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Alexandra Ianculescu

My Purpose

By InnerVoice

October 19^th, 2018

Starting from Scratch

I was born in Romania, and we immigrated to Canada in 2001. It’s impossible to forget because we flew on September 11. We were flying over Greenland when the second plane hit. I remember sitting in the window seat, next to my mom, and the screens on the plane were showing the live feed. She thought it was some sort of joke. Our plane got turned around and we returned to Europe until September 28, when we were finally able to make the journey again. The craziness didn’t end there, though, because in all the mayhem our bags never arrived in Toronto. When some things did find their way to us, a lot of it was moldy and needed to be thrown out. We literally started rebuilding our lives from scratch, in a new country, and at that stage I spoke Romanian, German, and French, but didn’t speak any English.

I was unpacking one of the bags that did arrive, and I remember pulling out some medals that belonged to my mom. I asked her about them, and she told me that she was a speed skater, and was Romanian national champion in 1986. She signed me up for our local club, and, wearing a baggy Toronto Cyclones shirt and my mom’s grey tights that she still had from her career, I won my first age group race. Mom took the lead on most things, but both of my parents found time to drive me around four days a week, to Brampton and downtown Toronto, just to get ice time. At age 16, I made the switch to long track skating and left my family behind in Toronto. I moved to Calgary to pursue my Olympic dreams. I always knew where I wanted to go, but I never realized there were stages to get there. I was an athlete, and I wanted to get to the Olympics, and somehow I was going to make that happen.

National Pride

I’m proud to represent Romania because it’s where I was born, and I do it for the people. But I’m also really proud to be Canadian, and I’m sad that I had to switch countries due to political issues within the sport. I was a Canadian national team member, and national champion. I remember my first World Cup race in the 2014/15 season; stepping onto the ice with the maple leaf on my back and the iconic Canadian skin suit on - I was thinking “Frick yeah, I’m part of one of the best teams in speed skating.” It was an incredible feeling.

Switching nationalities was the biggest turning point in my career.

I’d had two years of poor results, but in the lead up to PyeongChang I had the best summer I’d had in a long time. I was training with the Chinese national team and the former world record holder was my training partner. I was keeping up with her in everything we did, and I realized I was starting to get in the best shape I’d ever been in. I was stronger and bigger - I’d added around 15 pounds in muscle - and I felt good and healthy. The problem was I became obsessed with physical training; I hadn’t been to the ‘mental gym’ all year. I was stronger but I wasn't fit. Strength and fitness go hand-in-hand, and you can’t have one without the other and expect to perform. I had always achieved my goals in the past, so with the physical success I was now having, I started putting expectations on myself to succeed. It’s something I’d never done before. I thought my past experiences would help me avoid performance anxiety; little did I know how crippling my own expectations would be. I skated the qualifying time for the Olympics, but missed out on officially qualifying when, at the last event, two skaters moved ahead of me in the ranking system.

I'd missed out on the Olympics.

A little while later: a reprieve. I was getting ready to fly to New Zealand to do a photo shoot for Coors Light when I got a phone call saying that two skaters had failed drug tests. I was at a payphone in Frankfurt airport when the Olympic Committee asked me, “Do you want to go to the Olympics?” I’ve never cried so hard in my entire life. I had to decide between going to the Olympics, or starting to pay off my pre-Olympic skating debt of $55,000 (as I have no sponsors). It was a bittersweet moment because you can’t really sharpen your knife that close to competition, and I really wanted to pay off a big chunk of that debt.

I decided to make 10-year-old Alex happy and go to the Olympics. I went and had an amazing time.

The Man Who Changed my Life

I am fortunate to have met Gregg Planert at World Junior Championships in China in 2008. He is the man that forever changed my life. A few years after we met, I was debating whether to continue speed skating when he pulled me aside and asked if I wanted to work with him. I accepted immediately. Gregg’s best man at his wedding was former Japanese National and Olympic team coach, Teramasu Osada, so we decided to head to Japan to escape the routine that had me considering quitting the sport. I spent the summer training in Japan with Tomomi Okazaki, Tomomi Shimizu, and Osada. We had an unreal summer of cycling, dry-land training, stair climbing, and running up Mount Fuji in beautiful weather. It was truly an eye opening experience training with Okazaki, who is a legend of the sport. She was the first training partner that truly taught me how to be a better athlete, and person. After that summer, my times kept dropping, and I climbed the Canadian rankings quickly.

Gregg has been working at the Olympic Oval since 1987. He is competition director at the Oval, and coaches me before his morning meetings, during his lunch, or out of his ‘vacation’ hours. He was a speed skater himself, and his passion for the sport runs deep. As a former national team coach, Canadian high-performance committee member, and race director at multiple Olympics, I am grateful for his in-depth knowledge, both on and off the ice. I am thankful to call him my best friend, in-town-dad, mentor and coach. Team Gregg finally went to PyeongChang in 2018, and now we’re working on 2022 & 2026.

Rock Bottom

During the period where I thought I wasn’t going to the Olympics, I hit a huge wall. I didn’t know it at the time, but I was at rock bottom, full-on depressed. I went home to Toronto for three weeks and moped around. I didn’t skate at all for about a month and a half. When I’m in a dark place I try to accept it and acknowledge what’s going on. For those three weeks I just let it happen, knowing that it would pass. It’s easier to say that now, but in the moment I felt that it had become a way of life; to wish something bad would happen to you, to self-sabotage and end everything that was good in your life. Eventually, it started to subside and I felt like it was time to take charge again. I slowly started to skate again.

In March, after the Olympics had ended and the season wound down, I decided to redo my one, five and ten year goals. I was sitting in a cafe in Toronto, and I started by asking myself a simple question: what makes you happy? I don’t know why, but the first thing I wrote down was cycling. What the fuck? It came out of nowhere, but why wouldn’t I give it a go? I didn’t know at the time that I needed a break from skating, but had I continued, I think it would have completely destroyed my love for the sport. The cycling epiphany worked out perfectly, because my talent agent was trying to convince me to go to Vancouver for a month to do some modelling. I took my bike, and went to the velodrome.

I’ve never loved something as much as I love skating, but this was the closest thing. I remember being at the track and thinking: what is this? I’d taken some time off from skating but I still had power in my legs, and to be on a track bike and feel the pure power translate directly was exhilarating. I can brag; I’m a really good technical skater, but I learned how to cheat my way through my technique. I’ve never used my power to my full potential. In track cycling, if you don’t use your full power you just don’t go anywhere. It was the first time where I’ve put everything, my whole body, into something. I felt so strong and thought: I need to do this! I called Gregg and he said: “you need to follow your dreams.” I feel like I’m not going to grow as a human if I don't make the switch to cycling now. Plus, I have another four years until the next Winter Olympics.

I needed to do this for myself.

“Don't give up when you are in a dark place; as bad as it seems, the positive outcome on the other side will outweigh the bad times. It's here where you truly learn about yourself, and grow as a person - not when it’s all easy going and the sun shines.”

Finding my purpose

It’s funny because as an athlete you have an identity, and everybody relates to you based on your sport. Even though my car license plate says SPDSKTR, there’s so much more to an athlete than the sport you do. That’s just a chapter in your life, and I think it’s important to not fully immerse yourself in only being an athlete because at any time it can be taken away from you. I’m actually shocked that I got to where I am because I feel like I never gave 100% to speed skating - I was just so passionate about so many other things. Even from a young age I had skating, and art, and a whole range of other sports and hobbies that I felt made me well-rounded. Could I have done better at the Olympics if I was solely committed to speed skating? No, I know I wouldn’t have because it would actually be detrimental to me personally. I need to do more than one thing, it's how I function. I usually fully load my plate with more than I can chew, and just chew faster. It works for me.

I’m in a constant state of growth, so whether something is good or bad, I always try to figure out what it teaches me in that moment. Something I’ve learned through sport is emotional management and physiology. I was taught how to deal with things in real-life and in business. Through my experiences - good and bad - I can now help people around me by giving them something to think about. I can challenge people to become better humans in their world, and have them see a different perspective to situations. I’m grateful that I went through all the shit because now I can openly talk about it, and help people, which might actually be my purpose in the world.

Tokyo 2020

I’m committing myself to cycling for two years and I’m going to aim for the Tokyo Olympics. Whether I make it or not, I’ll come back to skating even stronger than I’ve been, and then look to 2022 and 2026. I needed this change; I don’t want to slowly die from emotional failure anymore. I want to be healthy, mentally and physically, and set goals that scare me and push me in a good way. This period has also given me space to work on my personal business, which is online personal training. I’ve been sitting on it for about two years, but the whole idea is to be trained by an Olympian. There are plenty of personal trainers and Instagram trainers out there and they have beautiful bodies, but I don’t think they’ve really experienced the super-highs or super-lows as a high-performance or world-class athlete. Going through that, you learn a lot about how the body and mind works, and you learn how to be in touch with your emotions and your gut. I want to bring a holistic training program to the world which has physical, mental and nutritional elements sprinkled in, as well as a consulting part where I give back to the younger athletes of all sport, in areas I wish I had access to as a young adult, and even on the international stage.

Footnotes

Words by Alexandra Ianculescu. Photos by Matt Clark (Stirl and Rae Media Haus) and as attributed, Edited by Cody Royle, Published by Travis McKenzie, Copyright NTSQ Sports Group Inc.

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FootNotes

Words by Alexandra Ianculescu. Photos by Matt Clark (Stirl and Rae Media Haus) and as attributed, Edited by Cody Royle, Published by Travis McKenzie, Copyright NTSQ Sports Group Inc.

Colin O'Brady

Alexandra Ianculescu

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FootNotes

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I'm Here To Win

The Humble Son

My Incredible Journey

The Most Interesting Man In The World

Season 3