Sport psychology professor John Dunn is taking a year's sabbatical from research and teaching to do something truly out of the ordinary: he'll be working with Canada's prime athletes from three Olympic teams - men's and women's biathlon, and some of the athletes in the men's Alpine speed team, to keep them mentally primed for the performance of their lives.
If the men's curling team he works with succeeds at the Olympic Trials in December this year, you can make that four.
To do it, he'll rack up the Air Miles accompanying the athletes as they make their way through training camps in South America to world cup competitions all over Europe and he'll zigzag across Canada from Whistler, British Columbia to Valcartier, Quebec. At the Games he'll put in 18 hour days, every day, exist on five hours sleep a night - and love every minute of it.
Working with high performance athletes is the thrill of a lifetime for this high-energy, in-demand sports performance professional who cut his teeth in the world of applied performance psychology working with the Canadian military biathlon team back in the 1990s. Dunn has also worked in the NHL with the Edmonton Oilers and was recently invited by the St. Louis Blues to spend some time in their organisation.
He says the biggest challenge for Olympic athletes at the upcoming Games will be the emotional pressure of competing on home turf before a home crowd with friends and family in tow and news-hungry media constantly on the hunt for the big story.
"The media build-up to these games is huge," he says. "This far exceeds anything that any Canadian athlete has ever or may ever experience in our life time. So our athletes will become household names in the build-up to the Olympics and anyone who wins a medal will be a household name forever.
"We're also dealing with the pressure of no Canadian ever winning a gold medal at any Olympic Games in Canada. We've had Montreal and Calgary and we've not had a Canadian stand atop the podium. This puts unbelievable pressure on our athletes - so much it's almost unfair."
Dunn says keeping the athletes grounded so they can prepare is paramount. "First and foremost I have to help the athletes deal with that pressure and forget about it on competition day, but you can't just switch it off. Part of my job is to help them deal with the reality of that pressure with coping strategies that help them control their emotions, even reminding them to breathe. Ideally we want them to feed off the pressure, get excited, focus on the opportunity, focus on what they can gain, and then perform to the best of their ability."
The pressure of carrying a nation's hopes for a medal on your shoulders is brutal, says Dunn, who counters that by having athletes think about representing themselves and the effort they've put into getting to this point. "While they are there to represent their country, they are also there to represent themselves. That might sound selfish, but if you're standing at the starting line thinking you're representing your country, that's enough pressure to make your legs buckle right there."
Dunn says while he understands the importance (and benefits) of media interviews and athletes' exposure to the media, as competition-day approaches he'll be advising his athletes to hunker down, avoiding media interviews, social media, newspapers and television and staying focused on the task ahead.
"We will also have to have a plan in place to educate families and friends that they will have limited access to their son or daughter as they prepare. Performance has to come first. It may be a holiday of a lifetime for friends and family but it's certainly not a holiday for the athletes," he says.
"The single biggest coping mechanism anyone can have is perspective," he says. "It's just a sport; just a competition. If you have a bad day, you pick yourself up and get on with life. At the end of the day our athletes are paid for what they love to do and if they don't do well on the day, there's another world cup event for them two weeks after the event. When you think it's black in your world it's not even close to being black in someone else's world.
This is not like what our brave men and women in the Canadian armed forces face, who put their lives on the line every day in countries like Afghanistan."
Dunn knows whereof he speaks: he has worked with combat troops from the Canadian armed forces and recently did some work with military personnel from the Edmonton Garrison who will deploy to Afghanistan to disarm IEDs (improvised explosive devices) that have caused many soldier deaths. "Talk about perspective! Now that is a life or death situation," he says.
Sport psychology isn't a quick fix, emphasises Dunn. He has worked with individuals in the national biathlon teams for six years. "It takes extended work over months and years to try and get athletes to understand what is mental preparation, what is performance psychology, what is the attitude I have to bring into sport to be successful. Performance psychology is not a one-off meeting or a magic pill and suddenly you're profoundly better. It often takes years to get those messages home, though some athletes obviously catch on more quickly than others."
In his quest to help high performance athletes do their best, Dunn's ultimate goal is to see the day when he's done his job so well he becomes redundant.
"But so far it's not happened," he says with a smile.