for our medal count, but there was something that stood out, perhaps, with... The unbridled nature of an enthusiasm was something that I couldn't ever have expected or hoped to hide, just being sort of a live wire kind of guy. I did have to apologise to Martins afterwards, and, you know, to this day, I will always say that celebrating when somebody loses isn't a good look. It's simply not. And I wish I could have been more stoic, but that's only rhetoric, too. I mean, I don't wish anything different, but you do owe an apology when you're a little overzealous in celebration when somebody else loses, and I did owe him that, but I wouldn't have changed how I was honest in my enthusiasm, because, I mean, you got to be real, man. Trying to be something you're not is an exercise in futility, and I was happy that day. I owed him an apology because of that celebration. It would have been different had I come down and been in first place and kept first place, and had the race from beginning to end on lock, but I didn't have that race until the very final corner on the very final run, and we did, just for reference purposes, 64 corners. We did that track four times. There are 16 corners. At 64 corners, that's 2 minutes and 23.7 seconds of sliding time, and it came down to 800ths of a second, blink of an eye. The blink of an eye is longer than 800ths of a second. And after all that 6km of track, it was about half a length that separated me from Silver. And the only place I overtook him was in the very final corner, on the very final run, and that corner is called Thunderbird. And I had 2 Thunderbirds emblazoned on the side of my helmet, in indigenous design, to pay respects to local legend that the Thunderbird lives up on top of Blackcomb Mountain. So wherever those energies came from, wherever the good spirit entered, I know it was in the final corner on the final run.
COLIN HILDING: So then you transition into Amazing Race Canada, which funny story, we had Hal Johnson on the Oz Network to do a recap of Amazing Race last year. He told me about when he first heard the announcement that Amazing Race Canada was happening, he immediately contacted people at CTV and said, hey, if you need a host, I'm your guy. And they said, we've already got a host, but why not audition for the show? So I'm going to assume that you were that host that they already had, like were you approached to do the Amazing Race or is it something that you kind of sought out?
JON MONTGOMERY: I didn't actually hear who that person was.
COLIN HILDING: Hal Johnson.
JON MONTGOMERY: Oh, Hal Johnson, right. Well, you know what? I didn't know that little story. And I don't know if they had me pegged or not, but they did ask me to audition. And I did audition, and maybe that had already come in. But no, I didn't know that Hal had reached out about hosting the show. But that's interesting.
COLIN HILDING: We've got a couple of listener questions, too, about The Amazing Race here. One from Mark Doyle. One of the questions I think most people would have is I think the thing that differentiated you from other Amazing Race hosts from around the world is that you perform these challenges when you're introducing them. Was that like a conscious decision? We want to do something to separate you from Phil, the host of The Amazing Race US version? Or is it just, you know, we got an Olympic athlete. People are going to get on his case if he doesn't do these challenges.
JON MONTGOMERY: Well, I think it was hopeful that I would want to do everything. And that was the differentiator, I think that they wanted to bring to the host role on the Canadian version as opposed to Phil. And that was an opportunity, I think, that they identified right from the go, was Phil didn't do any of these stunts and challenges, and maybe they could get the Canadian race host to do them. I am not forced to do anything that I don't want to do, and it's really good we've got this symbiotic relationship between the producers and myself, because I wouldn't actually be able to do the show without being able to take advantage of these awesome situations that they're presenting the challengers with, or the racers with, because I'd be like, no way, I'm just going to talk about this stuff and not do it. You guys, doing it, damn it, we're going to slow down production, I'm trying this, and whether you capture it or not, it's up to you, but I'm not leaving it until I get to jump. And there's some stuff that gives me great cause for pause, like I'm scared of heights. I have to always work myself up to jump off the edge of a precipice, but I find great value in that. I like scaring myself. I like building myself up to overcome things that I deem scary. There's a great sense of pride in overcoming that stuff. And so, yeah, that was, I think, the impetus to find a guy that would be daft enough to do all these stunts with a smile on his face. They found that person in spades in me. Plus something that I don't have to act or be put on about, which is my pride in this country. Like, I would talk till the cows come home about how great Canada is, how lucky we are to be Canadian. You know, till the day that I die. And so I can do this job with my eyes closed on a passion level. Now, there's so much that I have to learn in terms of delivery and the nuanced approach to being a host or a presenter. But the passion part, you can't fake passion. It's there authentically in me and it will be there authentically in me. Pride is at the centre of everything that I hold near and dear.
COLIN HILDING: If you have a minute or two here, I'd just like to go through a couple of quickfire questions, maybe some of the listener questions here about Amazing Race. The number one that we have, obviously, is the next season of Amazing Race Canada. Obviously, everything in the world sort of put on hold right now. But are you coming back for the next season, you know, when it when it does happen? And any word on what it could look like or any plans in the work right now?
JON MONTGOMERY: No clue. I show up and I try on some outfits and I say what they tell me to say and I go where they tell me to go. And right now, they haven't told me to show up at any specific time anywhere. So I am in the lurch like everybody else, wondering what, when, where, how, why. But I do know that Canadians still have an incredible amount of interest in this show. Broadcasters, TV, definitely is a massive fan of this show for their network. Insight Productions, they want to make it. And Disney will own the franchise, I believe. Well, they're still franchising it and putting out licensing agreements. So all those things considered, you can expect another version. You can expect another season. Just gonna have to wait.
COLIN HILDING: If you were to go on the race, who would your partner be? And do you actually think you could win?
JON MONTGOMERY: Based on how my wife and I navigate poorly, no, honestly, we couldn't win based on poor navigation skills. We fight well though, and that's a skill that needs to be employed. Because if you're biting your tongue constantly, you can't get energy out, you can't move forward quickly enough. And so my wife and I, we fight well. We would be volatile, but we would make up quickly and use our words constructively to build each other back up and move forward collectively. So fighting well is one of those things that we would have, but geographically, our ability to navigate would be somewhat compromised. And I think that would be our undoing. So I guess Dish, my wife, she's my partner, and no, we wouldn't win because we suck at navigation.
COLIN HILDING: I think that would be most people's downfall, to be honest.
JON MONTGOMERY: Yeah, yeah, I do do.
COLIN HILDING: Just before we go, just wanted to tell you, you know, obviously we've been talking about you for a couple of years on multiple podcasts here, and literally right behind my corner, I will send you a picture when we're done. I have an autograph painting that I bought off of some sports trader. I'd gone in to get a Doug Gilmour rookie card, and I see this giant autograph painting of Jon Montgomery from the Olympics signed right behind me, so it's there.
JON MONTGOMERY: No, dude, you got to go back for that Dougie Gilmour rookie card.
COLIN HILDING: I got both. I will say I got both.
JON MONTGOMERY: Okay, I'm happy about that.
COLIN HILDING: You're in the same league as Doug Gilmour, at least. They're up there.
JON MONTGOMERY: Don't say that. Dougie is my childhood hero. My mum's last name is Gilmour, so I used to go around telling people that Doug was my uncle, and of course nobody believed me, but I just would tell them that anyway. But I have a quick funny story about that. I was in Hamilton doing an event, and I got up, and earlier that night, I signed a well-done piece of art made out of clay, of a mole of me carrying a pitcher of beer. And so I signed this about 30cm tall clay figurine of me holding a pitcher of beer, and I was like, this is awesome! Somebody spent a month or so, and they said it took 30 days, to craft this thing, and they had to look at my picture every day, this poor soul. And so later on that night, I was auctioning it off live at this event, and I couldn't really see past the bright lights, and what happened was I had ended up selling it to a person in the audience, who was Doug Gilmour. He gave it to me that night, and I had signed it earlier, and I said, well, this is incomplete without a Doug Gilmour signature on it. So Doug Gilmour bought me and gave me myself. But I got his autograph on it, and so now I have a picture of me with my signature and Dougie's on it, and I treasure that thing.
COLIN HILDING: Well, hey, you send me a picture.
JON MONTGOMERY: Not because it's me, but because it's Dougie's signature, not because it's me.
COLIN HILDING: Hey, look, we have the same childhood hero. You send me a picture of that, I will send you a picture of my Doug Gilmour card in front of my painting of you. All right, Jon, we're so glad to finally have you on here, and we look forward to hearing you maybe call some Olympics in 2022, possibly down the road?
JON MONTGOMERY: We'll see. Well, yeah, I'm not sure. I went to Pyeongchang and really enjoyed myself. The other side of the coin being a broadcaster for the Olympics was awesome. I will say, though, that being over there for those two weeks, really by myself and probably without knowing it, really mourning the, I guess, the transition. I won't say loss. I won't say anything of the sort other than transitioning from athlete to broadcaster, to regular life, to not being an athlete was, it was depressing. I swear, for the first time in my life, I think I know what depression felt like. And it was at the Olympics, and it was in Pyeongchang, and you were watching all this amazing success, the trials and tribulations of athletes unfolding. But I think I was mourning the loss or mourning the transition of my life, my life moving from athlete to broadcaster. And so it was this really interesting, conflicting time in my life. So who knows whether or not I'll find myself in Beijing, but the experience itself of broadcasting, of being a part of the Olympics, from a different perspective, was really rewarding and fascinating, and at that same moment, somewhat depressing. I will for sure be over it by the time Beijing rolls around. No doubt about it. I don't think I'll still be mourning that loss. But when you find yourself in a moment like that, you reflect back to a period in your life which had such meaning. And while the meaning of tobogganing is really vapid, and the, I guess, aspiration to find out what you can do physically is really self-serving and really selfish, there's a lot of depth to it in terms of fulfillment through the journey. And while the reasons might not be grandiose or super enlightening, there is a lot of depth there in terms of meaning. And when you step away from that, trying to find that same level of connectedness to the purpose is what I think lots of athletes struggle with. And I'll have moved on from that by 2022, no doubt. But I'm sure if I find myself in Beijing, it will be without that bit of depression that I experienced at the 2018 Games.
COLIN HILDING: Well, yeah, I mean, I'm sure between Amazing Race Canada and Beijing, we're going to have you all over the TV on CBC, CTV. You just need to check off a few more networks and you're going to be the man on all TV in Canada.
JON MONTGOMERY: Well, why don't we do some of the other ones? CBC will make it there, and CTV, I don't know. But what else could we be seeing on here? Netflix, Apple Prime, Over The Top providers. Global, we're going to get on Global. You are going to be sick of Monty. But I think Monty in small doses is the right amount. We don't need anything to Montyize because sometimes you... Small doses, right?
COLIN HILDING: Absolutely. And thanks so much for joining us on both shows here today, Jon.
JON MONTGOMERY: Pleasure. Thanks for having me. I appreciate you guys reaching out.
COLIN HILDING: Huge thanks to Jon Montgomery for joining us today. And as I did mention at the beginning of the episode, if you wanted to hear more about his amazing race career, you can go over to our sister show, The Oz Network, which you find on iTunes, Stitcher, Google Podcast, wherever you can find podcasts, just look for The Oz Network, and you're gonna hear the same bits and pieces of the Olympics here and there, but you are gonna hear more of the amazing race story over on our sister show. As for what else we have lined up, next week we've got a Canadian sprinter, track and field star, Brendan Rodney, who won the bronze with Team Canada back in the Rio Olympics in the 4x100 relay. And at the time of this episode being released, we're probably still about 24 hours away from recording the episode, so if you tune in next week, and there's no Brendan Rodney, then well, it's been postponed till later in the season. Otherwise, make sure to like us on Facebook and follow us on Twitter now. We started a Twitter account. I don't know why we postponed this for so many years, but we now are on Twitter as well. And make sure to subscribe to the show because as I said, we got a lot of interviews lined up. We got some really big ones, some really exciting ones. Stay tuned here, and we're gonna bring you tons of athletes all the way through what would be the original Tokyo Olympics, and then who knows, maybe this will just go on so long. So we're gonna carry you all the way to the Tokyo 2021 Olympics next week. Thank you for tuning in. Thank you again to Jon Montgomery, and we'll see you next week, either myself or Ben or Jarrod or who knows, all three of us.
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