One of the things we love most about The Amazing Race Canada is that each season typically features at least one team of notable athletes who remind us just how far a positive attitude and good teamwork can take you on a stressful jaunt like this.

This season that team may very well be Olympian track stars Sarah Wells and Sam Effah. The Team Canada teammates are one of the 10 teams taking part in this year’s Second Chances edition of the race, and the Torontonians say that even though they’ve been watching the show for years (Effah is a big fan), they never thought about applying until they saw this year’s theme.

“When I saw that season seven was going to be about resilience, a lightbulb kind of went on in my head, Effah says. “Like this is what me and Sarah have gone through,” the native Calgarian shares.

They’ve both made epic comebacks from injuries

It’s no secret that professional athletes put their bodies through a lot, but Wells and Effah seem to embody that. Years ago, Effah faced a pretty brutal injury training for the Olympics when he tore both his hips. Doctors told him that without surgery his sprinting days were over, and with surgery he had a 50 per cent chance of returning. These days he’s training for the 2020 Olympics.

“It was upsetting but also motivating because I had to push,” he says. “I went to the Commonwealth Games last year and I’m hungry to do it. When I think of resilience I think of that.”

Wells has a similar story. She was sidelined during her first Olympics with an injury that was supposed to take three months to heal, but it wound up taking nine months instead.

“It was just heartbreaking to be told month after month, ‘Nope sorry not healed. Nope sorry not healed.’ I had to keep moving to get back up, to believe it was possible,” she says. “I’ve had the ups, I’ve had the downs. So has Sam. We know we can rely on each other, that we are both gritty, we’re willing to choose to get back up every single time. That’s why we knew. We saw the title, and we were like, ‘That’s us.’”

Read full post here: https://www.theloop.ca/these-olympic-track-stars-are-putting-everything-on-the-line-for-the-amazing-race-canada/

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Canadian Sprinter Sam Effah is one of these athletes.

For Sam, winning is a choice. A choice he makes hundreds of times a day. Whether it’s setting goals, training, or eating right, Sam makes each decision with his end goal in mind. These tiny decisions separate him from other elite athletes and give him an edge above the competition.

Sam is a natural in track and field, but he isn’t what you would call a seasoned veteran. In fact, Sam didn’t start competing until he was 19. He was originally recruited to the University of Calgary as a football player, but that was short-lived due to his size. “I was 150 pounds, so I couldn’t take a hit,” Sam says. “So, the next natural step was like, I know I’m fast, so let’s see what the track team has to offer.” And, with this decision, he began to make history.

Read the full post here: https://whatsupusana.com/2019/03/sam-effah-choosing-to-win/

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Sarah Wells and Sam Effah, a pair of Team Canada track athletes from Toronto, were last on the Island to compete at an international track event in Victoria. This was their first time in Nanaimo, where Wells has family.

“My cousin actually lives in Nanaimo and I have never gone there to visit her,” she said. “So it was fun once [last week’s] episode got aired she was like, ‘Oh my gosh, you’re coming to my city.’”

On the Nanaimo leg of the race, the teams of two completed a number of challenges that showed off the area’s parks, wildlife and natural beauty.

Amazing Race host Jon Montgomery said the Nanaimo area has a “treasure trove of flora, fauna and outdoor activities to keep people like the Amazing Race producers just noodling on endless possibilities to torture racers with.”

“It’s next level what we can achieve with what Nanaimo has to offer,” he said. “It’s pretty thrilling from both a visual perspective – what you can achieve from the shots and what it looks like – to great gameplay and being able to challenge these racers with lots of cerebral tasks, not just physical ones.”

Wells said she and Effah had a motivational word of the day they would “lean into” to help them through the competition and in Nanaimo it was “persistence.”

“We just kind of had this word in our head of ‘persistence’ that we were going to relentlessly pursue and push past every obstacle we faced, no matter what the challenge,” she said.

The first team to arrive in the Nanaimo Harbour via sea planes from Vancouver were Vancouver couple Aarthy Ketheeswaran and Thinesh Kumarakulasingam, winners of the previous two legs of the race. They said they’ve visited Victoria in the past but this was their first time in Nanaimo.

Read full post here: https://www.vicnews.com/entertainment/the-amazing-race-canada-comes-to-vancouver-island/

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Effah, the son of immigrants from Ghana, grew up in Calgary and attended university there before relocating to Toronto. A two-time Canadian champion in the 100m, he ran his personal best of 10.06s at NACAC in Miramar, Florida in 2010. He struggled with muscle tears in his quads and hips that prevented him from making Canada’s Olympic team in both 2012 and 2016. Effah is 30.

See full post here: https://runningmagazine.ca/the-scene/sam-effah-and-sarah-wells-to-appear-on-the-amazing-race-canada/

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See full post here https://globalnews.ca/video/3469840/sam-effah-mentors-in-classroom-champions-program

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Sarah is the founder of the Believe Initiative, a program that teaches resilience and self-belief to young people. Sam is an ambassador with Classroom Champions, a virtual mentorship program that connects him with students from across North America.

RELATED: How Canadian Athletes win friends and influence people

These athletes live the messages the preach. Both have had near career-ending injuries and have had to employ the tools they teach others in overcoming their own hurdles. Those tools also served them well as they engaged in gruelling physical and mental challenges as contestants on The Amazing Race Canada.

Read the full post click here https://runningmagazine.ca/shakeout-podcast/the-shakeout-podcast-sarah-wells-and-sam-effah-redefine-their-limits-on-the-amazing-race-canada/

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RELATED: Sam Effah Golden at NACAC U23 Championships

Then, in 2012, it all changed. Effah was the defending 2-time national champion and he was set to compete at the 2012 Olympic trials. The expectation was for him to place first or second so he would be eligible for the London Olympics. Only Effah knew that 54 days prior he had torn his left quad muscle while competing at a diamond league event in Italy. He had been in treatment every day up until the day of the race and his feet hadn’t hit the track during that entire period.

He figured that the power of the crowd roaring with cheers would push him though, it was a mental game. But there was no level of support that would help him overcome that kind of injury – and he finished 8^th.

As crushing as that was for Sam, it wasn’t enough to extinguish his fire. Every failure, every pitfall, has a silver lining and he wasn’t going to settle for anything lower than gold. He knows how to set goals and he knows how to smash them.

Read the post here https://olympic.ca/2019/01/16/the-hunger-for-more-ignites-the-soul-of-rbc-olympian-sam-effah/

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But tell that to Sam Effah, BComm’14 — who, along with his teammate, Sarah Wells, snagged second place in the latest season — and the Olympic hopeful will tell you otherwise. It may not have been the most physically demanding event that Effah has ever faced, but some of those speed bumps, coupled with cabbie issues and the usual map-reading foolery, did unnerve Effah.

“I’ve always had a fear of heights,” confesses the 30-year-old sprinter, who grew up in Calgary but now calls Toronto home. “So, when I had to do the Primal Swing [46 metres above the Nanaimo River], I was completely terrified. Doing it twice within 10 minutes was brutal.” (Unfortunately, Effah blew the second part of the challenge that required him to correctly recite the ingredients in a Nanaimo bar.)

There is no denying the athleticism on The Amazing Race Canada. From swimming under ice (where the air temperature in Yellowknife was minus-22) and racing dirt bikes, to testing their lacrosse skills, the duo was able to physically claw their way back after a shaky start. A near-elimination happened in Episode 1, which still gives Effah nightmares — and, like knowing what goes into a Nanaimo bar, it had nothing to do with athletic prowess. The challenge was they had to perform a voiceover to part of the then-newly released movie, The Lion King. Effah misunderstood the instructions and thought they had to memorize the text, which set them back two hours.

“Always read your clue, very carefully,” he advises. “I was nervous and lost focus and didn’t properly read the clue . . . but to have been the sole reason for an elimination would have been the worst feeling ever!”

Read the post here https://alumni.ucalgary.ca/stories/sprint-amazing-race-canada

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Reaching any goal takes a huge level of commitment to overcome setbacks, losses and remain focused. Effah explains, “it’s about how to take those losses and then turning them into the best race or competition you’ve ever done.”

We caught up with Sam to see what’s next on the radar for this aspiring Canadian Olympian; how he juggles it all, what he’s learned along the journey and the best advice on striving for greatness.  

Describe yourself in one sentence?

Motivated, continually learning, and never settling.

Who or what inspires and motivates you?

Wanting to reach my full potential motivates me. I’ve had big successes on the track, as well as too many setbacks. I won’t quit until I reach my athletic limits.  From hip surgery to keeping faith and believing that I can be the champion I once was. I need to keep going.

What is the biggest challenge you’ve faced in your career as an athlete?

In 2014 I was diagnosed with major labral tears, one in each of my hips.  It hurt to sit, walk, twist, and of course, run. I was told there was a strong potential that I would not be able to sprint at the same level again. I required surgery to manage the pain. Starting from scratch – walking, jogging, sprinting in competition, required a ton of patience, discipline and trust in my recovery program. I jumped on the Anti-Gravity Treadmill – A state of the art technology used by NASA – and was able to train while recovering. I adjusted to the gravity over the course of my recovery and was able to bounce back.. eventually.

Read all the article here: https://www.holrmagazine.com/linea-intima-collab-with-house-of-empreinte/

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