Defining success: Team Canada athletes think beyond the podium

How do you define success?

This is a question we posed to Canadian athletes as they journey towards the Milano Cortina 2026 Olympic Winter Games.

In sport, too often success can be seen as narrowly defined by podiums, medals, trophies, or wins. But such a limited idea of success can leech the joy from sport and negate the pride that one should feel from working each day towards a big goal. 

Here are some tidbits of wisdom from Team Canada athletes:

Jocelyn Peterman and Brett Gallant (Curling)

JP: We’ve been talking a lot about success as fully buying into our processes and the work that we’re putting in. Success isn’t necessarily the medals or how you finish. It’s more, if you’re the teammate you want to be on the ice, if we’re preparing the way we want to prepare, then that’s success for me.

READ: Curlers Peterman & Gallant are first athletes nominated to Team Canada for Milano Cortina 2026

BG: We know what effort we put in behind the scenes and what we’re doing day-to-day to try to be at our best. At the end of the day, when you’ve gone through that process and you’ve done to the best of your abilities, that’s success. Sometimes getting through that grind of a training or, just the preparation, the lead up [to a competition], getting through all that, is a big success in itself.

Cynthia Appiah (Bobsleigh)

That’s an interesting question because I’ve really been trying to work on not tying success to a result. And that’s easier said than done. 

I had the the opportunity to watch sport and be inspired by the bobsledders of yesteryear, and I’m hoping that’s my legacy—that I inspire the next generation of bobsledders and that when they join the team, it’s a completely different sport than what I got into and I can leave the sport better than when I first got into it.

India Sherret (Ski Cross)

That’s one that I feel like I’ve been redefining it a little bit for myself over this last year or so. I used to kind of think that success was, you know, a particular result or a level of performance consistently.

Lately I feel a lot more that it’s: am I putting my whole self into this? Am I enjoying the process? Am I still having fun? 

Obviously I want to win. I’m an athlete, that’s always going to be the goal. But for me to be successful in that goal, I think if I am enjoying what I’m doing and I know that I’m able to put my whole self into it and really dedicate myself to the whole process, that’s what success looks like for me.

Brodie Seger (Alpine Skiing)

That’s one I’ve been asking myself lately, actually. 

I think [success comes from] those bravery moments. It’s so much more deeply satisfying, whether you were first or 10th or 30th, when you know you lay down a run where you left everything on the mountain. You gave yourself a chance, you put yourself in a position to succeed. 

Mistakes happen when you’re in that zone. If you’re just chasing the perfect run and you’re always trying to be on the perfect line and execute everything perfectly—that doesn’t exist, and it’s probably going to be slow. A deeper success comes when you leave it all out there and you know you gave yourself a chance. Whether it was your day or not, that’s not up to you, that’s out of your control.

READ: Brodie Seger rises to meet challenges on the slopes and in ALS advocacy

Lewis Irving (Freestyle Skiing – Aerials)

I think my definition of success has changed throughout the years. When I was younger, success was solely focused on results, winning, being the best. Getting a little older and having done a little more, now, to me, success is: can I look back at my day and be proud of what I did? Can I look back at my day and not have any regrets and not want to change anything? If I can check those boxes, then it was a successful day. 

For example, at worlds I finished 10th. I messed up my qualifying jump. But we still pushed the envelope. We did the plan we were planning on doing. We didn’t take a step back when weather or conditions changed, we still went at it fully. So for me, it was easier to stomach the loss on a day where I did that. Had I gone the other way [and dialled it back], I don’t think I would have lived with it as easily. So yeah, just being being proud of my day is a successful day.

Elliot Vaillancourt (Freestyle Skiing – Moguls)

Success is a feeling. 

If you get success without all the effort, it doesn’t feel balanced. I feel like many athletes would agree, that feeling is the reward within yourself—that “I’ve worked my a** off to get here and holy sh*t, we made it!” accomplishment. 

Trinity Ellis (Luge)

I think success to me is finishing a result and feeling personally satisfied. It doesn’t necessarily have to be like a numerical result, but knowing that I really did the best that I possibly could, I feel like I’m always happy with the outcome of that.

Kevin Drury (Ski Cross)

[My definition of success has] changed over the years. I think now I’m at the point where as long as I know that I performed to the best of my abilities, I’m really happy. 

In our sport, there’s so many variables that can happen—whether it’s someone hits you and you’re out of the race or you just crashed out—there’s so many things that can go wrong that you have no control over. And so I’m less results driven now and just like, how do I feel I did?

Brendan MacKay (Freestyle Skiing – Halfpipe)

I think leading into Beijing 2022, I really wanted a medal insanely badly, which ended up being pretty disappointing for me. Not performing in Beijing was challenging to reflect on.

So I think at least for these Olympics, I’m trying to be very open minded about any result. I think as long as I go out there and I give it my all and I commit to my plan, then I hope I’m very proud of whatever comes out of it.

Hannah Schmidt (Ski Cross)

Personally, when I think of success, I think of resiliency. By no means did I have anything easy.

And I think every athlete has their own story of struggles. But I think just being able to live with type one diabetes, deal with all the injuries, the doubts from some certain people, and just being able to push through and be resilient towards sport, that’s success.

Alexandria Loutitt (Ski Jumping)

I think that [success is] not just about standing at the top of the podium. It’s kind of like how you executed what you were trying to do. 

Sometimes you can execute everything perfectly and still not win. But at the end of the day, that’s still a win, still a success.

Cameron Spalding (Snowboard – Slopestyle/Big Air)

Obviously I want to be the best, I want to win everything, really. But at the same time, I just want to have as much fun as possible on my snowboard because that’s why I started. There’s really nothing else that compares in my mind to snowboarding. So as long as I’m having fun and the love for it is still there, then that’s success in my books.

Dawn Richardson Wilson (Bobsleigh)

Success is a word that I don’t think one person can justify for everyone. I think your version of success might be different from my version of success.

Let’s say on a day-to-day basis, I could view success as, “I woke up and I ate breakfast today.” That could be success. And other people would be like, I managed to do this, do this, do this, do this and this, and that’s a successful day.

So I think for me, success is knowing that you put everything into whatever you wanted to do for that day, that goal, or whatever the case may be, and not feeling any what ifs at the end of it, because you know that you put in everything. And maybe on a given day your everything is only 90% of your full capacity, but that was still everything on that day.

So I think that’s just how I view success. It’s not so much winning gold or winning medals. Yes, that’s also success. But I would say it’s also the journey of how we get to those moments that makes up the success story.

Embyr Lee Susko (Luge)

I think success, a lot of the time, is really defined by having that gold medal. But I’ve really tried to change my perspective on success and finding it within, and asking: what’s really important to [me] about that sport?

Last season I really felt a lot of growth in that area. My success was not medaling at worlds. My success was not winning nationals. My success was finding so much joy in that season. I’m really appreciative that I’ve moved more into that headspace.

Florence Brunelle (Short Track Speed Skating)

I think success became something [to me] in the last two years that it wasn’t before. For me, success is being able to value myself, based on what I do every single day. It’s all about the process. We hear “process, process, process.” For me, success is how disciplined I am in my journey.