sportspeople-from-canada

"As an 'allocated Canadian' (for the National Women's Soccer League) I got to list three cities that I wanted to play in and no joke I wrote 'Portland, Portland, Portland'."

"She has that special quality that I cannot teach; she is just there and knocks the ball in with head, chest, or foot."

"I really don’t think about scoring, but instead think more about being dangerous."

"I know that she’s (Foluke) such an inspiration to so many women who want to be moms and continue their athletic careers or other careers. She’s just pulled it off, like everything else in her life, with so much grace and resilience."

"Nobody in this program thinks that anything is impossible for Foluke. You could just ask anybody and they say, ‘Well, of course, it’s Foluke; she would have done it if she had to do it in less than 12 less months and play last year (2020). She’s got a very single-minded way of being able to do that. To be able to do that after having started a family is just blowing people away that she continues to be such a professional and approach her craft in such a disciplined way and crush it as a mom."

"I feel like I've become more of a feminist through this process of becoming a mom and just knowing that women are badasses. I'm just encouraged every day and I'm so happy that there are people who have pioneered this...There's so many [women] who have gone through it before and so many who will come through after me as well. I'm just happy to be part of it."

"Every day we come back and we are trying to play our game. We haven't had much time together in these past months, so it's just about streaming up point by point. The Netherlands are always a dangerous team and both of us came out a little bit slow. I think that when we were able to pick up our service pressure it really helped us with block and defence. Our goal is always to focus on things on the court. There are a lot of things we are working on. I think every time we step on the court, honestly, we are just trying to play our game, to score some points, just execute as much as possible and I think we do a really good job. Obviously, there is a lot of room for improvement, but we can continue to improve and to work on some things and come back stronger next game."

"For the longest time, I dreamt of becoming a mom AND a professional athlete. I’m proud to say that I am now both. Thank you to all the badass mothers who came before me and showed me that it was possible, and here’s to those who will follow in our footsteps."

"I got to compete for Team USA for the first time in almost three years. I never truly understood how much weight the USA jersey held until yesterday. It’s been a long and arduous journey to get back here and there were many times I debated calling it quits along the way, but I’m so glad I didn’t. It was all worth it."

"The notion of having a growth mindset has played an instrumental roll in my development as an individual on and off the court. I'm so excited to share what I've learned along the way, with the hope that the youth will be encouraged to pursue whatever they want in life with the confidence and mindset of a champion."

"I think what’s helped me the most is the fact that I never looked too far ahead. I’ve kept my head down, put in the hard work, dreamed big, and tried to treat others the way I would want to be treated. And above all, I’ve been blessed."

"I’m not exactly sure what I want to do once I finish my career, but I do know that I want to do something in medicine."

"I never set out to have a long career in volleyball. I didn’t even know the professional world existed when I started."

"I was fortunate enough to be surrounded by great coaches and fantastic teammates who showed me the ropes."

"I would be lying if I said that I didn’t have doubts, but at the same time, the player I am, I just always believe that whatever I put my mind to, it’s going to happen. It was a goal and aspiration of mine and I was going to do whatever it took to make that happen. But, yeah, there were many moments along the way where I just thought maybe it wasn’t for me."

"It doesn’t help to live in the past. I’ve learned it’s not going to change the outcome for us, unfortunately. If it did, I would do that all day every day. But because it doesn’t, it doesn’t help to do that. And all I can do is hope for a better tomorrow and hope for a better next time."

"She wasn’t afraid of getting down in the trenches with you when you were at your worst or things were at their worst and helping you figure out how to put the puzzle pieces back together."

"I could not be more proud to have played with Foluke, to have known her in college and to see where she’s at now. Not just as an Olympian, but also as a mother. I think it’s fantastic and amazing what she’s been able to do. It just goes to show how incredible her work ethic is."

"It’s important to have an identity without sports"

"The ultimate goal was competing in the Olympic Games and that was a tough one"

"Many athletes struggle with the transition. It was a hard decision but I know it’s time to move on"

"I chose to put my proceeds towards getting more women involved in leadership roles in football, which I think is important, especially as a woman in football myself. Just having coaches or people working on technical staff, even physios… just having women in that environment alongside men is important."

"It’s hard because sometimes I think with social media people put out what they want people to see. I’m trying to get more comfortable with putting out what is actually there and not always just the super-positive stuff or how people maybe envision what I’m like."

"I think when people are able to bring that passion and they’re able to enjoy what they do it carries over onto other people."

"When a "journalist" is presented the "cause" of death by the examining doctor, real journalists vet the facts the doctor uses to make a conclusion. PROPAGANDISTS just "report" what the doctor says is their conclusion. REAL JOURNALISM is cancelled in America."

"It’s hard coming from such a family when you have to earn your place on any team. There were so many good riders.""

"When Chris Benoit and CM Punk battle for the vacant ECW World Title at Vengeance: Night of Champions, it will be a clash of both present – and perhaps future – legends in sports-entertainment. The Rabid Wolverine is a former World Champion and perhaps a future WWE Hall of Famer."

"He (Benoit) was peaceful and kept to himself. I think it had to be something personal, a domestic problem between him and his wife. She was into devil-worship stuff. It was part of her (wrestling) character, but (she was) somebody who gets so close to their character, someone who gets into their character too much. Sometimes these people believe their own publicity."

"Last weekend, I had heard about Chris Benoit no showing Vengeance because of a family emergency, and I had heard rumors about why that was. I was reading rumors and speculation about this matter online, and one of them included that his wife may have passed away, and I did the wrong thing by posting it on wikipedia"

"Chris Benoit was replaced by Johnny Nitro for the ECW Championship match at Vengeance, as Benoit was not there due to personal issues, stemming from the death of his wife Nancy."

"No one who eats the flesh of animals can progress spiritually beyond the average."

"At first, I wasn’t too sure about becoming a vegetarian. … In the beginning it was for athletic reasons, but later I became more concerned about life itself. I won’t go too deeply into it, but there is a religious part and meditative part of vegetarianism for me. … As far as I know, I was the only vegetarian wrestler around. … Well, when I got away from animal foods, I became closer to God. That’s what happened to me. I was more conscious of the good things in life. I was more conscious of other people. And I was conscious of love."

"You have to have a real love of your sport to carry you through all the bad times."

"As I learned more about veganism, and animal farms and the way animals were treated, it just disgusted me to the point where I could never imagine eating animals again."

"You need to understand that everything you do at the poker table, conveys information. You can't be all loosy goosy, eating a sandwich, or checking your phone."

"In 2000, I became a vegetarian. The guys in poker mocked me. There was this idea that "real men eat meat" and they'd eat piles of crap around the table, like mounds of dead animals every hour. … I became vegan in 2006 when I started taking healthy eating seriously. … The other players are a lot more accepting now, they embrace my veganism! … Poker has changed, in the past, high profile players were obese, now they're fit. They've swapped their moobs for pecs. Players now are educated people, they're smart, they do the research … Although my veganism started out absolutely about health, it's also become about the environment and animal cruelty. The way animals are treated and the conditions are atrocious. They're force fed steroids, the chickens are de-beaked. You end up eating sick, diseased chickens because they're living in shit. It's like a holocaust on animals."

"Knowing that training is little more than breaking down muscle, I figured that what rebuilds that same muscle must be a major factor for recovery and therefore quicker improvement. If I was able to recover from each workout faster, I would be able to schedule them closer together and therefore train more than my competition. I would improve faster. As I suspected, food was the answer—high-quality, nutrient-dense, alkaline-forming, easily digestible food in proper proportions … Nutrition has a dramatic effect on recovery—that was unmistakable. … The result was astounding. Not only did my recovery time plummet but my energy level, strength-to-weight ratio, and endurance shot up. … On the cellular level, this diet was able to speed the renewal of muscle tissue. That meant that following this diet would actually help the body regenerate more frequently, suggesting that it could help reduce biological age."

"Some of the greatest athletes in the world are vegetarians … There's a well-known triathlete name Brendan Brazier who is also vegan and quite successful. His sport is much more demanding than hockey so I knew if he can do it, I could also."

"When more nutrient-rich foods are present in the diet, the body does not have to eat as much as it would with less nutrient-rich foods. In addition, when the body is fed the nutrients it needs, the brain turns off the hunger signal. And so, the need to continually consume, a state many people who subsist on a refined-food diet experience, ceases, and not as much needs to be eaten and digested."

"Stress is like fire: When controlled and used for a purpose, it serves us well. Left unbridled, it can consume us. In amounts that our body is capable of adapting to, certain stresses are beneficial. Exercise, for example, is a stress."

"My belief in how plant-based nutrition could boost athletic performance while also reducing the strain on the environment was, at the time, considered fringe at best. … Ten years later, it's now common for people to speak of their “plant-based diet.” Even “vegan” is a familiar word, seen on the most conventional restaurants' menus. The importance of avoiding animal products in our diet, whether for heath, physical and mental performance, environmental, ethical, or a combination of these reasons, is now well understood and widely accepted."

"Although I am not as strict a vegetarian as I once was, I do continue to choose to eat more like a vegetarian than not. I would call myself a "conscious eater". It all started with my desire to be as lean and healthy as possible as a teenager around 17-years-old. With more education, as well as trial and error, it also turned into an expression of my attempt to show compassion for all living things."

"I am not the type of person who thinks in terms of "if only" or "could have, would have, should have". It is what it is and everything happens for a reason. When a person thinks "if only I would have known such and such" it shows a certain amount of fear or lack of trust that everything is as it should be. I try to always do my best and if I look back and think I didn't do my best, then that is the only thing I acknowledge and then try to change. One of my favorite expressions is, "Everything is okay in the end and if it's not okay, it's not the end.""

"Hasta la vista, baby. I can't take this abuse anymore. I'm coming back - as a spectator. I'm retired."

"I have the heart and what its got to be champion and I did it, I proved it tonight again."

"Don't tell me I cheated the system because that's [expletive]. I didn't get treated fairly by the system. They cast me out and they were jealous because I turned in the fastest time ever run by a human and it was impossible at the time."