This coming 13 February, Vincent Labrie of Quebec, will take part in his first Olympic Games in the 500m. He explains to us how he worked with psychologists to improve his mental focus these two last years to finished 4th on the 500m just behind Jeremy Wotherspoon, Mike Ireland and Brock Miron, a performance that qualified him for the games.

This is the second part of the interview with national coach Arno Hoogveld. He talk about the program that leads their athletes to Torino games and the place of cycling in speed skating. Arno Hoogveld is very confident in his athletes and in all the canadian athletes going to this game. Canada is definitely a country of winter sport!

Active since 1983, Arno hoogveld now has a full-time position at the Calgary Olympic Oval. The first 4 years he worked with the junior program. In 2003, he has been lucky enough to join a successful senior group that Xiuli Wang was already coaching. Together they coach a group of 12 skaters at the Calgary Olympic Oval and out of this group 5 skaters are Torino bound, 4 of them Canadian, 1 American. The Canadian skaters are Arne Dankers, Kristina Groves, Clara Hughes and Kerry Simpson, while Catherine Raney is from the USA.

This is the second part of the interview with Maria Garcia. She present herself to the games with a good attitude, where she hope doing well on the 3000 relay. She also reveals some advice about preparation in competition.

Maria Garcia will soon compete in his first Olympic games where she qualified for the 3000m relay. Despite good performance on the 1500m at the selections where she was in the lead when you combine both 1500m races but she failed qualification on that distance because they combine points from 1500m and the 1000m time trial.