Beijing Bound: Kim Thompson heading to second Olympics as Mental Performance Consultant

A lot can happen in four years. Gee-Gees alumna Kim Thompson was with Team Canada's Women's Hockey Team in Pyeongchang at the 2018 Winter Olympic Games and remembers vividly the moments in the rink following the gold medal game.

It's a memory that combines the heart-wrenching sting of a shoot-out loss with the supportive energy of a pro-Canada crowd. That crowd's appreciation is what stands out years later as a reminder that the team had given their all. 

But as Thompson makes final preparations to return to the Olympic Games, that moment now feels like forever ago…

Thompson knows better than most the way the mind can shift perceptions and meanings, particularly in sports. She is the senior Women's National Team's Mental Performance Consultant and has been an integral part of the incredible journey to get the team prepared to return to the Games.

"The athletes were pretty devastated in 2020 when the first championship got cancelled," says Thompson, recalling that the Women's World Championship was one of the first major international events to be cancelled by the pandemic. "We didn't think at the time it was going to last this long."

The 2020 Worlds became the 2021 Worlds, but not without a second round of postponements in between. However, when the Worlds did take place, Canada was triumphant. The gold medal win in August of 2021 has the team heading into the Olympics on a high.  

"We had done a lot of work in terms of planning for the 2020 World Championship and the way it ended up now? It all feels like it was always supposed to be that way, so I'm a big believer that things happen for a reason." 

Thompson also believes that at Hockey Canada, there has been an investment in her field which is paying off.

"Hockey Canada is an organization that really buys into the role of the mental performance coach and mental training. It is incorporated into our daily training and not treated as one-off sessions. It's how we build relationships. It's how we connect on the bench during games. It's how we coach. It's how we teach. It's how we receive feedback as an athlete. All those things come into play. It's not just 'hey, let's talk about goal setting'," Thompson says jokingly.

"It's been awesome working that way. I think the coaches do a lot more mental training than people even realize, which is a great thing."

The unique challenges of postponements and quarantines have been tackled in a similar way, by the group as a whole. 

"From a performance standpoint, our whole focus was just on us and not comparing to what other teams were doing. A big thing that we had worked on this through the pandemic was being grateful for the opportunities that we have and what we get," says Thompson.

"I may not have done a session on being grateful in the past, but in December 2020 that was our monthly theme. How do you keep motivated and not feeling like it's the end of the world? Being grateful for the little things."

Skipping ahead to August 2021 at Worlds, the grateful mentality was at the forefront as the team spent 40 days in a bubble. "I think for the athletes, having those two championships cancelled and not being able to be on the ice together… I think it was easy to bring it back to say, hey, we're just grateful to be together." 

"Through the ups and the downs and the peaks and valleys of performance, we are very cohesive, and we choose to take it step by step rather than the bigger picture."

Thinking back to that Olympic applause in 2018, Thompson reflects "I gained so much, much more than a silver medal. You realize that there is more to it than that actual outcome. It's easy to focus on the outcome when really it's about everything they accomplished, everything you put on the line, everything that you sacrifice. It really does make it worthwhile."

One other recent project for Thompson  was a program with fifth-year medical residents at uOttawa who were preparing for their final exams. "Obviously I value mental training. I think it's for everyone, in every area. You don't have to be a high performance athlete to see the benefits of it." 

Kim Thompson is a Gee-Gees women's hockey alumna and part-time professor in uOttawa's School of Human Kinetics. She holds three degrees from uOttawa, and has been a player and coach with the Gee-Gees hockey program. She also spoke with the Gee-Gees before the 2018 Games.

Thompson (back row, third from left) with the 2018 Olympic Team.

Thompson (third from right, standing) with the 2004 National silver medal winning Gee-Gees.

Thompson (back row middle with red headband), as a member of the first Gee-Gees women's hockey varsity team, 1999-2000.