Jeff Pain

0:29Thank you very much. Pleasure. Appreciate you being here today. Pleasure. The kid, a room full of screaming children for you this morning. Yes, okay. Getting nominated to the skeleton team for the third time. Third time, yeah. Amazing. And now you don't have the guy that beat you last time for gold on the team. So it's all yours this time. Yeah, well. Hopefully that works out. Take it home. I heard they told you you were, you couldn't do Bob Slud, you couldn't do lose. You're like, but anyone can do skeleton. Yeah, skeleton took anybody. And you seem to have excelled at the sport. So it worked out quite well for you. Yeah, that's right. Yeah. And then you got Oscar, is that true? Yeah, born in Anchorage. When did you come to Canada? Oh, I, before I was one, it was pretty, really. Oh, so you are Canadian at the end of the day. Yeah. Now tell me about the history of skeleton. I know it started like long, long time ago, but it didn't become an Olympic sport until very recently. Yeah, we were in the Olympics, I think back in 42 in Semirites.

1:16Okay. Where it was more crusted, when it was skeleton. But yeah, back in, oh two, we got back into the Olympics. So I've been here ever since. You've been doing this for a long time. So what were you doing with skeleton before? It was an Olympic sport. Just World Cups and Europe kind of thing. Yeah, I kind of started doing skeleton aid because it was a great sport and great people. But with the thought that it would be an Olympic sport someday. And there was rumors that was talking about that. We almost got into Nagano. And then, so I was, I was learning my craft prior to the inception in L2 and time and worked out really well. Nice. Tell me about the angry beaver. Yeah, it's amazing. It's amazing. The other you're the raging beaver. I'm sorry about that. It was an idea that I had after seeing one of the American's helmets in L2.

2:02He had the Eagle, the Eagle, and I thought well, being having a Canadian sense of humor, I thought an angry beaver would be funny and I told some friends about it. And he said, hey, that's an awesome idea. Well, we'll get it painted for you. So after I picked my helmet for L6, they said they ended up to get painted and the raging beaver was born. And now you can buy t-shirts with the raging beaver at your website, Jeff Payne.ca for those who have been. Jeff Payne.ca, your, my wife on his new site, marriageandmetals.ca.com. So is that a book that you're writing? What's going on with that? Yeah, my wife and I wrote a book and it's a rough draft right now and finished copy of the available March 1st. Oh. It's called, right after the Olympics. Good time, man. The business of marriage and metals. And what is it about just your lives kind of thing?

2:48Yeah, our journey. The ups and downs, the good, the bads all through the last, well, really the last 26 years, that's along with each other, but really kind of the focus is the period of our marriage in marriage for 12 years. So how skeleton is influenced that and how a good job and a bad job I did and how we managed to somehow make it out the other end and have a great marriage with a great family. That's great. Well, it sounds like you're ending your career there, how we made it up the other end. Is this your last game? Oh, I always joke, this is my last game is in skeleton. And my wife says this is his last game is for his wife. Oh, yeah, that's great. So yeah, it'll be my last one, because unless I take up curling in my later years.

3:33Well, that's a good one too. Yeah. A little easier on the body, I think. Yeah, probably. Great sport. Well, actually, here skeleton is the safest of the three out of the lose Bob's play in skeleton. For sure, yeah. Skeleton is by far the safest. See most people think opposite of that. Right. You know, just because we're head first, people think, oh, it must be totally good. Well, and there's no protection, at least you have the sleigh on other sides of you. Right. In our sport, our center of gravity is really, really low. So when we do crash, most often we can roll back on and continue so we don't grind to a halt. Which is where it really gets painful and it gets burnt and all those sorts of things. In the luge, you know, very high center of gravity, very easy to tip over. In the Bob's side, you have a hundred kilos piece of equipment that tries to kill you on the

4:22way down if you're not right side officer. Fair enough. Yeah. You took home silver last time. Yeah, it was your first Olympic medal. And I'm assuming Olympic medals are a little different than a World Cup medal. There's a bigger stage for everything. Is the quest to get that first medal as important to you as winning another one or does it become like an addiction? To just keep winning those medals? No, it's certainly not an addiction to win a medal. It's certainly something I train for and strive for. I want to do. I'm constantly on the hunt and the search to become better. Whatever it is I'm doing, whether it's skeleton, whether it's being a father, whether it's being a husband, I'm always trying to be better at what I do. And the Olympics are just a stage where I get to, in skeleton, test myself.

5:07There's a lot of other tests that come in life, but for me in skeleton, the Olympics is the biggest stage I can test myself at. Are you excited to go to any other events? I know you're excited to compete, but are you going to other things? Are you going to go see other stuff? Oh yeah, I mean as soon as my event is over, I will go to every event I possibly can. I'm a total sport addict. The aerials are awesome, I'll miss that. But any of the freestaws skiing, my favorite event called the Olympics is the Short Track Relay. Oh yeah? Team Relay? The speed's getting. Short track's getting an amazing race to watch, so I love that one. Cool, well Jeff Fain, thank you very much. Good luck. Thanks.