‘Pretty surreal’: How a U of T architecture student turned a CFL setback into an Olympic debut

Eight months ago, Luka Stoikos was chasing a professional football career. Now, the University of Toronto architecture student is pushing for the podium at the 2026 Winter Olympic Games as a member of Team Canada’s bobsleigh team.  

“These last eight months feel pretty surreal,” says Stoikos. “But ultimately, I’m just filled with a great sense of gratitude for how the story unfolded.” 

For the former Varsity Blues football and track and field student-athlete, the road from Toronto to Milan was far from carefully mapped out – or even planned. 

He had been preparing for the Canadian Football League’s three-day scouting event, known as the CFL Combine, when he decided to attend a similar event for potential Olympic athletes called RBC Training Ground.  

“RBC Training Ground came to U of T and I was like, I’ve already trained for the combine, I might as well just do another one,” says Stoikos, who is pursuing his bachelor’s degree in architectural studies at the John H. Daniels Faculty of Architecture, Landscape, and Design. 

He connected with Bobsleigh Canada at the event and was invited to a camp – but football was still the focus. Stoikos had spent years training – early mornings in the weight room, extra sprint work, film sessions, intense combine prep – and had earned a reputation at U of T for being a powerful, explosive athlete. He was the kind of player who could break tackles, win races downfield and grind through any workout thrown his way. 

“I was like, ‘Listen, I’m still trying to get drafted to the CFL here. If for whatever reason that doesn’t work out, I’ll give you a call.’” 

Stoikos, right, at a BC Lions training camp in May 2025 (photo by Brian Johnson/BC Lions) ​​​​​​

Then, after being selected by the BC Lions in the 2025 CFL draft in April, Stoikos made it nearly all the way through training camp but was cut the day before the Lions’ second preseason game.  

For many athletes, that moment would have marked the end of a dream. For Stoikos, it quietly opened a new door. 

“The night I got cut, the first phone call I made was to my parents,” he recalls. “The second one I made was to my contact at Bobsleigh Canada. I said, ‘Hey, when do I start?’” 

His first bobsleigh experience in Calgary was anything but glamorous, however. 

“It was my first time touching a sled,” says Stoikos. “It wasn’t even necessarily a real bobsled, just the frame sled that we use for training.”  

Inside the Ice House, an indoor training facility, athletes pushed – sprint, drive, reset, repeat – and Stoikos’s years of Varsity Blues training were immediately apparent. The same lower-body power that fuelled his football and track and field career quickly translated to the most critical part of a bobsleigh race: the start. 

“I’d touched the sled less than 10 times, pushed a pretty respectable time in the Ice House, and they seemed pretty impressed,” Stoikos recalls. 

His first run down a bobsleigh track in October was eye-opening. 

“They brought us to Whistler to actually go down the track for the first time,” he says, likening the experience “to being in a bathtub and then being put into the clothes dryer and then going down a mountain.” 

Following a training camp in Whistler, coaches pulled him aside with the big news: he would be going to the Bobsleigh World Cup.

“That was the most emotional part for me because I realized this Olympics thing might not be so crazy after all.” 

By November, Stoikos was racing internationally against the best athletes in the world. When the season ended, the team returned to Calgary to find out whether they would be Olympics-bound. 

The coaches called him into the office and asked him how he thought his first year had gone. 

“I told them I thought it was pretty good. I love the sport, obviously, and I think I’ve got a lot to learn still.”

Then came the words that changed everything. 

“They said, ‘Congratulations, you’re going to the Olympics.’ It was … pretty sweet,” Stoikos says. 

Stoikos pushes the sled on the World Cup circuit (photo by Viesturs Lacis)

His eight-month journey from Bobsleigh novice to Olympian still doesn’t feel real. 

“It was a lot of just betting on myself,” he says, crediting the many people who helped shape him at U of T, including strength and conditioning coaches Christopher Johnson and Seamus Egan-Elliott, track and field coaches Carl Georgevski, Rostam Turner and Yolanda Sternberg and his many football coaches. “I made a big decision, pursuing a sport that I had never actually done. I’m just very, very grateful it all worked out.”

As the grandson of Macedonian and Italian immigrants, Stoikos says the opportunity to represent Canada at Milano Cortina 2026 is deeply personal. 

“Canada gave my family so much when they moved here,” he says. “For me to be able to give back and represent that country is honestly a blessing.”