From Durham, USA
(May 18, 2022) – For our first athlete profile of 2022 (and the 35th in the “Getting to Know…” series) we catch up with Canadian skeleton athlete Jane Channell. Jane is a two-time Olympian (2018, 2022) and has been a fixture on the IBSF World Cup tour since 2015 where she’s won two silvers and two bronzes in her career, with a best overall finish of third (2015/2016). She also has a silver medal in the inaugural Skeleton Mixed Team competition in the 2020 World Championships alongside Dave Greszczyszyn.
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Slider: Jane Channell
Team: Canada Skeleton
Home track: Whistler
Hometown: North Vancouver, BC, Canada
We’ll start off like we do with all of these: What’s your favorite track on tour?
Honestly? I really, really like Altenberg, and I also really like Sigulda!
Okay, so two tracks that almost nobody has ever said, so I have to ask…why?
I like the driving tracks. Coming from Whistler I like the speed and the pressures, I really struggle with the gliding tracks. That’s not my forte, I’m not a big fan of Igls, I’m not a fan of St. Moritz. Really not a big fan of Beijing, that’s a big glider’s track, too. So I really like the ones where you have to work and you feel the pressures and not exactly “muscle” your way down the tracks, but you have to be brave finding that fast line.
I will say as well, I really like Königssee. I really hope it can get back on tour, and get fixed up and everything. That one by far is really my favorite on tour!
Unrelated to the track itself, what is your favorite town on tour to visit?
It’s got to be Königssee! I love that town, I love the area. It’s honestly my happy place on tour. I really wish we could go there last year, but I feel so fortunate to have been there that last year that it was operating. I hope it comes back.
Is there anywhere in particular you like to visit while you’re there?
I’m such a nerd…there’s a rock shop right on the lake in town and I absolutely love it! I love going down to the lake there, feeding the ducks and just the feeling…that feeling of being small in something that’s just so grand there is one of my favorite things.
What’s at the rock shop?
Just rocks…just rocks! I like rocks!
What’s your favorite place to visit when you’re not doing skeleton-related activities?
That’s hard…we never really went on many vacations growing up, so most of the traveling I’ve done in my life is through sport, at first through track and field and softball, then through skeleton. So to be quite honest, because I was always away from home my favorite place to go is probably home.
Did you live in North Vancouver most of your life?
Yeah, I grew up and was born and raised there. I lived in southern Alberta for a little bit before moving back with my family when I was still in elementary school. I moved out for university at SFU [Simon Fraser University], which is just outside of Vancouver in Burnaby.
Everyone has their own way they get into the sport, how did you get into skeleton?
It was back during the 2002 Salt Lake City Olympics, it was on television and I was watching with my grandpa. Just like you’d see on TV there were a few sleds that zipped by, and he turned to me with this look of utter disgust and says “They’re crazy!” So that kind of planted the seed.
Then with Vancouver hosting the Olympics, with the facility right there, it was just really the turning point to be at the right place at the right time with life events, I moved up to Whistler without ever having tried skeleton before and said “this is what I’m going to do!”
You’d mentioned you’d played softball and ran track and field, what did you do in those sports?
I was a sprinter in track, so the shorter the better for me. I did the 60m, 100m, 200m…I got away without ever having to run a 400m in university which never happens, so thank goodness because that would have sucked! I also threw javelin for fun in dual meets, mostly because of my softball background.
For me, softball was always my fun “escape” sort of sport. Where as track and field I was quite competitive with it. I was recruited out of high school to play softball as well, but the seasons conflicted so I sort of had to pick and choose. But because I’d red-shirted an indoor season for track and field, I was able to finish collegiate career being on the softball team as well. I was a freshman senior!
What position did you play in softball?
I was originally brought on to be a pinch runner, but I ended up playing some outfield as well. Mostly right field.
Tell us about your cat!
Oh my goodness! Well Twiggy is a sphinx, I got her when she was just six months old. She was “on sale” because she was six months old and the last of the litter. She was such a little raisin, she was so cute and I could not walk away without her.
She’s been amazing, she’s my best friend and is such a great travel buddy. She’s like a snow bird in that she will stay with me in the summer, then goes and stays with my parents in Vancouver in the winter, so she never really gets the full effect of a cold winter. She’s definitely lucky in that sense.
She’s the best, she loves to curl up and snuggle. Being out in Calgary, I’ve been here for nearly nine years, it’s like she’s my only family out here. So it’s amazing to have her out here.
She makes friends wherever she goes, and people just know her! She’s got a great personality…and honestly I wasn’t a fan of cats before I got her and I was definitely more of a dog person. But just with the lifestyle I couldn’t have had a dog, so looking things up and having met a sphinx growing up, they’re one of the most dog-like breeds out there. So it just made sense!
The season has been over for a bit, and you’re getting back into training, what did you do with your downtime?
I work! Plain and simple I work. I put in a lot of hours, I work for an engineering consulting firm in their environmental sector. I work in the health and safety department…which has me back in school! I’ve missed learning so much, and I’m working on my certificate to get certified on a health and safety professional there, which is super cool. It’s always changing, each day is different, and the people I work with area amazing. I’ve been really fortunate to have found them…I met them at a job fair and I pretty much just glued myself to them and were like “You’re hiring me!” I can work from wherever as long as I have internet so I can work while I’m on tour as well, and I’m really fortunate to have them.
Skeleton athletes have some great helmet designs, what inspired yours?
The most recent one for Beijing was a compilation of all of the designs I’ve had before. The artist, Ian Johnson, is based out of Vancouver and is fantastic. I just give him a few ideas and he just runs with it.
I had no idea what I wanted to get for the Beijing helmet, and was like “here, do it”, and Ian came back with this awesome idea. I had wanted something blunt on the front because some of my past helmets have been a bit hard to tell with the cameras and everything. So he came up with the maple leaf on the front. On one side is a dragon, which is what I had on my original World Cup helmet. It’s a tribute to me being half Japanese, so it’s a Japanese dragon. On the other side I have a phoenix, that’s also a tribute to the art he did with the purple phoenix. It summarizes my sliding career a bit where like a phoenix you have to rise from the ashes! As well as there’s two pinstripes that go down the back, each represent the two Olympics I’ve been in. One has the 2018 year and one has the 2022.
(Photos courtesy Jane Channell)
In the dragon and the phoenix, both are kind of glowing with glowing hearts, which is a tribute to the first Olympic helmet with the “with glowing hearts”, which was a tribute to the 2010 Vancouver Games! On the back there’s also a broom and some paw prints for Twiggy.
On the front as well there’s a set of wings and a number 7 for my past boyfriend who was a big motivating factor for me to pursue something and challenge myself to dream big and then dream even bigger.
Pre-race music: What do you have in your headphones?
It kind of morphs and changes through the years, but lately over the past couple of years…I love The Killers! I can’t get enough of them. They have a live album, and I have that pretty much on repeat. So if you see me bopping around, it’s probably The Killers.
Did you know “Mr. Brightside” has been on the charts for over 300 weeks in the UK?!
That’s incredible, and that’s a long time! I can understand why…you know how Spotify has the thing where it tells you you’re in the top whatever percentage of listeners? I’m always in the top half of a percent of their listeners…and I don’t know if I should be proud of that or not, but I love it!
What’s been your favorite sliding sport memory?
I think one of the most special times for me was when I placed second in Whistler (Nov. 24, 2017) and having all my friends and my family there and getting to share that moment with them was just out of this world. Being able to share Pyeongchang with them, too, with my first Olympics was really special.
But there’s been so many. Waling in an opening ceremony in both Olympics…but there’s one that probably stands out.
We were en route to Pyeongchang and we had missed our connecting flight in Beijing on the way to Pyeongchang. So we were stuck there for 15 hours and the next flight wasn’t until the morning. So the whole skeleton crew and some of the bobsledders all went out into town. We saw Tiananmen Square, we found a night market, and it was just like we were actual tourists and not athletes. And it was just one of the most incredible times for me.
Do you have a particular race or anything you’d like another shot at?
Probably every single one? Yeah…every single one probably. There’s always something in every race you think you could have done better or you want to go back and try again. The second Altenberg race of last year was very, very disappointing. It was my first time ever not getting a second run in a race. I know there’s nothing to be ashamed of, but man that one was low.
Guest question: Leslie Stratton (SWE Skeleton): If you could combine any start ramp, track, and outrun together, what would be your ideal track?
This sounds like an awful idea but it would give me all sorts of advantages and everything: I’d say the start ramp of Altenberg, mixed with the speed of Whistler, and the technicality of Königssee. Definitely NOT the outrun of Igls, hard no there…I would say the outrun of St. Moritz, because you always make it to the top! And with the smoothness and the “woosh” of St. Moritz, as well!
