feeling when you woke up that morning to go and run that race?

Well, the morning, well, that's, again, that's gloom.

The morning, I woke up at about 9.30.

I had ran, we had ran, when we competed in 1996, there was four rounds in the race.

So you had the heats and the quarterfinals, which is the day before.

And then, of course, the next day would be the semifinals and finals.

I woke up the morning that we're scheduled to run the semifinals in the evening, and there was a bombing.

What prompted you to be so honest about that at that time?

It's deeply embedded in what you do, and it seems evident in what you've been doing since you retired from running.

Yeah, I mean, I think that, like Katrina, you know, I try to stay close.

I mean, I'm a sports analyst.

I'm actually going in to see my media coach tonight, and I'll be on CBC next week for the Commonwealth Games.

So from that perspective, I definitely try to engage and speak to the athletes.

I'm consulting with a few of these guys.

And, of course, you know, I'm available, you know, summer, winter, whatever sport it is that you're doing, because, you know, a lot of this becomes, you know, like mindset.

But, you know, what does life look like when you take lessons from the track field or lessons from 100 meters and pour it into your friendships?

And then you thought of your uncle Keith, who had been a mentor to you as well when you talked about people important in your family and how proud he would be watching TV only to learn, sadly, that he had actually passed away the night before and they hadn't told you that he didn't actually see, except maybe from heaven, you win your race and that he was so important to you.

You know what? Wow, John, that's awesome.

I'm glad you read the book and you brought that up.

Yeah, I mean...

In our sport.

So track and field is an individual sport, just like tennis or golf.

It's just that we also are controlled by governing bodies.

And do you think things have come along since that time you were talking about a time, you know, back in the 90s and so on and before? Do you think things have come along? Have we made progress?

[laughs]

So when we were together on the team, we were all kinda ...

It was Chara's first year, Yorkie's first year.

Savvy, I think he'd just gotten there too, and, and Chara wanted to do two-a-day skates, and after pra- he always talked about after games when we wouldn't win, like, "We need to work harder." And, like, every time that Chara would start in on that, then it would, I think it was Yorkie would start, or Savvy, I'm pretty sure it was Yorkie, would be like, "Well, you know what? I, I, I think we work pretty hard.

I, I think we might work too hard.

Like, I think we need to take some more time off." And then Savvy would be like, "Yeah, I agree with Yorkie.

Yeah, I think we should take more, some more time off." [laughs]

Um-