The Kevin Karius Show - Mar. 10th, 2026 - Brendan Mackay

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1:00Hi, this is Pablo Torei from Pablo Torei finds out, and today I want to talk to you about boost mobile, because we spend a lot of time analyzing inefficiencies in sports, overvalued contracts, money tied up in the wrong places, and so on, but those inefficiencies aren't just on a roster. Sometimes, they're in your own monthly expenses. Boost mobile says switching to their $25 unlimited forever plan can unlock up to $600 in savings a year. That's $25 a month for unlimited data, talk, and text when you bring your own phone. If that money is trapped in a pricey phone bill, it might be worth a second look. Visit boostmobile.com to learn more. After 30 gigabytes, customers may experience slower speeds. Customers pay $25 per month as long as they remain active on the boost mobile unlimited plan. Savings claim based on a January 2026 boost mobile survey of 1,000 Americans with single line unlimited plans, comparing average annual payments of major carriers to 12 months on the boost mobile unlimited plan. For full offered details, visit boostmobile.com.

2:17On cloud nine here, after picking up bronze metal, I suppose it never gets old looking at it or talking about it. What's the last little bit that's been like for you since you want it? Yeah, I mean, it's been really amazing. It's something I've kind of dreamt about ever since I started competing in skiing, almost 20 years ago. And yeah, so having earned an Olympic medal is pretty incredible. And yeah, I mean, I think the biggest thing is just the amount of support and outreach I've had from both family and friends and also just from, you know, Canadians far and wide. I've heard lots of cool stories about kids who watch the event at school just because of the timing. It was a night event in Europe. So yeah, super cool. Let's start with that support. Brandon, you mentioned it to just be with your friends and family. How much they've meant for you to get where you are today. Yeah, I mean, yeah, to be able to achieve something like that

3:28takes so much help from so many people. I mean, my parents drove me to the ski hill like every day on the weekend growing up. And after school, I was riding at our local hill in Calgary every evening pretty much throughout the winter. So my parents, you know, put so much energy into getting me out skiing as much as possible. Like right before the Olympics, I was in Calgary and I was trying to get some extra training in. And my coaches worked in Calgary at the time. And I had friends who are coaching, you know, kind of lower level, you know, non-competitive teams who would come out and help me with my training. So, you know, really so many people have helped me over the years to get, you know, to achieve that result. Brandon McKay with us on sports 1440. Why did you make the switch when you were a real young guy? It's probably close to 20 years ago now to go from ski racing to

4:30freestyle. And was it a hard decision for you, Brandon? No, it wasn't a super hard decision for me at the time. My older brother, I'd say, led the charge. I was probably around 10 and he was, would have been around 12. And I think we found when, like in the afternoons, after we'd be skiing gates or racing, we'd want to, we'd get to go free skiing with our teams and we found that more enjoyable. And maybe kind of less restrictive. There weren't any rules. There wasn't a right way to do something you could kind of just go and have fun with your friends and really do whatever you wanted and could imagine. And so really my older brother led the charge. And at the time, I just, I found it more fun to kind of go free skiing, go get in the park, go right around the mountain. But definitely having grown up racing helped my like fundamental skiing a lot. So cool. When you went to Beijing in 2022, how much did you learn from that Olympic experience

5:36that enabled you to reach the podium in Italy? Yeah, for sure. I think having gone to a previous games and it didn't go super well for me in Beijing was, was huge for my performance in Italy, both, both just mentally. I knew that there was, there's a lot more to go into the Olympics and to the Olympics experience than just results. So I was really trying to take the pressure off and not put, you know, put too much pressure on myself to like achieve a specific result. Because I knew the most important thing was going out there, you know, representing Canada, the best that I can and enjoying myself. And then also at the previous games, I, because I was putting so much pressure on myself, I really, I guess, took more risks than I think I should have in hindsight. And so in Italy, I decided to kind of somewhat dial it back and played a bit safe, which ended up paying off.

6:38So how do you kind of walk that line, Brandon, in the sense that, you know, you, you want to have the best complete, you know, tricks and program, everything that you can, but you also want to run clean. So, so maybe just discuss that, that fine line of sort of teetering on, teetering on either edge here. Yeah, totally. I mean, the cool thing about half-pipe skiing and, and also slope-stop skiing is, is you get in finals, you get three chances, and they just take your best run. So you can definitely take some amount of risk. But normally I'm, normally I'm the type of competitor who would like to land my first run and then build into my second run, and then maybe on my third run go all out after having landed two pretty good runs. That's, that's my approach, whereas a lot of, a lot of the, you know, some of my best competitors would just go for a run that maybe they have, you know, less than a 50% chance of landing, but after three runs, if they land

7:38it, they'll have a really good shot of winning. And so that's kind of the alternative approach with that I usually don't take. However, at the Olympics, you know, everybody wants to be on the podium. People are willing to take more risks, including myself. And so my plan at the Olympics was to, the run I did, which I ended up only landing on my third run. I wanted to land that on my first run and then actually build into some harder tricks in my second and third run. But I ended up, you know, making mistakes on my first two runs. I think both the pressure and, and we had done our qualification that morning. So we were all pretty tired, kind of got to me. So I, I've really ended up doing what I'd call my, my safe run. And I really, for that last run, I was talking to my coaches about like, I wasn't sure if that run would be enough. I knew if I did a harder trek or two more harder tricks, it would be enough. But I, after Beijing, I knew I just, I wanted

8:39to put down a clean run, because after Beijing, I was really frustrated. I didn't put down a clean run. Brendan McKay with this Olympic bronze medalist on the Kevin Carichel in sports 1440. When you say that you learned from your mistakes in the first two runs in Italy, Brendan, but also in that same sense, now the pressure's on because you're down to your, your last crack here. Yeah, yeah, I mean, even though I was kind of calling it a safety run, the run I still did was the hardest run with two tricks that I haven't kind of done back to back, which were the, like, right side 1620 into the left side 1620. So, you know, it was both a safe run, but still kind of the hardest run I had ever done up to that point. And so, on my first two runs, I'd done them back to back for the first time, but just had, you know, maybe popped a little hard, landed a bit funny, didn't fully trust myself. So on that last run, I really had the confidence to, you know,

9:45trust myself, land the tricks properly, and kind of execute how I wanted to. Yeah. Hi, this is Pablo Tore from Pablo Tore finds out, and today I want to talk to you about boost mobile, because we spent a lot of time analyzing inefficiencies in sports, overvalued contracts, money tied up in the wrong places, and so on, but those inefficiencies aren't just on a roster. Sometimes they're in your own monthly expenses. Boost mobile says switching to their $25 unlimited forever plan can unlock up to $600 in savings a year. That's $25 a month for unlimited data, talk, and text when you bring your own phone. If that money is trapped in a pricey phone bill, it might be worth a second look. Visit boostmobile.com to learn more. After 30 gigabytes, customers may experience slower speeds, customers pay $25 per month as long as they remain active on the boost mobile unlimited plan. Savings claim based on January 2026, boost mobile survey of 1,000 Americans with single line unlimited plans, comparing average annual payments of major carriers to 12 months on the boost mobile unlimited plan. For full

10:46offered details, visit boostmobile.com. During the Cocina Latina event at Whole Foods Market.

11:46I'm most well known for, and it would be my signature trick. I drop in backwards at the very top of the pipe, and I go switch alley-oop. That means you're spinning upwards in the pipe instead of downwards. I do a switch alley-oop double flip, and I spin 900 degrees. I really enjoy that trick because usually I'm able to go really high out of the pipe. Then I get a pretty distinguishable grab in it. It feels really cool to do, and it has a real wow factor for especially someone who hasn't watched Half Bay before. It's like, wow, that's big, that's cool. How cool was it Brendan to have your fiance, I guess, competing in Milano Cortina as well? Yeah, that's amazing. Such a cool moment that we'll remember forever. We've

12:50traveled together and competed together for a really long time, and I'm not sure if we'll be at another Olympics together. We're definitely both near the tail end of our careers, so getting to go together and support each other through the process, and also be together in the athlete village, be together at training. It really makes it a special experience. I guess what does the future hold for you here, Brendan, because he had such great success. Obviously, winning the Crystal Globe and the World Championship in 2023 on the tour. A four-year cycle is a hard commitment. We hear about it incurring all the time, but what's the initial plan and goal here for you? Yeah, I mean, yeah, the four-year cycle is a huge commitment, and I think, after the last Olympics, I was pretty committed to doing another four-year cycle. For this time around, I think I'm going to just take it year by year. I do plan to compete

13:52again next season, and there's some pretty exciting competitions on the horizon in freestyle skiing outside of the World Cup circuit. There's some other kind of new half-pipe competitions that are like X games should have multiple stops, and then Sean White's created a new competition series with a new format called the Snow League. I'm super excited for those competitions next year, but then after that, I'll be taking it kind of season-by-season, seeing how my body's feeling, seeing if I'm still motivated to kind of go up there and put it on the line, but I do look for it getting back out there next season and competing some more. Oh, that'd be great. Brendan McKay with this Olympic bronze medalist from Italy on the Kevin Carri Show. Do you have a favorite stop on the World Cup tour? Yeah, that's a great question. I really love the half-pipe that we get to compete in China,

14:58which China's probably not my favorite stop because it's usually pretty cold. It's kind of like Calgary and Edmonton. It can be really, really cold there, but it's not the funnest competing one. It's like minus 20, but the half-pipe they build in China is beautiful. It's perfect because it's so cold. They can make a ton of snow, and they bring out one of the best builders in the world. I always find I can ride really well there, even though it's usually pretty cold. Well, Brendan McKay with this in sports 1440. Just looking at your bio as well, Brendan, I mean, you're not exactly having trouble with school either. Just looking at what you've taken at the University of Calgary and then pursuing your masters of science in physics at the U of C. So, how did this all come about? Why is this a field that you want? Maybe your career outside

16:01of skiing to take a turn at once everything's done on the hill? Yeah, I guess I'd largely attribute studying physics to like a really good teacher I had in high school. My high school physics teacher, Dr. Light, was great, and he got me really excited about the subject. And then more generally, like in Canada, there's a very big push from sport Canada to have athletes looking into and kind of giving athletes resources to look into things outside of sport because often the transition both after the Olympics and also retirement from sport can be super challenging for athletes at all levels because usually being an athlete is such a large part of your identity. So for me, having that outlet in school has been massive both during the off season or when I have injury or if I want to take

17:02some time away from competitions it's giving me something else to focus on and it also helps me stay kind of less stressed about skiing because at the end of the day, you know, skiing even though sometimes it feels like you're at the Olympics it's the end of the world it's really not there's so much more going on and so many more important things. So having a different outlet I think for kind of all athletes is a very very good thing to have. Well, you're a perfect guy, Brendan, to try to help figure a problem out that, you know, we've been talking about and we talk about every four years and fortunately we don't talk about it enough between Olympics and that's funding and that's training that are both available to athletes going to the Olympics but not near enough. So could I just maybe get a comment on from your perspective on what it's been like with limited funding and training possibilities that could be a lot better than what they are.

18:04Yeah, I mean it's it's both we're both super privileged in Canada because we do receive support from the federal government which a lot of nations don't receive and so you know when I when I look at my competitors, Canadians aren't definitely at the worst off but at the same time I know the cost of training and the cost of being competitive at at something like the Olympics and pretty much all the sports I'm aware of is going up like in half-pipes being in particular the costs really increased even over the past five years and federal funding hasn't increased. So it basically means athletes are either paying a lot of money out of pocket which you know can be difficult to raise or alternatively a lot of Canadian athletes just aren't receiving the same training that athletes from other countries are receiving and in the long run what that's going to mean is that Canadians will be less competitive on average at events like the Olympics. So it's definitely you

19:10know if you want if you want to see Canadians out at the Olympics bringing home medals you know winning at all the major events around the world we definitely need a ton of support to do that there's no way around the need to train and unfortunately training and in most sports is very expensive. Hey Brandon really enjoyed this conversation thanks so much for coming on on the show best luck in the future to you and hope you can ski many more years and maybe bring up bring home another world championship or even another middle at the Olympics for our country thanks for thanks for coming on take care and maybe we'll chat soon. Yeah thank you so much Kevin appreciate it. Hi this is Pablo Tore from Pablo Tore finds out and today I want to talk to you about boost mobile because we spent a lot of time analyzing inefficiencies in sports over value contracts money tied up in the wrong places and so on but those inefficiencies aren't just on a roster

20:12sometimes they're in your own monthly expenses boost mobile says switching to their $25 unlimited forever plan can unlock up to $600 in savings a year that's $25 a month for unlimited data talk and text when you bring your own phone if that money is trapped in a pricey phone bill it might be worth a second look visit boost mobile dot com to learn more after 30 gigabytes customers may experience lower speeds customers pay $25 per month as long as they remain active on the boost mobile unlimited plan savings claim based on a January 2026 boost mobile survey of a thousand Americans with single line unlimited plans comparing average annual payments of major carriers to 12 months on the boost mobile unlimited plan for full offer details visit boost mobile dot com with its two juicy beef patties three slices of melted cheese and tangy big art sauce the big arch is what happens when you start making a McDonald's burger and never stop the big arcs the most McDonald's McDonald's burger yet for a limited time explore a new spring collection of pieces that take you to the places you dream about a suitcase filled with heritage

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