Athlete Perspective: How to manage social media during competition

SIRC’s Athlete Perspective series provides insight and recommendations on key issues from an athlete’s perspective. The collection of blogs and SIRCuit articles profiles Canada’s Olympic and Paralympic athletes and taps into their lived experience. While social media can have many positive uses for athletes, such as interacting with fans, creating a brand, and providing value…

Athlete Perspective – Social Media

While social media can have many positive uses for athletes, from interacting with fans to providing value for sponsors, engagement can also pose risks to performance. In today’s blog, Olympic curler Lisa Weagle provides insight into the steps she and her teammates used leading up to Pyeongchang to control the impact of social media on…

Bell Let’s Talk Day 2019

Today is Bell Let’s Talk Day – a national initiative to promote awareness and action by fighting stigma associated with mental health issues, improving access to care, supporting world-class research, and providing leadership on workplace mental health. In today’s SIRC blog, Audrey Lacroix from Game Plan talks about the mental health challenges faced by high…

We Need to Talk about Mental Health

Life as a high-level athlete has its ups and downs. There is success and failure, stress, pressure, endless doubts, injuries, days where you are surrounded by people and others where you are completely by yourself. It’s a train of emotions, one after the other, almost simultaneously. It can be too much to process. In the…

Athlete Perspective – Christine Girard

On December 3, 2018, Canadian weightlifter Christine Girard received a gold medal from the 2012 London Olympics and a bronze medal from the 2008 Beijing Olympics, following the disqualification of athletes convicted of doping violations. Learn more about her journey and commitment to clean sport in the SIRCuit.

Why Transgender Eligibility Policies Aren’t Enough

In releasing its transgender inclusion policy in September 2018, U Sports joined an ever-increasing list of organizations, from the community to international levels, that have implemented policies to regulate the inclusion of athletes who identify as transgender. Organizations with trans inclusion policies include, but are not limited to, school divisions (e.g. the Toronto District School…

Winter 2019 SIRCuit

The Winter SIRCuit is now available! This edition is issue-packed, providing evidence-based and experience-informed insight through a variety of timely and topical articles: Increase your commitment to improving sport in Canada through an article on values-based sport. Contemplate the role of policy and practice in maintaining hazing culture, supporting the inclusion of transgendered athletes, and…

Athlete Perspective: My reality as a clean athlete in a not so clean sport

SIRC’s Athlete Perspective series provides insight and recommendations on key issues from an athlete’s perspective. The collection of blogs and SIRCuit articles profiles Canada’s Olympic and Paralympic athletes and taps into their lived experience. I started weightlifting in a small, remote city in northern Quebec when I was nine years old. It was, and still…

Canada Winter Games 2019

Freestyle Skiing is the combination of speed, showmanship, and the execution of aerial movements whilst skiing. Canadian athletes have a long history of success in Freestyle Skiing on the international stage. It is just 1 of 21 sports to be featured at the 2019 Canada Winter Games hosted in Red Deer, Alberta. The games begin…

2018 Year in Review

As we ease ourselves into the year ahead, here is a round-up of the most popular SIRCuit articles and SIRC blogs from 2018! Top 5 SIRCuit articles The implications of cannabis legalization for athletes Issues in athlete identification and selection: Are we compromising talent? A year in the making – Reflections on Canada Artistic Swimming’s…