Player's Own Voice podcast: All aboard for big air with Laurie Blouin

Picture two radically different sports. Snowboarding and golf, for example. Nothing in common, you say?

Laurie Blouin might persuade you otherwise. When she's doing her slopestyle or big air events — flying and spinning at stomach-lurching speed and altitude, stomping the touch down — she says that's the very same feeling she gets when a round of golf comes together on the links. Mortal athletes are saying "Really? Corkscrewing through the air at 50 kph…that's like nailing a seven iron?" 

Blouin clarifies: It's a mental thing, in the quantitative sense. As she tells Anastasia Bucsis on Player's Own Voice podcast, it's all about doing just the right amount of thinking. Not being relaxed and absent, and definitely not overthinking the process. Just hitting that mental sweet spot.

Blouin knows what she knows. She's already got the silver medal from Pyeongchang to prove it.

Fresh off an agonizing fourth-place finish in slopestyle, Blouin has the balanced attitude in the bag as she waits for next weekend's big air to begin.She's proud of her opening event performance but a little disappointed to miss the medals.And that's just about the right amount of thinking to do at this point.

So now it's on to part two of Blouin's mission in Beijing. She's keeping herself safe, relaxed, and ready to soar.

Negative tests, positive attitude.

Like the CBC Sports' Player's Own Voice essay series, POV podcast lets athletes speak to Canadians about issues from a personal perspective.  

A transcript is available for our hard of hearing audience. To listen to Laurie Blouin or any of the guests from earlier episodes, and more Canadian athletes throughout the 2022 Winter Olympics and Paralympics, head to CBC Listen — or wherever else you get