Jon Montgomery knows all too well what it takes to hurl yourself headfirst down an icy skeleton track with the world watching.
The former Olympic champion believes one of the young Canadian athletes preparing to compete at the Milan Cortina Games this week has a “huge advantage” — her age.
Hallie Clarke is 21 years old, but possesses the maturity and mental fortitude of a more veteran athlete, said Montgomery, who won gold on home soil at the 2010 Vancouver-Whistler Games.
“Hallie, as a world champion, as a world junior champion, is competing beyond her years in terms of the mental aspect of things,” he said.
“If you ask me, it’s impressive to watch. It’s exciting to see. And I’ve got nothing but hope in my heart for her being the best version of Hallie Clarke on the day that matters most, which is this Friday and Saturday.”
Clarke, who hails from Belleville, Ont., has already made skeleton history.
In 2024, she became the youngest woman in the sport’s history to be crowned world champion at just 19. She’s also the first athlete to hold the senior and junior world championships at the same time.
Clarke will make her Olympic debut in Italy this week. The other Canadian in the field will be Jane Channell of North Vancouver, B.C., who’s set to compete in her third Olympics.
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Being young and inexperienced can be “wildly beneficial” in pressure-packed sporting moments, said Montgomery.
“I think anybody who looks at her age and suggests to themselves that, ‘Well, you need to be older,’ is both deluding themselves and being dishonest. You don’t need to be anything,” he said.
“When you’re 35 years old, and you’ve reached the pinnacle of your sport for the very first time in your life, you’ve also got all those added years of wanting building up to that moment in time. And it would be hard not to place an undue amount of pressure upon yourself.
“But when you’re young, when you’re 21, when you don’t have 16 years in a sport bound up in one moment in time, I think you have an opportunity to be freer, certainly, of the mental load that exists in that time and space. And to discount it as an advantage is being short-sighted.”
For a young athlete like Clarke, racing should be about having fun and being grateful for the moment, added Montgomery.
He remembers his own Olympic experience — which included a walk through the village of Whistler, B.C., carrying a celebratory pitcher of beer — not only as fun, but as a “once in a lifetime opportunity.”
“I was at home, I had my family and friends there. I was comfortable, and I was confident in my preparation to execute,” he said. “I was never confident that I would win the gold or that it was mine to take, and others were just going to have to deal with me. I was only ever racing the clock.”
Now a public speaker and the host of the reality TV show “The Amazing Race Canada,” Montgomery finds it hard to believe the Vancouver Games were 16 years ago.
He hasn’t been very involved in skeleton over that time, but his love for the sport remains.
“That doesn’t mean that it’s ever far from my heart or my mind or consideration,” he said.
“Everything that I pretty much get to do today and from this day forward is born out of elements of what transpired in 2010 through sport, through competition, through representing the Maple Leaf on the world’s greatest sporting stage at the Olympic Games.”
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Feb. 11, 2026.
© 2026 The Canadian Press
