Press Conference Highlights

Jodie Stimpson (GBR)
I think obviously to doing well in the Commonwealths and setting this goal to do well it was such a high having all friends and family but there is a job to do in Edmonton and I still wanted to do well in the rest of the series.

At the beginning of the year I sat down with my coach and said which was the main goal, and it was my first championships and Commonwealth Games was my first one but I still wanted to do well in the series.

You don’t really know how much of a high or low how much of a low you can get after a big championship so to pick yourself back up was quiet a challenge. I’m running third in the series and hopefully I can finish off on a high on the weekend.

Gwen Jorgensen (USA)
I’m really excited to race this weekend and I’ve had some successful races this season which is phenomenal but at the same time I know that all my competitors are going to be there giving their A game on Saturday. With the Commonwealth Games being done now this is their next focus and I know that it’s going to be a challenge and I’m going to have to do everything I can to have a successful race.

On living and training overseas
Everyone sitting here next to me are away from home for most of the year, it’s something we do to be successful, it’s part of the job and it’s an investment we make to be successful. I’m really fortunate to have a great support crew behind me.

Javier Gomez (ESP)
This year was great was probably the best season of my life so far, four WTS series victories is just amazing.

I’ve had four weeks at home training hard just getting ready for these last two races. Last weekend I wasn’t able to perform due to a stomach problem, I got sick the day before the race, felt really bad in the race.

The recovery I got better, I’m feeling good now, all the training done should still be in my body. I’m looking forward to the race on Sunday, I’m feeling good right now and hope to have a good one. I’m ready to fight and give my best and enjoy another good race in Canada. It’s a country that always has been good to me.

Jonathan Brownlee (GBR)

The role Alistair has played on your career.

Alistair has been massively important to me, he’s the one who got me into the sport taught me how to train taught me how to race. It’s incredibly powerful when you have world champions like Javier but when you actually live with a world champion and you see he’s eating fish and chips and you think I can eat fish and chips as well and Alistair can become world champion by running around in the cold of Yorkshire so I can do that too. So it is incredibly power and obviously the races coming into London we had to deal with an enormous amount of pressure but Alistair took a lot of that away from me because he was the favourite and world champion, I was just the younger brother and if I got a medal then that was great.

Tactically we can talk about races beforehand and during the race we can work together.

Stockholm was the first time that I’d actually won a World Series race in a long long time. I’d become known as the guy to come second or third the how time.

This year is a year of two halves for me. If Sunday goes well then it would be a year of two halves, after the first half of the season wasn’t too great, a bit too much travel and maybe I overtrained a bit. Commonwealth Games I trained for 5 weeks and it was nice to get a medal but hopefully I’m a different athlete now. Will wait and find out.

The athletes were presented with their own ice hockey jersey’s’ presented by Andrew Ference, Edmonton Oilers, Captain