Transcript: Amber Balcaen on Player's Own Voice podcast

Anastasia: You can measure sports a hundred ways, but if you want to start with bums in seats, NASCAR is a beast. 60,000 people will show up at races and tens of millions tune in over the season. Baseball may be America's pastime, but NASCAR speaks to the heartland like nothing else. So it's great to see a woman, a Winnipegger, no less, in the thick of it. Amber Balcaen is not only the first Canadian woman to win a NASCAR sanctioned race, bombing around the track in her custom red and white car, She's also proof positive that there's no substitute for good old fashioned hustle.

It's Player's Own Voice. I'm Anastasia Bucsis.

[music]

This is such a stupid question, but when you're turning left a lot, which obviously, I did as a speed skater, does that make your body compensate in weird ways?

Amber Balcaen:  Yes, it actually does. It's not a bad question at all. Funny story:  when my husband and I started dating my dad and I were walking, and we both kind of walk with a lean like this, and he's like 'Why does your dad walk like that? Oh my God, you walk like that, too!'  And I was like, Yeah, I think it's from racing all these years. We just,  we're so used to turning left that automatically our right side just goes up because we're used to kind of being pinned down on our left side.

Anastasia:  I probably walk that way too. Not that I ever went the speeds you did. Do you get injured on one side more than others or is it really just like compensation? 

Amber Balcaen:  No- I mean, when it comes to injuries  the injury, usually it comes down to like neck or head injuries. That's been my case. Most of the time it's like concussions and things like that. Two years ago, I actually had a really bad crash and ended up in a