The 2019 Skate Canada grand prix underscores the new normal on the national figure skating scene. Today's skaters are younger, and to the casual fan, less familiar than the stars of recent vintage.

With one exception: Kirsten Moore-Towers. The reigning Canadian Pairs champion is keenly aware that she alone has yet to retire from her star-studded generation. Does that make her wistful? Not at all. For 'KMT', it's all about being grateful to still be at the apex of her sport, still loving competition.

She joins host Anastasia Bucsis to talk about the maturing athlete's changing relationships with coaches and partners. Kirsten is a fierce competitor on the ice, and a constantly thinking athlete the rest of the time. She has a growing desire to help shape the sometimes unhealthy body image (and eating disorder-prone) culture of her sport. Moore believes we can avoid the messaging that all too often accompanies rewarding female figure skaters for being lithe and lean and preformative in skimpy outfits.

At the ripe old age of 27, the veteran has a plan to leave her sport better than when she found it.

Dylan Moscovitch enjoyed a long and storied career as a pairs figure skater, but he's in his early thirties now, and even though he's still a young man, he knew two years ago that he was done with competition.

So Dylan did some reflecting: he had spent half a lifetime learning how to be an elite athlete. What could he do with those hard-won skills in act two of his life? Physical performance? Check. Ability to memorize, rehearse and sell gestures and moods? Check. He was comfortable in front of audiences and clusters of judges. He figured it out pretty quickly- he had nailed most of the core skills for professional acting.

But as he says to host Anastasia Bucsis, there was an unexpected wrinkle. Athletes are trained to perform with confidence, while actors need to perform with vulnerability. How do you learn that?

Reinventing yourself is what it's all about on this week's podcast.

It is hard to think of a more famous 9.84 seconds in Canadian sports. It took a lifetime of confident concentration to bring sprinter Donovan Bailey to the line for the race that made him king of the world.

This week, host Anastasia Bucsis explores self-assurance with Bailey. Without that confidence, track history could very well have been different.

Bucsis and Bailey zero in on one race to talk it through, because the thing we may forget, looking back at his triumphant 100 metres in the 1996 Olympics, was just how agonising the race was for competitors. It took an eternity to get underway. False start followed false start. The disqualified Linford Christie even refused to clear the blocks for a while. But through it all, Bailey kept his composure and his certainty of victory.

He gives full credit for that confidence to his parents. Which is not to say they were stroking his ego. On the contrary, when Bailey was breaking world records, his folks often didn't even choose to attend, and both loving parents maintained a cool attitude about their son's growing fame and accomplishments.

No Canadian has seen greater Olympic glory than Marnie McBean. But the rowing legend says one of her most memorable moments came at the Sydney games, where she was injured out of competition. The support she got from her fellow athletes and from Team Canada, changed her outlook dramatically, and made the Olympic movement the enduring focus of Marnie McBean's life.

Canada's Chef du Mission for the Tokyo Olympics comes into studio to share her understanding of Olympic sport culture with host Anastasia Bucsis. Beyond the individual insights she has picked up from years of mentoring, McBean has invested serious thought in the areas where the Olympics struggle. How do host cities justify the cost of building so much infrastructure? What is the work that still needs to be done to keep athletes safely away from steroid use? Are we any nearer clarity in the shifting sands of gender and competition?

The chat raises more questions than answers, but the questions matter if sustainable Olympic games are the goal.

Rosie Maclennan is the only person to have won back to back Olympic gold medals in Trampoline. The way she sees it, that's history. You can't change history, can't take it away, no matter what you do in the future. So when it comes to Maclennan's approach to Tokyo 2020, call it a threepeat if you want, but that won't change her plan of attack: to be the best she has ever been on trampoline.

Which is not to say that Rosie makes light of her legacy. Maclennan is proud of the fact that a whole generation of young athletes joined the sport because of the example she set. She tells host Anastasia Bucsis about her work with Right to Play, The Gist, and other female sport initiatives. The involvement goes well beyond lending her name to good causes. Maclennan recently earned a masters degree, focusing on Athlete's rights and responsibilities, and she ploughs into the work with serious purpose.

Maclennan is also extremely persuasive on the matter of physical literacy in Canada's schools. She's at the peak of her game, in every sense… The concussion-like injury of several years ago is no longer a problem and a recent foot fracture is healing nicely.

Rosie has written about her recovery from injury for CBC Sports' Player's Own Voice essay series.

When Battle of the Blades contestants throw it down on the rink, they are not chasing personal riches. They are in it for their favourite charitable cause, which sounds like a perfect summary of Sheldon Kennedy's life work.

The former NHL player, who is strapping on toe picks for the first time for BOTB, is quick to say his life and career was permanently scarred by the sexual abuse he suffered as a youth. Before Sheldon, nobody talked about coaches as predators. And, in fact, the silence surrounding the issue nearly killed him.

But Sheldon Kennedy has changed the world, and his own life story, by advocating for victims and training more than one and a half million sport volunteers and workers to end the abuse.

How's he doing now? Well, he's a new farmer and a new father and he's having fun on the new skates. Host Anastasia Bucsis checks in with that rare hockey legend whose greatest work is happening off the ice.

Keegan Messing is serious about having fun.

His goal is Olympic gold in figure skating, but that doesn't stop him from dreaming up a new Olympic contest. His idea is three kinds of skaters — speed, hockey, and figures — all duking it out in tests of overall skating supremacy. Unlikely, but fun idea, right?

He is no stranger to unlikely plans. Born in rural Alaska, in a home with no running water, a young Keegan watched a DVD of Canadian figure skating great Elvis Stojko and knew that a men's singles Olympic gold medal was exactly what he wanted. He quickly figured out that Team Canada was going to be his best way to get there and having a Canadian mother opened the eligibility door.

Like many Alaskans, the 27-year-old is at home in the outdoors. He can fix his own cars and dirt bikes with the best of them. His career makes him a jet-setter, but his heart sings when he's way off the grid. What sets Messing apart is the power he brings to performance on the ice. Coming up in the Patrick Chan years, Keegan's intense strength and jumping ability almost feels like a throwback to a previous era.

He is in the driver's seat now as Canada's top male skater. Working hard and having fun every step of the way.

There are contradictions in most athlete's careers, but Canadian professional bike racer Michael Woods embodies a doozy. In the last year, he has posted career highlight results in the world's biggest races, even as he was battling injury and personal tragedy at home. Grand Tour racing is famously a sport whose athletes embrace suffering, but even so, Woods has found a way to harness setbacks and managed to train and race even harder through them.

He gained the respect of thousands of racing fans, along with a lot of sympathetic winces with his performance at this year's Tour de France.

He tells host, Anastasia Bucsis, that he picked up some of his mental techniques from Wayne Gretzky. He describes literal out of body experiences that he has had while winning some of the most gruelling mountain races in the world. Certainly a lot of years of punishing practice in the saddle and on the running track went into the mix as well.

Those early years as a super elite track runner set Woods apart in other ways. For most of the peloton- winning a Tour de France is the dream …but as an early career runner- it's Olympic glory that fuels the fire for Michael Woods. Barring disaster- he has already marked a big X on his calendar for Tokyo in 2020. Oh- and about that nice smelling Peloton? Cologne. Plenty of it splashed around, especially on the Giro D'Italia. Who knew?

Four time Olympian Sam Edney is Canada's best-ever male luger. He recently peeled off his speed suit for the last time, and is about to begin a new sporting career, as high performance manager for the national team.

This week, even before doping concerns swirled around Canada's canoeing hopes, host Anastasia Bucsis and Sam Edney sat down to talk about how Russian doping had such a dismaying effect on Edney's peak competing years.

His doping rollercoaster began with a disappointing fourth place team finish in Sochi. Three years later, temporary redemption came with the announcement that due to positive results on the Russian team, Canada would become bronze winners after all.

The sucker punch was delivered mere days before the Pyeongchang winter Olympics, when that decision was reversed. The Canadian luge team strongly felt that they had been cheated of the same medal twice!

But whatever else the eve-of-competition setback did to the team mindset, Edney and his teammates regrouped and raced to a Silver medal at the 2018 Olympics.

Now, the new High Performance manager can look ahead. His focus is on development, of the new luge track in Calgary, and the new crop of Canadian hopefuls.

Rebecca Johnston is eyeing a fourth trip to the Olympics. She has already helped deliver two golds and a silver medal. She has lived the experience from within as the pro game patiently built over the last ten years — but she has never seen a setback quite like the collapse of the CWHL. Host Anastasia Bucsis takes time with the all-star forward to talk about establishing one permanent, professional, equitable league. Having high quality refs, skate sharpeners on site, and some kind of broadcast schedule would be a nice bonus.

As one of the premier players in hockey, Sudbury's Johnston has no shortage of ideas about the game's needs. As she sees it, away from the Olympics, and the Clarkson Cup, the women's game is played out in media silence. It is too easy to ignore what we cannot see or hear.