Bujnowski hoping to slide onto Olympic podium
Kristen Bujnowski battled injury throughout a track & field career. Then she tried rowing. Now, she’s about to live her Olympic dream — in a sport she’d once never thought about: Bobsled.
Bujnowkski (right) with teammate Christine de Bruin. The pair have won four bronze medals on the World Cup circuit this season as they head into the 2022 Beijing Winter Olympics. (Photo: International Bobsleigh and Skeleton Federation - IBSF).
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At home during pandemic lockdown, Kristen Bujnowski rattled the ghosts of a Mount Brydges farm girl still lurking in her childhood bedroom.
There, pasted inside the drawers of her old nightstand, Bujnowski uncovered a collection of photos from the Sydney Olympics that a younger version of herself had placed inside as a reminder of The Games she watched with her parents. The then-8-year-old heard them talking about how the people who competed at the Olympics were the best in the world at what they do.
“The way my parents spoke about Olympians and the Olympics stuck with me. I’ve always thought that going to the Olympics and representing Canada is the greatest thing a person can do.”
Now 29, Bujnowski has put a young lifetime of frustration behind her and officially become what that little girl dreamed of all those years ago – an Olympian.
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Everyone knew it was time for her to pack it up – everyone, that is, except Kristen Bujnowski.
Primarily a long jumper in high school, Bujnowski had her eyes set on making a junior level national team and then on to eventual NCAA stardom. But those dreams collapsed under the weight of injury. After injury. After injury. It was weird – young athletes usually bounce back quickly, but Bujnowski kept tearing, straining, and pulling, and never seemingly recovering.
Her natural athletic talent sustained her in competition, but her never-say-die work ethic was plotting against her.
“I was incredibly motivated. I got it into my head that if I just trained more, I would get better even if I was injured. Some people had told me if I lost 10 pounds that I would be a more elite long jumper. So, I was starving myself a lot of the time and then also working myself to the bone. I didn’t have a program, but I would go and lift all the time. I was jumping in my backyard all the time. Just constantly training with no real program or structure. Just putting my body through hell thinking this is what was gonna get me there.”
That constant grinding led to long-term injuries, a series of hamstring pulls, which led to some substantial muscle imbalances and knee issues that still linger on today. The pain isn’t as extreme as it was in high school and university, but it still pops up and reminds her of all those early mistakes.
By Grade 12, Bujnowski was so injured she could barely train. She would show up to a meet, get one jump to qualify for the next meet, then shut it down. She was in so much pain.
Shelving her NCAA dreams, she turned her attention to Canadian universities, many offering her scholarships to compete for them. She landed, however, in the one place that expected nothing from her.
“At the end of my Grade 12 year, I didn’t think I was going to continue because it was hurting me a lot,” she said. “I picked Western because they didn’t offer me a scholarship and I wanted to go somewhere where it was my choice if I wanted to continue to pursue sport and not that I was obligated to do it.”
At Western, she started on the track team, but when trainers told her they didn’t think her knees could be fixed, she switched to rowing. “I still had this, like, burning determination to somehow compete for Canada on some level.”
Even so, she stopped rowing after two years because she didn’t see herself moving into the elite level.
She was guide running when her coach convinced her to come back and try training again – this time jumping off the opposite leg. It worked – kind of. “It was really difficult, but by the end of my university career I was actually putting up numbers that were fairly similar to my old personal bests, which was just even more frustrating. I always felt like I could be so much better if it didn't feel like I was doing everything with my left.”
She graduated university. And with two degrees under her belt (mechanical engineering and kinesiology), it was time to create some new goals. She went and worked for a year and a half without doing any kind of physical activity. Without sport, her body and soul hurt so badly that it made her miserable.
“Without any goals, it made me sad. Some people close to me basically said, ‘It’s time for you to move on. You’re really far away from your goals and you’re constantly hurting.’”
(Photo courtesy Bobsleigh Canada Skeleton).
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How does the joke go? An atheist, a vegan, and a CrossFitter walk into a bar – I only know that because they told everyone within two minutes.
Part fitness program, part cult, CrossFit has both its advocates and its detractors, but for Bujnowski, it was her salvation. When introduced to the fitness regimen at a gym near her workplace, she found an activity that matched her energy – if not her body type. The five-foot-10 Strathroy Holy Cross Catholic Secondary School grad had several inches and 40 pounds on the small, muscular CrossFit frames.
But it reminded her that she still had the physical ability and the emotional drive to compete at a high level.
That fire was further sparked when her younger brother, Mark, a thrower at Guelph University, made his first national track and field team. When your baby brother – six years younger, no less – reaches your goal before you do, there are a lot of emotions. “It didn’t make me mad. I wasn’t even jealous,” she said. “It honestly made me depressed. ‘Why not me? Why is he more athletically gifted? Why did he deserve to make it to this level?’”
Inspired, she started researching late-entry (think older) speed-power sports. There happened to be a bobsled testing camp in Toronto two weeks later; her tryout went well. She was starting to get attention and the body was holding up. All in a sport she never expected.
“I think most people going into bobsleigh don’t know a whole lot about it. To be honest, a lot of people stumble into bobsleigh,” she laughed.
The sport attracts a lot of people who have previously excelled, like Olympic-level sprinters, CFL football players, rugby players, mainly people who have trained in speed and power who are of a bigger frame. They also trend older than many athletes.
“It’s a lot of really highly motivated people who aren’t really ready to end their sporting careers. It’s people who aren’t ready to give up the dream,” Bujnowski said.
(Photo: IBSF).
“Being older is actually really important for bobsleigh, because we’re on the road for so long. I’ve literally been on the road since the start of October, when we went to China. If you're young, if you're in your late teens or whatever, you’re forced to grow up quickly. You have the team, but you’re away from your family for so long. It can be tough.”
With a chance to make the Olympic team, she quit her job and moved across the country to Calgary to go to the push camp. There, she ended up tying for third and traveled to PyeongChang, South Korea for training for two weeks, where she was named to her first World Cup team. A few months later, she was named as an alternate to the 2018 PyeongChang Olympic team.
“A lot of people think it would be scary to quit a job and go, but it was not scary at all. It was kind of like the opportunity that I’ve been waiting for my whole life,” Bujnowski said.
That doesn’t mean everyone was thrilled.
“Initially, when I told my parents that I was going to go, they weren’t super stoked. Basically, I was doing everything that your standard parents want you to do. I graduated from university, had a long-term steady boyfriend, had a job, and was paying off my student loans. They were like, ‘Why are you wasting your time with this? You’re 25 years old – move on.’ It wasn’t until I was racing in Whistler that year and they came out to watch, and they saw the cameras, the lights, watched the CBC interviews and stuff like that that they understood how big a deal it was. They’ve been on board ever since.”
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Not all Olympic experiences are created equal.
Alternate life was not what she wanted – donned in staff grey, not team red, jackets. They stayed outside of the Olympic Village. Grunt work and stay ready in case of injury. The Canadian Olympic Committee does not consider bobsleigh alternates as Olympians.
“Not to say there weren’t many cool things, like walking into Opening Ceremonies, which I had dreamed about and thought about for like my entire life. But there were also difficult parts to it. It was cool, however, because it was also motivating. I knew standing there at the line catching the snow suits of the girls who were racing, I knew I never wanted to stand here again. So, after the Olympics, I moved out to Calgary and pursued bobsleigh full time.”
After PyeongChang, she watched her teammates come home and get tattoos of the Olympic rings. She did not believe she earned that tattoo as she was only an alternate – but she did get a tattoo reading “FIGHT ON” behind her ear. And, so, she did.
That was four years ago.
Today, Bujnowski is one of the country’s top brakemen. Teamed with Christine de Bruin, the pair have won four bronze medals in six World Cup races in the 2021-22 season. Last weekend, the team finished sixth at the finale event in St. Moritz, Switzerland.
So far this season, de Bruin and Bujnowski avoided illness – particularly during the holidays when a COVID-19 outbreak within Team Canada led to 11 athletes and three staffers quarantining for 10 days ahead of a World Cup event in Sigulda, Latvia. With the Olympic Opening Ceremony only weeks away, de Bruin and Bujnowski continue to take precautions by no longer interacting with other squads.
“Physically, I am feeling pretty good,” she said. “It’s been a long season. We went to China for three weeks and then we started the World Cup tour and haven’t gone home at all. The COVID outbreak amongst our team was incredibly stressful. Christina and I did not get it. Which is almost more stressful because now we have to be extra vigilant. If we catch COVID in the next couple of weeks, we can't go to China. That’s something that’s come on our minds a little bit.”
On Thursday, Bujnowski was officially named to the Olympic Team that will ship off to Beijing for the 2022 Olympic Winter Games. Her and de Bruin will serve as Canada 1, the country’s top two-woman sled, and they’ll hope to carry the momentum of their successful World Cup season onto the podium in China.
“I have been motivated ever since (2018) to be on the start line in 2022 rather than at the side of the track,” Bujnowski said in a team statement. “It’s been an incredible journey so far, and I am proud to be named to Team Canada and now have the opportunity to compete in Beijing. It is honestly a dream come true.”
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