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<\/p>\nCanada\u2019s bob and skeleton team opens the World Cup season Nov. 21-23 in Cortina, Italy, at the sliding venue for February\u2019s Winter Olympic Games.<\/p>\n
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Mitchell won cycling gold in the women\u2019s sprint in Tokyo in 2021. She didn\u2019t own a bike when she was recruited into the sport four years earlier.<\/p>\n
A fast learner in track cycling, the 31-year-old from Sherwood Park, Alta., hopes to also be a quick study in bobsled. Mitchell had tried bobsled at age 21.<\/p>\n
\u201cI just didn\u2019t have the leg power, the explosiveness that I have now,\u201d she said after training push starts at the ice house.<\/p>\n
\u201cWith cycling, we do a lot of training in the gym with our legs and lower body. Coming here, my legs were strong enough. It was more so actually getting a little bit more upper body in and then learning how to properly run because the sprinting technique is so different.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s kind of an ongoing joke that I need to not cycle my legs when I run and actually be more like a sprinter and drive them like pistons. It\u2019s a steep learning curve.\u201d<\/p>\n
Mitchell says she intends to eventually return to track cycling with an eye to the 2028 Olympic Games in Los Angeles.<\/p>\n
Of the 13 athletes who have represented Canada in both Winter and Summer Olympic Games, five were bobsledders.<\/p>\n
\u201cI thought about that a lot honestly. It would be so incredible to have that title and be an Olympian in both winter and summer, but I\u2019m just so happy to love sport again and be in this environment and the girls have been amazing, the guys\u2019 team is great,\u201d Mitchell said.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhether I\u2019m on the Olympic team and I am contributing on the ice or I\u2019m an alternate and I\u2019m contributing to the environment and helping someone else become a winter Olympian, yeah, I\u2019m grateful for this opportunity.<\/p>\n
\u201cHopefully I can add that Winter Olympian to my name, but the focus is to stay healthy, have fun and contribute to Team Canada being the best.\u201d<\/p>\n
Cyclist and speedskater Clara Hughes is the only Canadian athlete to win medals in both Summer and Winter Games. <\/p>\n
After finishing eighth in the sprint in last year\u2019s Paris Olympics, Mitchell sought a break from track cycling.<\/p>\n
\u201cI burnt myself out,\u201d she stated. \u201cMentally, I was just broken, and then physically, my body was breaking down too. Being in a new environment, I definitely needed that.\u201d<\/p>\n
Mitchell gave speedskating a try for a few months thinking the physical requirements of that sport would transfer well back to track cycling. The hard sprinting in bobsled doesn\u2019t transfer as well, and Mitchell counts staying healthy as her biggest challenge in the sport.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019ve been doing a low impact sport, haven\u2019t been running, my feet haven\u2019t touched the ground and so now I\u2019m constantly running on probably the hardest surface ever in shoes that have very little support,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n
\u201cFeeling a little different aches and pains. There\u2019s a gap of knowledge that I don\u2019t have yet, but there was the same thing with cycling.\u201d<\/p>\n
Bobsleigh Canada Skeleton high-performance director Jesse Lumsden and strength and conditioning coach Quin Sekulich both say Mitchell is coachable and thus adaptable.<\/p>\n
\u201cI wouldn\u2019t say she was the best sprinter we\u2019ve had come out, but she\u2019s a quick learner, picks stuff up pretty quickly and you don\u2019t have to be the prettiest sprinter either as long as you can look right behind the sled,\u201d Sekulich said.<\/p>\n
\u201cShe\u2019s a winner, she\u2019s a champion and she wants to win and you have to be that way to be in this sport. It\u2019s a very aggressive sport. It\u2019s the 100 metres of the Winter Olympics.\u201d<\/p>\n
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Oct. 10, 2025.<\/p>\n
Donna Spencer, The Canadian Press<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Canada\u2019s bob and skeleton team opens the World Cup season Nov. 21-23 in Cortina, Italy, at the sliding…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":204015,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[569],"tags":[64,63,784,85],"class_list":{"0":"post-204014","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-cycling","8":"tag-au","9":"tag-australia","10":"tag-cycling","11":"tag-sports"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/204014","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=204014"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/204014\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/204015"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=204014"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=204014"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=204014"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}