News

At the 1988 Olympics in Calgary, Dr. Peter Jensen was inundated with over 160 requests for media interviews.

Sports psychology was so new and novel that everyone wanted to know about how an athlete's brain worked.

But Jensen wanted to work behind the scenes and said he didn't respond to even one of those requests.

The Toronto native still works off-stage and is currently with the Canadian women's hockey team at the world championship. What he does is now considered a normal and integral part of a team's success.

"Sports psychology addresses what do exceptional people do on the inside that make them so exceptional on the outside," Jensen said Monday. "It's quite acceptable now."

Excluding head coach Peter Smith and assistants Lisa Jordan and Nancy Wilson, Jensen is one of a dozen people the Canadian women have with them at the world championship to smooth the waters and help create an environment in which the team can win.

After Monday's practice at Baqu Arena, Jensen chatted and joked with the players while they rode their bikes, and gained a read on their emotional temperatures while doing so.

"A ton of it is verbal," Jensen explained. "The coach may come up to me and say 'you know, I think so-and-so is feeling a little something today. Is there anything going on?'

"That often is a cue for me to go and find out, or a player will come up to me and say 'so-and-so is having a bad day, might want to go and touch base with them."'

But Jensen doesn't tell the coach what a player tells him because confidentiality and trust is important.

The players are always nervous about their position on the team, so they don't always feel they can air their problems to the head coach.

"I wouldn't identify a player. I would just say 'this is what's happening right now,"' Jensen explained.

"They've come to realize I'm a neutral corner. They can talk to me. I'm not Hockey Canada, I'm not their parent and I'm not their coach. When new players get added, they see pretty quickly that the veterans are comfortable with me and we go from there."

Travelling to and playing in the first women's world hockey championship in China meant navigating long travel days, drastically different time zones and a unique culture while trying to win a world title.

Jensen gave a talk to the players on Chinese history when the team arrived to help them better understand where they were. At training camp in B.C., he spoke to the team on how to adapt to change.

"He's played a big role in helping us be able to make light of situations and some of the differences and not get so overwhelmed by some of the things," assistant captain Becky Kellar said. "He's very good at keeping things light."

Since 1984, Jensen has worked with athletes in several different sports over six Olympic Games. His work with the women's hockey team is particularly important this year, given the unfamiliar environment the team finds itself in here.

"It's probably been a little bit more important to have somebody in his role," Smith said. "We talked about adapting to different circumstances when we got here and I think that made some of the players a little bit nervous so he's been there to reassure them, to help them."

The Canadian team also has with them a goaltending consultant, a video coach, a doctor, an equipment manager, an athletic therapist, a massage therapist, a strength and conditioning coach, a media relations director and a co-ordinator of team logistics, as well as general manager Melody Davidson and Hockey Canada director of female hockey Julie Healy.

A nutritionist worked with them at training camp in Victoria, but she did not come to China with the team.

The report that was the genesis of Own The Podium, which is the five-year, $110-million business plan to get Canada to the top of the medal standings at the 2010 Olympics, addressed the issue of why the country's athletes won international competitions between Olympics, but didn't convert that into Olympic medals.

One of the reasons was that Canada didn't surround athletes with support staff that other countries do.

OTP spent $4.2 million of its $23.5-million budget in 2007-08 on what are called Integrated Support Teams, which are the nutritionists, physiologists, psychologists, doctors, trainers, video analysts and other staff who help winter athletes do what they do.

The women's team has had a full staff complement for a few years now. But Davidson, who first coached a national team back in 1994, recalled coach Daniele Sauvageau fighting "tooth and nail" to get a goaltending coach for the 2002 Olympic team.

A massage therapist wasn't seen as a crucial part of staff until the years between the 1998 and 2002 Olympics, she said.

Only since the 2006 Games in Turin has the team had a full-time video coach, who breaks down and analyzes game tape.

"The best thing about our staff is they're experts in their areas, but nobody is afraid to pick up a hockey bag or wipe the tables or do whatever it takes," Davidson pointed out.

The money OTP gives the women's hockey team ensures Canada doesn't have to cut corners when it comes to taking staff on the road.

"It allows us not to have to worry about it," Davidson explained. "We haven't been in a position where we've had to choose one over the other.

"I feel like the Own The Podium money has allowed us to stay status quo without any questions."

The support staff receive an honorarium for their work and have their expenses paid for while with the team.

"It's nothing compared to what they give up," Davidson said. "What the doctor makes daily, we're not even close. The people we have are tremendous."

Jensen runs a corporate training firm in Toronto and teaches at Queen's School of Business. He views working with the Canadian women's team as advanced field work.

"It's a great laboratory for my business," he said. "A lot of these skills apply in my business, which is what I do for a living. Sport I do as a volunteer."

When they look down the hall at Baqu Arena, the players can see the Chinese team, whose players sharpen their own skates and wash their own jerseys.

"I guess we're spoiled," Kellar said. "It takes going back to our club teams to realize what we have done for us here and what we get.

"Everything they do makes everything that we have to do that much easier."