Ideas - Perdita Felicien on how to navigate life’s biggest hurdles

Episode Date: June 17, 2025

Champion hurdler Perdita Felicien has climbed to the summits of international glory throughout her track career, and endured the excruciating lows of defeat. Those peak experiences inform the talk she gave at Crows Theatre in Toronto, in which she parses the comparison of sport to life, and life to sport. In her words: "It isn't that sport is life exactly. It's that it reveals life. It's the part of life where we play with purpose. Where effort is visible. Where character is tested. Where failure is not final, just part of the arc. It's where we try. Fully. Openly. Without guarantee."

Ten years ago, I asked my partner Kelsey if she would marry me. I did that, despite the fact that every living member of my family who had ever been married had also gotten divorced. Forever is a Long Time is a five-part series in which I talk to those relatives about why they got divorced and why they got married. You can listen to it now on CBC's Personally. This is a CBC Podcast. Welcome to Ideas. I'm Nala Ayed and welcome to a live recording of Ideas at Crow's Theatre in Toronto. This year we've invited five thinkers to meditate on ideas raised by one of the plays in the Crow's Theatre

season and that speak to some of the most pressing questions of our time. This is the fifth and final in the 2024-2025 series, and today's speaker is Perdita Felicien. She is an author, television host, sports broadcaster, two-time Olympian, ten-time national champion, and the first Canadian woman to win a world championship gold medal in track and field. After a stellar career as a hurdler, Perdita retired from professional sports in 2013 and is now a broadcast journalist who was inducted into Athletics Canada's Hall of Fame. And her talk today is entitled, The Power of Dreams.

In it, Perdita explores what it means to be an athlete, what it's like to navigate hurdles, both physical and metaphorical, and what the rest of us too can learn from sport to help us navigate the hurdles of the real world. Please welcome Perdita Felicien. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.

Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.

Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.

Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Uncaged, my competitive instinct roared. There were 12,000 people watching, 60 meters of track, 30 steps to the finish, eight of the world's best hurdlers, seven seconds of speed, five barriers, and at the end of it all, one world champion. We blazed ahead. Our collective steps threatened to rip the track apart. To my right, the American, Gail Devers, a legend, the reigning world indoor champion. She has proven over and over again that she's untouchable

in a race, in an arena where you win it in the blink of an eye. Hurdle one, clean. Hurdle two, crisp. Hurdle three is textbook. A sprint whole race isn't about raw speed. It's about precision, power, rhythm. One two three, one two three, one two three. That perfect cadence of my feet in between each obstacle. I can hear the sweet sound in my head and in my heart. Between us, there is no room, no daylight, as we fight to separate ourselves from the pack.

Gail, she's my idol. I adored her growing up, watched her win world and Olympic gold medals. She was dominant. She was unbeatable. As a kid, I taped posters of her to my bedroom wall. And now to be in her league and to be stride for stride with her? It was something my 17 year old self could only dream of and then faint. But there I was. Before this moment, I'd found it hard to summon my edge when

Gail was in a race. The admiration I held for her threatened to simmer my fight. How do you summon the venom needed to devour your foes when she is someone you love? Someone that you deeply admire? Now, get this, Gail had no clue that what I wanted to do to her and the others relinquished them all to second best in the record books that day was a skill that she had taught me. She taught me best. Move! One two three, one two three, one, three. We raced as though we wanted

gold more than we wanted breath. At hurdle four, my execution was flawless. I could hear nothing. The starter's pistol had pressed mute on the outside world. My legs and lungs sizzled electric. Approaching the fifth and final barrier, it came down to that final 10 meter runoff to the finish line. The critical zone where Gail's speed and her power could bury us all. There it was just my idol and me. Now that was one of the biggest races of my life, right? Twenty plus years ago, and I am aging myself very proudly, the 2004 World Indoor Championships, the 60 meter hurdle final.

In that championship, you should know some things, right? Like I said, seven seconds long, and there are five barriers. So let's use that as the framework for what I'm about to share. So let us start at hurdle one, the game of life. Why sport is more than just a game. I want to ask you something, all of you listening here and on the radio. Have you ever watched a sporting event? Think of your favorite thing to watch.

Just just imagine it. Boxing, hobby horse racing, NASCAR, whatever that is for you. Just think of that competition. And have you thought, hmm, this matters a little bit more than it should, right? Like somehow this collection of rules and whistles and these sweaty people running around,

or in my previous case, scaling over obstacles, was calling you, telling you something about yourself. That the moment, the stakes felt bigger than the final score. And what do we hear all the time? It's just a game. Just a game. But you know that's not true, right? Yeah, you're all nodding. Not everybody's nodding, but you're all nodding. I'm gonna prove it to you. Sport is one of the most powerful metaphors we have for life. Think of, think

of all the glorious things that it does. It's our teacher. It teaches us discipline, resilience, and the value of practice. It reveals the beauty of teamwork and the gift of failure. Sport is our tester too. It pushes us to our physical, mental, and emotional limits. It reveals who we are under pressure. It's also another thing, our illuminator. It exposes character in victory and something I know about in defeat.

Sport reveals things we might otherwise never see about the world we live in, about the people around us, about ourselves, and sometimes even things we may not like about ourselves. But let me take it a little bit further. Sport is our existence, compressed, condensed, distilled to life's finest particles.

In sport, we do what we do in real life. What is that you ask? This is why I'm here. We compete, we compete. And I know, I know some of you are looking at me and you're giving me these side-eye right now. From your cars, from your office, maybe right now you're taking your hot girl walk.

But yes, we all want to be good at something. And for some of us, to be better than the person right next to us. And even the WWW, and not the internet, no, no, no, no. The whole wide world. That's what I believe anyways. Whether you're in the stadium, a boardroom, in a classroom, or on a job site, you're in this game. So how should I put this?

Buckle up, buttercup. But I know what you're thinking. Perdita, please, please, please, don't insult me here. We know, and I know, that there's a huge difference between sport and life. And to quote my six-year-old, brah, I know. So let's compare the two, shall we? Sport, everything happens out loud, in public.

With rules, with boundaries, with a definitive winner and loser. Sport doesn't let you hide. It strips everything down. It's out in the open. It's scored. It's timed. It is judged. There aren't many gray areas.

You win or you don't. You areas, you win or you don't, you give your best or you don't. You show up ready to leave it all on the line or like I love to say very eloquently, or you leave your beep at home. No long emails, no office politics, no co-worker leaving their fish lunch in the microwave in the staff room.

Eww. Sport just doesn't do that. If you know, you know. And now life. It really offers that kind of clarity. Most of the time, we operate in a fog of nuance, compromise, contradiction. In life, the outcomes are unclear. And is it just me? But doesn't it feel like sometimes someone is just making up the rules as we go? Just me? No, I know it's not just me. It isn't that sport is life exactly,

It isn't that sport is life exactly, it's that it reveals life. It's the part of life where we play with purpose, where sport is visible, where character is tested, where failure is not final, just part of the arc. It's where we try fully, openly, without guarantee. Trying is how we inch forward, how deeply we believe even when belief is the hardest thing for us to carry. So that in our arenas, hurt-aligned, time-bound, fan-watched, or unseen. We try. Being human is not about being perfect. It's about something else.

It's about being better. Better than we were yesterday, better than your excuses, better than what we once believed was possible for us. And think about it. How rare is that truly? When do you risk that much and still come back for more? That's the spiritual side of sport, I think. It's not religion, but it's ritual. It's not divine.

But it is sacred. Because in sport we know that trying, really trying, is its own kind of grace, that 100%. So maybe that's what makes sports so cool. And in that simplicity we find something profound. Because the stakes may seem smaller, it's just a game, Perdida please. But the mirror that sport holds up is crystal clear. It shows what's really there. Not what you wish, not what you pretend. In life, we stand in front of our own mirror all the time.

Think about it. The quiet one in our bathrooms, the loud one, mm-hmm, it's very loud, this one. It's held in the opinion of others. The imagined one we build based on what we want from ourselves, that internal drive, that internal voice. Each also reflects not just how we are, but how we want to be seen. I say that we see who we are when we try, when we fail, when we stand on the podium, or watch somebody else stand on the podium

instead. I don't like that part of sport. I've seen that. I've been a witness to that one. That's not the fun part of sport at all. But let's keep moving on. When it comes to competition, we all do it. We might not proclaim it out loud. We might pretend we're not competing, but we are. Job interview? Mm-hmm. Job placement? Anytime that pig me becomes front and center. And then there's this.

If you are sitting next to me at my local gym on the rowing machine, oh, we're competing. Oh yeah, I'm coming for you. I'm racing you. You might not know it. Oh, but I know it. Okay? So be ready as you see me at the gym. We compete for many reasons. To be good at what we do, to earn more, to be chosen, to be recognized, to stand out, to be better. And sometimes we just want to be the best. The best on the rowing machine

or sometimes the best in the world. There's something deeply human about this. We want to be good at what we do. We want to push our limits. It's just that with sport. It all happens under the lights, in front of the crowd, with pressure. Hurdle two. Sport as a symbol of hope and progress. Okay, so first hurdle is usually the hardest because you got to get your rhythm up and going. Hurdle two, we are clicking away. I will be the first to admit that this word

can be overused in sport, in life. That word is inspire. But allow me, allow me, I I'm gonna talk about the things that sport inspires because yes sport is about competition but it's also about something more powerful the dream of more the dream of better and to illustrate this point I'm gonna read an excerpt from my memoir my mother's daughter but let me let me set it up for you first. So it's 1989, the year the great philosopher Taylor Swift was born.

I know that's what you're thinking. I'm in grade three in gym class, we're sitting on our shuttle rows and it's Mrs. Arthur's class and what happened is I'm at Glen Grove Public School in Pickering. Go Grizzlies, go, because I know someone listening is a Grizzly. And there was this standardized test that everyone had to do back then. And it was Canada Fitness. Yeah, some of you know, some of you know, right? And it was the standardized test put on by the Canadian government, started in 1970, and you had to do so many things.

You had to run the 50-yard dash. Remember the push-ups, the curl-ups? I know some of you are having really bad flashbacks right now. I'm just gonna stop. I'm just gonna stop. But it went until 1992 until it got the axe. But in this scene that I'm about to read and set up for you, our results are back. And Mrs. Arthur's, she did something here, and I want you to listen. The day we received our results, our class sat in short rows, one behind the other, on the floor. My teacher, Mrs. Arthur's, explained that there were four achievement levels, bronze,

silver, gold, and excellence. After calling most of the students up, one at a time, to receive the rewards, she said she had something very important to announce. There was only one student in our entire class to earn the highest level possible. All our ears perked up at that. Who was this magical person? Then she spoke, congratulations Perdida. Mrs. Arthur said excitedly, I sat there for a few seconds before it hit me.

I was the special person. Come up here, kiddo, and get your award. Waving me up, my classmates erupted into a pause, making me feel like I would burst. Mrs. Arthur handed me a certificate with my name on it and a round red badge with shiny gold letters that said, excellence. Think about it. Excellence. Has a nice ring to it, doesn't it? That word. I displayed it on the top of my desk for the rest of the day. Everyone, I mean everyone

in our class kept coming by and asking if they could hold it. And I let them. I had never been celebrated in this way before and I bashed in the attention. It wasn't long after that that Mrs. Arthur's encouraged me to try out for the school's track and field team. So that day in 1989 is one of my most cherished memories, right? Here is my teacher seeing something, doing something. She saw something in me and she made sure I signed up for the team. I kind of marked that day as the spark, the beginning, the journey, my journey to the world of world-class athletics and the life of dreaming big began,

even though I didn't know it at the time. Hurdle three, sport as the embodiment of the human dream. My mother was born in St. Lucia in late 50s. By the time she was a tween, she had to drop out of school. And my mother loved dictation, spelling. She loved that class. But every single time a cruise ship would come to the shores of Gros-Ely, her small fishing town where she lived with her family,

her mother would see an opportunity. They were poor, didn't have a lot. So anytime a cruise ship would come, her mother Hilda would look out into the horizon and see that a cruise ship was coming. And she knew that she would have to stop her daughter from going to school that day, but head to the beach to sell. My mother did not like this at all, at all. She loved school, she loved playing. She was a kid, 10, 11, 12 years old. But what happened is as the tourism industry in Gros Lele and Saint Lucia grew,

well guess what happened? More cruise ship. And the result of that, the domino effect was, well, little Catherine would miss more days of school, to the point where she would go back to school and she would be so confused about the lesson that she was so uncomfortable going back until she never went back again. So as everyone tells me, my mother selling as a young teen,

a young tween girl on the beaches was like, she was vivacious. She could sell water to a fish. And so she embraced that always longing and missing school. And so my mother couldn't afford to really dream big, but she would see these tourists and most of them are white, assumed and imagined they were all affluent, but she would wonder where they were going to England, to America, to Canada. These lands must be so great and so vast, a lot bigger than her experience. And she would watch these cruise ships, right, as they disappear

into the horizon. And she always longed to go where they were going. She couldn't. And I'll fast forward and say my mother eventually does come to Canada. She has the opportunity as a 20 year old, one of the couples that she met brought her to Whitby, Ontario, in the late 70s. And my mother was thinking, this is my chance to make something of myself, to better myself. That was her dream. Her dream was also that her children could have a dream. She worked and she toiled and she worked and she toiled.

She thought, I'm going to do something with my life. But the life my mother had in her early years in Oshawa and Whitby in Canada, Ontario, were not easy. It was hard for my mother to get traction. The families, not all of them, but some of them that she worked for took great advantage of her. Hardly paying her any money, putting her in their basement.

Maybe she would get one day off a week. She had no real legal or permanent standing here to sink her teeth and her feet into this ground, into this land and build because anything she tried, misogyny, racism, would take what she had built and knock it down. But my mother fought and my mother tried. When I came into this world in 1980, I was born in Oshawa General, my mother didn't have anything. She was the only one in her hospital room. And I grew up seeing my mother fight really hard.

And one promise I made to myself is, I will never be on your list of difficulties. Some of you have grandkids, nieces, nephews, children yourself. You understand how perceptive kids can be. It might not be anything that you tell them but virtue of osmosis, what you're modeling, they pick up. The tension, the anxiety in the air, what you say, what you don't say. And I saw my mother cry way too much. I said I will never ever be a reason that you cry. So my mother did not give up on her dreams of wanting more for herself. And while she couldn't afford to have big opulent dreams, she wanted those dreams for her children. And so I'll tell you how my

mother finally got traction in this country. By the time I was six, seven years old, I was a child witness to domestic abuse. Something no child, no woman, no person should ever have to see or live through experience. But it happens. And we ended up in 1987, November, a very cold night, at an Oshawa woman's shelter, the Denise House, which is why a portion of every single book I sell will go to that woman's shelter. Because this is how it turned our life around.

We were there for way too long, but we were there. And I'm so grateful my mother had a place to go. And once she had to leave and go back to my dad, who was her abuser, because those places are temporary. They're not permanent dwellings. They're for a family, a woman, a person to get traction and catch their breath, a respite of sorts. And they called my mother from our home with my dad,

which was not always a happy home, not always. And they said, we have a unit for you in Pickering, Ontario. So some of you, if you don't know the geography for a young single mother who's kind of taking care of her kid alone to go from Oshawa, you know, a few highway exits away to Pickering, about 30k, is a lot. It's a lot to ask. But my mother did not know how she was going to do it or figured out, she's like, I'll

take the key. When my mother got that key, we moved in so quickly that it was safer for us to be there without electricity, without running water, without grass, just cement. But my mother had something that she'd never had after 10 years of being in Canada. She had autonomy. She had a key to her own home.

And the dreams that she still had for herself, they hadn't died. They were still in her. And the dream that she wanted for me and my siblings of bigger and more, my mother still held onto that. And so when my mother began to thrive, then I, as her daughter, began to thrive. So my mother could only dream so big in St. Lucia.

Her dream was to do more for herself, to finish school, to ensure that I had a really, really ambitious life. Though neither of us could ever predict what that dream would ever become. Every great athlete chases a better version of themselves. Faster, stronger, smarter, sharper, higher, I can keep going and going and going. And when we see athletes doing things that once seemed impossible, breaking barriers, records, defying expectations, rising after failure, we don't just cheer for them, we

cheer for the parts of ourselves that believe in us. We see that we too can make something better of our lives, our communities, our world. Sport is the stage where that belief is played out again and again. And even when the world feels broken or unfair, sport does one thing. It reminds us there's still a place where effort counts, where progress is possible,

where the human spirit can still rise. As I say all the time, my mother had to overcome so many barriers just so I could get to the starting line and have a decent shot in life. But that dream, it's not just personal, it's collective, it's social. Sport is one of the most powerful embodiments

we have of the human dream. The dream to improve, to grow, to become something more. When we run faster, jump higher, play better, it's not just physical. In my mind it's symbolic. It says we can be a better world, a fairer world, where people push themselves and pull each other up, just as my mother and Mrs. Arthur's did for me. Sport is where we act out that dream in real time, where we test it, where we see what's possible, and sometimes when the wind is right and the stars align,

we even achieve it. And that's just not an athletic victory. To me, that's a human one. Sport doesn't just reflect life. It reflects hope. The one dream we all share, no matter where we come from or what we do. The dream to make things better, to be better.

Think about it. Every athlete, every fan, every person watching the game or playing it, We are all drawn to the same idea. Progress. Sport dares us to imagine that things can change and that things work out. And then it goes out and proves it. The fastest person in the world gets beaten. The worst team in the league finds a way to win. Barriers fall, records break, and we cheer not just because someone else is winning, but because that win feels like ours too, like we're moving forward with them.

When I think of my mother being a domestic survivor, someone who had to drop out of school, who has a single parent in Canada, took the bus with her children so she could earn her high school diploma. Knowing all that was never far from my heart anytime I raced with the maple leaf on my chest. I always knew I represented her, my family, my community, and my country. And as those days are behind her and us and our light on her shines brightly today, I've

always found it ironic, poetic even, that after all the barriers that my own mother had to overcome to give us the life that we have now, that her first child to be born in Canada went on to become a professional hurdler, a literal overcomer of obstacles. Hurdle four, the team versus individual. In life like sport, you're on your own. You train alone, you struggle alone, you doubt yourself and do the ugly cry in the mirror in the dark alone. Oh, just me?

I'm the only one? We're going to pretend I'm the only one? But here's the thing, you're never really alone. Because even in the most individual of pursuits, you're lifted, shaped, and sharpened by others, teammates, coaches, rivals, and yes, even your critics. And it's true that your fiercest competition might also be your greatest gift. I'm here to tell you that your rivals do make you better, but only if you'll let them. Sport proves every day that greatness is never truly a

personal endeavor, even in individual events. You run your own race, no one else can carry the weight, you make the sacrifices, or as I like to call it, investments. You live with the outcome. It's your name on the jersey, on the medal, behind the effort. Nobody else's. And yet, there's another thing. You're never without others. Even your rivals.

Nothing without the people who pushed you, believed in you, doubted you, or raced beside you. I would have been nothing without world champion Bridget Foster Hilton of Jamaica. Danielle Carruthers, my college nemesis from Indiana. I still don't like the girl, but I'm trying. Danielle, wherever you are, I like you. I'm trying to like you, but it was the competitor in me. But you made me better.

Gail Devers, my first ever American idol turned rival. They challenged me and instilled a sense of urgency in me. They didn't just make me race better. They made me dream bigger. Because here's what I believe. The dream isn't just personal. It's collective. It's shared.

It's social. That's what sport has shown me and what I think life needs more of. Not PBs, that's personal best in track speak, but CBs, collective best. That's what we need more of. Okay, I promised you something off the top. I said I'm going to take you to Budapest and tell you what happened. So here we go. World Indoor Championships 2004, Budapest, Hungary, five hurdles, eight women from around

the world, the best. It came down to the American, my idol, Gail Devers, and me. No daylight between us, nothing. One world title on the line. One, two, three, one, two, three, one, two, nothing. One world title on the line. One, two, three, one, two, three, one, two, three. That sweet, perfect tempo of my feet in between the barriers. Off hurdle five, I launched my body forward towards the end,

my arms pumping, body driving, eyes locked maniacally to the finish. I threw my body at the line as my lungs finally let go of their trapped air. I exhaled and stared at the scoreboard for the results. We hugged, we paced, we held our breaths again because we had no idea who had won. Normally the results come up instantly,

but this race was so close, it took the officials a really long time. I could feel my heart, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, pumping. I knew it was the two of us, but there's only one gold medal. All we knew is that all of us, we had left everything we had on the track.

And then finally, the scoreboard lit up by three hundredths of a second. If you blinked, you took too long. One person had beaten them all. Me. I was the world champion indoors, beating the field in one of the greatest hurders of all time. There's something about that feeling, that victory, that win, that I will never, ever forget. And then to do it with my idol right beside me was bonkers, bonkers. Even in an individual sport, you're only as good as the people who push you, test you, and challenge you to dig deeper. I needed Gale Deaver's that day, just like I needed Linda Ferga from France,

and Susanna Collor from Sweden a few lanes over, and all the others who put their hearts on the line that day in Hungary. Sport doesn't hide that. It's a tension that's always there. It puts it front and center, and that's why it represents something so universal. Hurdle five, our final barrier. Let's flip the lens. Why do you watch? Why do you care so much about teams and players who have nothing to do with your actual life? Why do we paint our faces and scream at the TV as though the players could actually hear us? Why do we even name faces and scream at the TV as though the players could actually hear us?

Why do we even name our pets after our favourite athletes? Laughter And may I just add, let the record show right here, right now, somewhere in Canada, there's a greyhound and a sphinx cat, each named Perdita. Laughter Yes, I get the Facebook pictures and updates, and I love them. Laughter

Very true story, but moving along. One theory is that we want and interact with sporting events because sport gives us a story. A real time unscripted drama with a true beginning, middle and an end. It starts with the anticipation, the kickoff, the face off, the first whistle, the first steps into the blocks. It builds with momentum and conflict, the comeback, the near miss, the heartbreak, the breakthrough. And it ends definitively with a final score and a victor. It ends with closure.

But in life, the story is harder to trace. There's no fixed season, is there? Is resolution even guaranteed? We live in those middle chapters, sometimes for decades, without knowing how things will turn out, or even what we're building towards. Meanwhile, the race will be won tonight, the season will end in a few months. We'll know who lost, who rose, who fell. But in our own lives, the end of the story only arrives when we're gone. And even then, someone else may write the final lines. That's why sport is powerful.

It reminds us that even if life doesn't hand us clear chapters, sport does. And that feels to me like a kind of hope. And there's also this. Frankly, sometimes we don't even care if they win. Maple Leaf fans, Maple Leaf fans. We care because they keep showing up. They keep trying, and that's what we want to believe about ourselves.

Sport is a place where falling short isn't the end. Just a checkpoint, a redirection, a necessary part of one's arc. In sport, we don't hide from failure, we meet it, we learn from it, we keep moving through it. Because in this space, failure, it's not final. You know what it is? It's fuel. It's the middle of the story, not the end.

We don't fall in love with perfection. We fall in love with effort, with resilience, with those who stumble and get up again and again and again. Because in them, we see the parts of ourselves that are still fighting. We don't just watch the game. We live it in our own way, on our own fields. When we see someone else fighting to reach their potential and dreaming, we're reminded to keep chasing ours.

That's why sport matters. Not because of who wins, but because of what it means to try. And to try, you first have to dream. The finish. We say that sport is a metaphor for life, but no, no it's not. It's more than that. It's life with a scoreboard, with rules, with teammates, with fans, with dreams that are big and real but also really fragile. Sport is life, sharpened, magnified,

a compressed, clarified version of everything we wrestle with. Competition and cooperation, glory and failure, isolation and connection, dreams and reality. So sure, sport is a metaphor, but it's more. It's also a mirror. A theatre. A test. A triumph.

A reminder that even in a world filled with chaos and contradiction, we still believe in fairness. We still believe in effort. We still believe that somewhere out there, our best self is waiting. And if we keep showing up, playing hard, keep supporting one another, we just might get there. In the end, sport is not separate from life. It is life with louder cheers and clearer rules.

It strips things down to what matters, effort, excellence, heartbreak, and hope. And maybe that's why we keep watching, right? Maybe that's why we keep playing because in every game we see a chance to do better and in every athlete we see a glimpse of who you might still become. I know firsthand that there's a brutal beauty in sport. It's pressure, don't I know, performance and public accountability. It's the same challenges we face every day, just lit up by the lights. It's a reminder to all of us that we

are in the game. Yes, you even you and right now. So my question is to you in front of me, and to all of you who are listening, is this. You're in the game. How big are you willing to dream? Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.

On ideas, you're listening to The Power of Dreams by Perdita Felisian. You can hear ideas on CBC Radio One in Canada, on US Public Radio, across North America, on Sirius XM, on World Radio Paris, in Australia, on ABC Radio National, and around the world at cbc.ca slash ideas. You can also find us on the CBC News app and wherever you get your podcasts. I'm Nala Ayad. Imagine you're 17 years old, you're minding your business, you're at your fast food job cleaning out the walk-in freezer, and all of a sudden your older

coworker comes in and reveals to you that he doesn't love one of his sons. This actually happened to writer Ocean Vuongong and he told me all about it on my new podcast, Bookends. I'm Matea Roach and every week I talk to some of today's greatest writing talents and rising stars. And I also get some pretty good stories along the way. You can check out Bookends with Matea Roach wherever you get your podcasts. Today's talk is part of a series we've developed

with Crowe's Theatre in Toronto, an opportunity to explore some of the ideas that animate great theatre and shape our own lives today. Today's speaker is author, sports broadcaster, and two-time Olympian hurdler, Perdita Felisian. The subject of her talk, how sport reflects life and the lessons it has to teach us on navigating the hurdles the real world

throws in our way every day. And I wanna now take a moment just first of all to say congratulations, what a beautiful, inspiring lecture. And the other thing I want to make clear is that should we ever run into each other at the gym? You're not getting on my machine. I'm not competing with you. You won't know it, I won't tell you.

Just making that clear, I am not competing with you. Fair. You say that sport isn't a religion, but you say it's a ritual, you say that it's sacred, is it also a belief system? I think it has to be for all the things that it commands from you, all the things that to be good at it and to be great at it, you you have to put in the effort and the work and there's a, to be honest, to be frank, there's a monotony to the work. Every day, every other day, it's the same thing over and over again.

But you show up every day to the basketball court, to the track, and you try. But at the end, you don't even know if you're going to get what you signed up for. So is the belief in the trying? The belief has to be why not me. The belief has to be that you can get it. You have to know that it's not not a thing it might not happen, but you have to believe that you can. If not, there really is no point to showing up. There is a line of yours that that really caught my ear. In fact your whole description of how we consume sport and how you participate in sport is quite novel to me.

I had never thought of it as us being enticed by a story that has a beginning, middle, and an end in a life that we have that is so uncertain. But it resonated with me because it makes a lot of sense. But you said, sport is more than a metaphor for life. It's life with a scoreboard. I'm wondering if it's also frightening knowing that. Yeah, I think, you know what, someone is always watching, someone is always critiquing, but sometimes I'll tell you the loudest voice and the biggest critic is yourself. And you don't need to be an athlete to know that that is true. And some of us wrestle with that inner voice that says, you're not good enough, you don't

belong, you're not going to get voice that says you're not good enough. You don't belong You're not gonna get that raise you shouldn't be here or you walk into a room and you're intimidated Think about walking onto a track and there's the Olympic champion. There's the world champion and you're like, how do I belong and I remember in 2003 it was leading into the World Championships in Paris. And this was a moment I never forget. We had trained for months and weeks leading into that championship, but I was also a college athlete. I was a junior, third year in university.

And I was just on fire one day in practice. But I was at that point where I was still in the old fight. I didn't know how good I would be. And the World Championships were probably like a month away. And I'd gone over three hurdles. And my coach Gary Winkler, he comes back and he was really long, he was like six foot five and a really long finger. He'd be like, wag me over.

You've got to listen to him. So I walk over and he crouched down, you know, imagine him being six, six plus and I'm, you know, five, three, five, four. And he leaned over and he said, Perdy, if you race like that, you will be top three at the world championships. And my eyes just, like what? Like he had opened my world up and said, you belong,

you have permission to believe this you can do this and That propelled me and what's interesting is when we got to the world championships. I was the youngest in the race first global final and Again, I'm still in university all these women are professionals And there's three rounds at the world championship and the third round is it's one round every single day. It's exhaustive work It's psychic energy emotional emotional energy, physical energy that you're just depleted. And Gary looked at my face going into that final and you're walking into this tunnel, the labyrinth, the belly of the stadium and this last time that you can see your team. And he had to end my warm-up

because I was so depleted and the Parisian sun was so hot and because he's tall and he cast a really long shadow I just sat in his shadow while the women in the world who are the best that have never faced off again are doing their warm up. So imagine that intimidation. So before we're about to leave and he can't go any further because we're going to be march the start line he hugs me and he's not a rah rah rah dude, right? You carry your own thing.

But he leaned over and he said to me, remember all your hard work. And when I tell you that spring, you ever had a plant that's dehydrated and you put it in water and it springs back to life? Like those words gave me energy and it gave me permission to belong and to remember what we had invested in. So I don't even know if I answered your question, Nala, but it just brought me back to those two moments. No, but that's a great way to answer the question.

I wanna kind of take you back in time to a moment that you said was pivotal to, as you say, fueling you towards what you ended up doing. It was such a powerful assertion of pointing out the fact that you ended up hurdling, having grown up in a home built by a woman who's only faced obstacles and hurdles in her life. How much of that, what you internalized growing up, you think actually was, it was inevitable you would be a hurdler. 100%. I keep saying there's an irony and a poeticism to it, and I think

children are sponges, and I think by osmosis, I picked up on my mother's tenacity and there are times where my mother would try and get traction in Canada, assert herself, get a babysitting job. And my dad, as punishment for her trying to make something of herself and do her own self, she was babysitting for a neighbor. And so my dad would take the phone out of the wall and go to work with it. So then what would happen? Well, she can't really communicate with this young child who she's babysitting for. So I saw my mom face that. I was a really young child

before the age of, you know, six, seven years old, around six or seven. I had to stay home alone because the money that my mom made babysitting, she had to pay a babysitter to give me. And there was hardly any money left. And I remember when I saw her crying that day, I remember she was braiding my hair and crying. And she told me, and again, this is a 30 year old woman confiding in her young child, like almost like it was her confidant. And when I saw her crying that day, I remember she was braiding my hair and crying, and she told me, and again, this is a 30-year-old woman confiding in her young child, like almost like it was her confidant. And when I said, mom, what's going on? Why are you crying?

She said, I don't have enough money to pay your babysitter. Everything that I make, I give away. And I said to her, it was my idea, and I remember this, and I said, I'll stay home alone. You can appreciate how devastating and how desperate you have to be as a person to make that call, right? But my mother had to create a system to keep me safe.

Who not to talk to? Who could know when I came home, she'd call, hang up, call again, ring twice, hang up, ring again three times. Okay, that means that's mom. I can answer and she knows I'm home safe. Right? So when you live that, when you see that, I had no choice but to do something with that story, with my mother's life. She came here with dreams that she could not fulfill in that way, but she passed those on to me. Her dream was, again, like I said, so I could

have a dream. And many, many people can relate to that. Many of you listening to me only have the life you live because someone allowed you to stand on their shoulders and see further than you ever thought you could see because of them. Going back to the competitiveness of sport, this drive to be better than others, you asked that question in your lecture.

You say, how do you summon the venom necessary to devour your foes when one of them is someone you love? How do you? So I'd been racing professionally for about a year. And it was after I'd fallen at the Olympics in 2004 in Athens, which was a very devastating outcome for me. But I remember I went to a meet a year later and it was in Lausanne, Switzerland. And I was on fire that day.

But because my body had lost that rhythm, I clipped a hurdle. And so I was leading the race and then I fell back and I hurt my knee. And because I was still living with the ghost of falling at the Olympics a year earlier, which was a very public and very devastating experience, that little spook in Lausanne just took me back, right? It was like trying to banish a ghost. If any of you live with something that's just been devastating, you kind of live with it. The humiliation, the embarrassment, just, you know, that mark in your life that and I remember being we had to go with a circuit.

So you leave Lausanne and then you go to Rome. So now I'm racing in Rome. Remember three nights before I had tripped up again, right? And I remember Bridget Foster Hilton and I keep talking about Bridget. Bridget I love you wherever you are. She's back in Kingston and I remember being terrified. The gun is about to go up. The starting pistol is about to go up on your marks. And Bridget understands that I am spooked. I am about to get into these blocks to try to run for 12 seconds. But she was in the race in Lausanne.

And she understands that I am still frightened by it. And she looks at me and she comes out of her zone. She unzips her masks or whatever she's wearing, her cape. And then she comes to me and she says, she passed me quickly, she's right beside me, she's like, you got this, she's got this. I know you're scared, I know you're spooked, but she's like, you got this, just run your race. And I look at her, I'm like, what? Because it's like there was a compassion, a tenderness that I never offered them.

And I didn't realize that it could be given back to me. She didn't have to do that. I didn't know if I would do that. So when I say about how it took me to summon my edge, that was the moment for me where I'm like, it can't be about hating anybody else. It can't be I need venom. I need bite to be better than anyone. It has to be an internal thing. I need to have that same compassion and empathy and reverence for the women beside me, not just to take them down. But that moment for me was like a switch. Since you mentioned the Athens experience, I do want to ask. So it was 2004, as you said, Olympics.

And you were widely expected to win, but you tripped on that first hurdle. We mention this only to say, the gift of failure. You talk about the gift of failure in your lecture. What does the gift of failure give us that victory cannot? You come with the good, this is why you have this job, Nella. They give you these good questions, girl. Now you're making me think.

So I will say having been a world champion and having been the the Olympic favorite who never was those are two extremes Victory best in the world to like falling out the first hurdle not making it Defeat Failure demands more of you and that's a universal relatable thing. It demands more of you. One, humility. You have to face yourself. What has gone wrong? What you've done wrong? What you've messed up?

And you have to answer for it in a way that winning doesn't demand. It also exposes the people around you. Who is in it because they truly love you and not who's in it because you're rich, because you have the nice car, because you have the gold medal. Who truly loves you for you and who will help you rebuild your house when it's come crashing down?

Is failure required for success? I don't think so. I don't think so. And I'm a mother to... I only have one child, her name is Nova, she's six. I used to think it did. I used to think that my mother's difficulties, the tension of our lives, the tumult of our lives is what allowed me to be great. I realized that's not what it is.

My daughter does not need to not have food in the fridge, does not need to like walk day or night cold or hot to get where she's going. It doesn't require that. But what it does require of me and any of you is to simply model the behavior that we want to see in them. Now, whether or not they're going to repeat it or mimic it or take it all in, you don't know, because I think there's a lot of it that's kind of out of our hands. But all you can do, I think, is really model

and lead by that example. You know, many former athletes have an existential crisis when they leave this way of being. Obviously, one example that comes to mind is George Foreman when he lost Rumble in the jungle. He left boxing and fell into a really deep depression. I'm wondering, when we define ourselves by such incredible achievement, what do we become, or what do

you become when you leave athletics? Good question. When I will say you can get addicted to the applause, to the gaze and the adulation, not everyone, not every athlete, but then when you leave that field of play, when you leave the arena, life gets quiet. So you have to be really sure about who you are. So I would caution anybody, any athlete, don't define yourself by that title, that championship,

that ring, that medal. You have to define what that is for you, and it cannot be a tangible thing. Listen, all my medals in my house, they're there, they're cute, my daughter doesn't bat an eye at them, they're dusty, some of them are rusty, right? They fade is my point. But what are you left with? What am I left with? And for me was always integrity, who I'm representing, knowing who I am. This is so relevant to everyone. And you are so wise on this. But you mentioned your inner

critical voice. Did that voice ever come close to making you quit? Who wrote that? That's such a good one. Get out of my head. No. But you have to understand that that voice, inner voice, can be really, really loud. And I knew that I could not stop because I didn't want the end to look like that. I didn't want my chapter in athletics or sport to be, you know, Athens Olympics on the ground. And so I went on to have another long career, another nine years after that, which is a

life long lifespan for Hurdler, but it's because I didn't want to end there because I didn't want that to be where it stopped. On ideas, you've been listening to The Power of Dreams by Perdita Felicien. Thank you so much. Thank you. What an inspiring presentation. Thank you.

This was the fifth and last in a series of talks this season produced in association with Crow's Theatre in Toronto. This installment of ideas at Crow's Theatre is produced by Pauline Holdsworth and Greg Kelly. Special thanks to Chris Abraham, Paolo Santoluccia, Katie Pounder, Ryan Borschach, Jeremy Hutton, Sean McPherson and the entire Crow's Theatre team. For ideas our, our technical production, Danielle DeValle and Adam Atchikon. Our web

producer is Lisa Ayuso, senior producer, Nikola Lukcic. Greg Kelly is the executive producer of Ideas, and I'm Nala Ayed. Thank you so much for being here today. Applause.