The 2026 Wilson Games Part 2 | EP. 7

Last week's episode was part one of a two part series of Wilson's in the 2026 Milan Cortina winter Olympics that was still going on until three days ago as of this episode recording.

Hello and welcome to another episode of the Cuz Wilson Show.

I'm your Wilsonologist Kenny Wilson and and this week is going to be a good one.

I am really excited about it.

My voice is a little bit better.

Not 100%, but it's a little better than last two weeks, that's for sure.

Last week was our part one of the two part series on Wilson's in the Winter Olympics and that part one included the Wilson sisters on the mountain and a hockey player in men's ice hockey.

Today's podcast is part two and it's going to be a little bit longer because we have a lot of Wilson's to cover in our People, Places and and Things categories.

As they deal with the Winter Olympics in Italy.

We can make our episodes short, medium or long as we want to because we have no restrictions from advertisers or media giants.

We don't have ads in our podcast.

We're listener supported from people like you.

Normally our episodes are about 30 minutes, but today is going to be a little bit longer.

For this week's episode of People, Places and Things named Wilson, in our People category, we talk about women's bobsledders and a famous Olympic women's hockey player from the past.

In our Places category, we talk about a Wilson winery in Southern Italy.

And for our things this week, we're going to talk about a US Figure Skating hall of Fame award, which has been long overdue from a skating champion named Will.

Okay, let's get started with our People category, which actually has three parts.

Part one is about two Wilsons in the Olympics sliding sports division.

Let's get right into it.

Today we are doing a deep dive into the Canadian Bobsley team as they head into the 2026 Milano Cortina winter Olympics.

Yeah, and we aren't just talking about, you know, medal counts or split times here.

Right.

What we're really looking at is what essentially amounts to a massive recruitment experiment.

We've pulled reports from the Canadian Olympic Committee, the Caribbean Camera, CTV News and University of Calgary Athletics to basically figure

out how this team is effectively redefining the physics of the sport.

Exactly.

It's a completely fascinating case study in optimization.

Canada is taking athletes who, historically speaking anyway, have absolutely no business being on

an ice track because they don't have that typical winter sports background.

Right.

And they're proving that specific isolated skills transfer to Bobsley better than a lifetime of winter sports experience.

Our sources focus heavily on two specific athletes who really embody this shift, starting with Dawn Richardson Wilson.

She's an Edmonton native, born in Ghana, and she made her debut in Beijing.

But if you look at her trajectory between Beijing and these 20, 26 games, she did something pretty counterintuitive.

Yeah, she walked away from the sled entirely.

A strategic retreat, I'd call it.

She went back to the University of Calgary specifically to compete in track and field.

And she didn't just casually train.

She won three straight Canada West 60 meter titles.

The logic there is that Bobsley is basically won or lost in the first 50 meters.

Right.

She realized she didn't need to be a better slider.

She needed to be a faster sprinter, which makes sense.

That distinction is crucial because of the roles inside the sled.

You have the pilot, who is the driver steering the lines, and then you

have the brake woman, who is essentially the engine.

Exactly.

Their entire job is to generate massive explosive power in a short burst just to overcome static friction.

By focusing purely on sprint mechanics, dawn was engineering herself into a much better engine.

It clearly worked.

Her teammate, pilot Mackenzie Stewart, actually called her a freak of nature with a big beast mentality after she returned to the ice.

But there is a bigger layer here, too, regarding who she might pair up with in Italy if she reunites with veteran pilot Cynthia Appiah.

For these Games, we are looking at a potentially historic all black sled, which

the Caribbean camera highlights as a major cultural pivot.

You have to remember Bobsley has always had a huge barrier to entry.

It's incredibly expensive, very expensive.

And you generally need to live near a mountain with a track.

Seeing an all black team from Canada isn't just about representation on the podium.

It completely dismantles the idea that winter sports are reserved for specific demographics or geographies.

It proves you can recruit strictly for power, regardless of a person's background.

Precisely.

And speaking of recruiting from unlikely backgrounds, that brings us to Eden Wilson.

Yeah, her story is wild.

If sprinting seems like a logical crossover for the engine of the sled, Eden's background is totally left field.

She is Canada's first indigenous Olympic bobsledder

with a biracial background as well.

Jamaican and Caucasian, along with her indigenous ancestry.

Right.

But athletically, she spent 20 years in

competitive show jumping going from horses to horsepower.

At first glance, you'd think, well, that's just a completely different sport.

But physically, it makes a ton of sense for a break woman.

It really does.

In show jumping, you are holding a squat position, absorbing the shock of a thousand pound animal moving underneath you, all while keeping your upper body completely still.

That is the key technical transfer right there.

It's core stability in a chaotic environment.

In a bobsled, you're rattling down pure ice at 120km an hour.

The G forces are just immense.

Yeah.

A rider learns to separate their limbs using their hands and legs independently, while the core stabilizes the chaos.

That body awareness helps a brake woman stay aerodynamic and stable without fighting the sled's momentum.

Plus, at least a bobsled doesn't have a mind of its own.

It's not going to get spooked by a plastic bag blowing in the wind.

A fair point.

It removes the variable of the animal entirely, leaving just the physics.

Guidon actually did experiment with piloting for a bit, but for Milano Cortina, she pivoted back to the brakes, applying that

strict equestrian discipline entirely to the push and the ride.

So, bringing this all together for you, as we look toward the 2026 Games, we have a sprinter optimizing launch mechanics and an equestrian optimizing core stability.

Under GeForce.

It really signals the end of the traditional winter specialist.

These athletes are breaking barriers of cost and race, sure, but they're also proving that elite performance is modular.

You can basically build a bobsledder out of components from completely different sports.

It totally changes how you watch the event.

We aren't just watching winter athletes anymore.

We are watching the result of cross discipline engineering.

Which leaves me with a final thought for you to chew on as we see this method succeed.

Are we moving toward an era where athletes are recruited entirely by algorithm?

Oh, wow.

Think about it.

Instead of kids growing up dreaming of bobsleigh, will we just see scouts inputting force plate metrics and reaction times into a database?

Just drafting super athletes who fit the physics equation perfectly, regardless of what sport they actually started in.

That is a little Matrix esque, but definitely possible.

Well, that is it for our deep dive into the 2026 winter game.

Thank you so much for that.

That was really cool.

Now part two is about a women's ice hockey star named Wilson from the past.

The Olympic ice hockey rivalry between Canada and the USA is fierce and it continued this year in dramatic fashion because the gold medal was won in overtime for both the women's and and the men's divisions.

Canada is still leading the overall historic battles between USA and Canada.

And part of that is because of Stacy Wilson.

Today we're working through a stack of hall of Fame biographies and university records.

Yeah, and some great historical retrospectives on the early IIHF World Championships.

Exactly.

And the mission for you today is pretty specific.

We want to trace the journey of a really pivotal figure in women's hockey, Stacy Wilson.

Right.

How she goes from a rural rink in New Brunswick playing on boys teams to, well, literally captain in Canada at the Olympics.

All while the sport is basically being invented right around her.

I mean, it's a fascinating case study.

You aren't just looking at a stat sheet here.

No, you're seeing the blueprint of the modern game.

Yeah, she's this crucial bridge between the era where women had to fight tooth and nail just to get ice time and.

And the high performance Olympic era that you recognize today.

And the timeline in our notes really highlights that struggle.

She starts out in Salisbury, New Brunswick,

playing minor hockey with the boys because.

Well, there's simply no other option back then.

But there's a gap, right?

She didn't actually play straight through.

No, she hit a wall after the bantam level, the opportunities just weren't there.

So she actually pivoted to badminton, right?

Yeah, to elite badminton for a few years.

She didn't actually get back on the ice until she enrolled at Acadia University.

And returning to the ice at Acadia in the mid-80s, I mean, that wasn't exactly a glam.

Not at all.

The infrastructure details really struck me.

They didn't have a funded varsity team.

It was just a club squad, which

is a huge distinction.

Being a club team meant they had to fundraise just to enter tournaments.

And the uniforms they were wearing used varsity men's sweaters.

Yeah, ill fitting.

Hand me downs.

It's such a stark image for a future hall of Famer.

But despite that lack of investment, her talent was undeniable because by 1990, she's on the roster for the inaugural IIHF Women's World Championship in Ottawa.

A completely legendary tournament, both for the performance and honestly, the optics.

You mean the pink jerseys?

Yes, the infamous pink and white uniforms Team Canada wore during that era.

It's just hard to imagine that flying today for a national team.

Oh, totally impossible.

But the contrast is what's so interesting.

They put these elite athletes in pink, perhaps to make them look less intimidating,

and then they just go out and play this incredibly lethal physical game.

Exactly.

Canada outscored their opponents 618 in that

tournament, and Wilson was a massive part of that engine.

She put up 11 points, three goals and eight assists.

It really established her not just as A participant, but as a premier playmaker on the world stage.

And that playmaking kicked off a serious golden era.

Wilson helped Canada secure four consecutive world championship golds.

Right.

In 1992, 94, 97.

And by 1995, she's the natural choice for team captain.

Which leads us right to that watershed moment.

Nagano in 1998, the Olympic debut.

Right.

And we know the result was heartbreak for Canada, losing the gold to the

US but looking at the game data, Wilson really didn't fade under that pressure.

Far from it.

She was integral.

Even in a tournament where the competition had tightened up significantly.

She ranked second on the team in assists, five assists.

Right behind Haley Wickenheiser.

Exactly.

She actually retired shortly after the Olympics due to injuries.

But she left at the absolute peak of international competition.

Her influence didn't stop when she took the skates off, though.

She stepped behind the bench at Minnesota Duluth.

Yeah.

Spending five years as an assistant coach.

And that wasn't just a figurehead role.

It was a legitimate dynasty.

A massive dynasty.

She helped guide the Bulldogs to three consecutive NCAA championships between 2001 and 2003,

before eventually taking the head coaching job at Bowdoin College later on.

Those Duluth really proved she could translate her on ice vision to the next generation.

Speaking of translating things, she also took that vision to the page.

She published the Hockey Book for girls in 2000.

And the reviews in the research packet for that were a little mixed.

Yeah, mixed is fair.

It was nominated for a Red Cedar Award because the tone was so incredibly supportive.

It filled a huge void for young girls who had zero resources regarding skills or equipment.

But critics did point out the photography was unfocused and the writing was somewhat

limited, which is true, but the real value was in its existence.

You have an Olympic captain acknowledging that girls needed their own manual.

So when we zoom out and look at the full picture.

Inducted into the New Brunswick Sports hall of Fame and the very first woman in the Acadia University Hockey hall of Fame.

What's the main takeaway here?

It's that Stacy Wilson did the heavy lifting before the cameras ever arrived.

She played for the pure love of the game in baggy men's jerseys so that the next generation could play professionally in jerseys with their own names on the back.

It really reframes the current professional landscape for you.

Which leaves us with a final thought for you to mull over today.

What's that?

If pioneers like Wilson hadn't been willing to play on club teams for free or literally fundraise and pay out of pocket just to play.

Would the sport have even survived long enough to build the infrastructure we see today?

It's a humbling thought to end on.

Thanks for joining us on this deep dive into hockey history.

Catch you on the next one.

That's pretty amazing, isn't it?

I can't wait till next the next Winter Olympics now.

But wait, there's more.

For part three of our people's category, I have a question.

Here's my question.

How many athletes from Mexico can you list who have ever won a medal in Winter Olympic sports?

Well, let's find out.

In this part three of the people category.

Today we are looking at a statistical anomaly that frankly just shouldn't exist.

Right.

We're talking about a Winter Olympic gold medal in ice hockey for Mexico.

Exactly.

To really understand how this happened, we've parsed through records from the 2020 Winter Youth Olympics, articles from El Sol de Leon and reports from the IIHF to bring you this story.

And our mission today is to unpack how a very unique tournament format allowed a 14 year old to completely change the record books.

And you know where she is today in February 2026, because we aren't talking

about a cool runnings, underdog situation where a national team barely scrapes by.

No, this is about the mixed NOC tournament.

NOC stands for National Olympic Committee, which

usually means Canada versus the usa.

Right.

It's country against country.

Yeah, exactly.

But the problem in youth development is that the big countries just completely crush the developing ones because of their massive infrastruct.

The International Ice Hockey Federation tried to engineer a level playing field by essentially dissolving national borders entirely.

They took players from up to 13 different countries and mixed them into color coded squads like Team Yellow or Team Black.

It turns the whole event from a battle of geography into a battle of pure individual skill.

But I imagine that creates a pretty massive logistical headache.

Oh, totally.

You have teenagers who literally don't speak the same language thrown onto a roster days before the biggest game of their lives.

I saw one of the reports that mentioned Team Black actually had to play games like nametag during warmups just to

figure out who was who.

Yeah, they ended up winning silver, by the way.

That is wild.

There was also this note from then IIHF president Rene Feazell that I found really telling.

He described seeing a player from New Zealand using sign language to explain a tactical play to a teammate from China.

It completely strips the game down to pure intuition.

And into this chaotic mix, you drop Louisa Wilson.

Right.

A 14 year old from Celaya Guanajuato.

Her profile is so interesting because she embodies that mix perfectly.

Born in Mexico, but her father is Canadian and a hockey coach.

They moved to Toronto when she was around 11.

So she had the Mexican heritage, but she also got that elite Canadian training environment playing for the North York Storm.

A completely lethal combination.

So she gets drafted onto Team Yellow and in the final they faced off against Team Black.

It was a super tight game early on.

Team Black actually scored first, but then

Louisa scored the go ahead goal that sparked this huge rally.

Team yellow won 6 1, securing the gold medal.

That win completely rewrote the history books.

She became the first Mexican athlete to win a medal in Winter Olympic history.

Youth or senior?

Doesn't matter.

First ever.

Her name is literally inscribed on the wall at the Olympic Museum in Mexico now, right alongside legends like Enriqueta Basilio.

It really proved that if you remove the barrier of asking if Your country has 50 ice rings, the talent is actually there.

But this deep dive isn't just a history lesson.

Since it is 2026, we wanted to see if that gold medal propels her into a pro hockey career.

Well, she is still an elite athlete, but she pivoted.

She swapped the skates for cleats.

She is studying physical therapy at Anahuacu University, Mexico now and playing rugby, elite rugby.

She represented the Serpientes, Mexico's national rugby team, at the Junior Pan American Games in Asuncion just last year.

In 2025, they finished sixth.

It is a pretty incredible transition from ice hockey.

It really speaks to her versatility as an athlete.

But she has been very vocal that her goal with that 2020 win was to show Mexican kids that winter sports are accessible to the them.

Which brings us right back to that tournament format.

The 3 on 3 mixed tournament was an experiment, but it produced a national hero for a country with zero winter sports tradition.

It validates the idea that you can prioritize global collaboration over national rivalry to highlight pure talent.

And that is the thought I want to leave you with today.

If mixed teams produce better competitive balance and fairer outcomes for athletes from developing nations, is it time for youth sports to stop obsessing over flags and start focusing purely on the players?

A great question to explore on your own.

Well, that concludes the people category for this episode.

But before we go on to the places category,

Do you want to hear an Uncle Willie joke?

Well, my Italian accent isn't very good, so I made this joke online with AI.

This joke was from my friend Uncle Wilsoni, who was an Italian chef.

And.

And he says to me what do you call a fake noodle?

An impasta.

Sadly, that was the last joke that uncle wilsoni told to me before he passed away.

Now, I still want you to record your Uncle Willie joke on our website@CuzWilson.com and you do that by just clicking on the microphone at the bottom right of the page.

Hint.

Next week's show topic will probably be about music.

So just search online for a dad joke about music and send in your best imitation of an old Uncle Willie.

Okay.

On for the places category.

Well, if you're in Italy, you do like the Italians do, and you eat great food and make great wine.

Because of the Woodrow Wilson event that we covered in last week's episode, places named Wilson isn't very common in Italy.

But never fear.

Cause Wilson is here.

I found that Wilson named Julio is quite the celebrity in Italy.

He often blends his two passions of winemaking and music.

And we review his wine vineyard for our places category.

Today we're.

We're heading over to Tuscany.

But we aren't exactly looking at the usual tourist traps.

Yeah, no, we're digging into something much more specific.

Right.

We've actually pulled together some really interesting profiles for you.

Stuff from agriturismo, La Panetta, winetourism.com, wikipedia, and some interviews from Radio Bruno.

All to unpack the story of a guy named Julia Wilson.

Yeah.

And honestly, the first thing that grabs you about this guy isn't the wine or even the music he makes.

It's that name Wilson.

Exactly.

I mean, it stopped you in your tracks, doesn't it?

You see Wilson on a bottle of win from fi o down in Tuscany, and you immediately assume that he's an American expat.

Right.

Living out some kind of under the Tuscan sun fantasy or something.

Because it just sounds foreign.

It definitely doesn't sound Italian.

Exactly.

But here's where it gets really interesting for you listening.

Giulio is Italian, born and bred.

Born in Florence.

Florence, 1983.

He's not an expat at all.

So naturally you have to ask, how does a local Tuscan end up with a surname like Blood Wilson for a first name.

It is this wild, fascinating historical anomaly.

It turns out Wilson is a given name passed down from his grandfather.

Yeah.

And the grandfather was born on the exact day that US President Woodrow Wilson was visiting Italy for diplomatic talks.

That is just such a specific slice of history.

It really is.

The family literally decided to name the child in honor of the President's visit.

And that name stuck.

It traveled down the lineage to the Giulio we are discussing today.

So you have this very American presidential stamp sitting permanently on a man who is actually completely obsessed with hyperlocal Italian tradition.

And when you say obsessed, that is not an exaggeration.

He is a degreedenologist, but he didn't go into mass market production at all.

Back in 2005, he founded a winery called Deli Nostromani, which means from our hands.

Right.

He started it with his childhood friend, Lupo Tardelli.

And their whole approach is what the sources call archaeological viticulture.

Archaeological, meaning they aren't just growing grapes.

Exactly.

They are actively recovering abandoned vineyards to save these rare varieties that modern industrial farming basically tried to delete.

We're talking about grapes like Pugnitello, Foliotonda and Abrastein, which I'll admit I had never heard of before.

Looking at this research.

Most people haven't.

And that's exactly the point.

Take Pugnitello, for example.

The name actually comes from Pugno, meaning

fist, because the bunches are small and tight, like a little fist.

Right.

And from a commercial standpoint, these are incredibly difficult grapes.

They're low yield.

But Wilson and Targalli, they're betting on biodiversity over sheer volume.

And it's not just what they grow, it's how.

This is the part that really blew my mind.

The Girone Capovolto Toscano method.

It is quite a striking visual.

It's a very traditional method of tying the vines.

If you go to almost any modern vineyard today, you'll see plastic ties or metal clips holding the vines to the wire.

Because it's fast and cheap.

Exactly.

But Wilson uses willow branches.

Willow branches.

So they literally have to go out, harvest the willow, prep it, and tie every single knot by hand.

Yes, it's incredibly labor intensive, but it's strictly organic and biodegradable.

It allows the vine to move and grow naturally without being choked by a piece of plastic.

It's a philosophy of patience you almost never see anymore.

That philosophy bridges perfectly into the other half of his life.

Because somehow, between hand tying vines with willow branches, Julia Wilson is also a serious musician.

He really is.

He's an award winning singer, songwriter, or cantatore.

He has collaborated with Italian legends like Bobby Solo and even the famous Chilean group Inti Illimani.

I saw that they did an album together called Agua.

They did.

And if we connect this back to the bigger picture, you see the exact same willow branch mentality in his studio work.

They call it artisan conception.

So just like his farming, avoids chemicals

the album Agua was recorded completely without electronic plugins or computer effects.

Absolutely no auto tune zero, no digital shortcuts whatsoever.

He wants the terroir to show through in the song just as much as it does in his wine.

Whether it's the taste of a pugnitello grape that doesn't fit the international mass market or a song recorded without digital polish, he is actively fighting against the flattening of culture.

He's keeping the rough edges in a good way and doing it all under a name that commemorates a diplomatic visit from over a century ago.

It really is a totally unique story of dual preservation.

It leaves you with a lingering question to think about too.

We live in a world that is just obsessed with scaling up, faster production, digital perfection, seamless experiences.

But Julia Wilson is showing us the real value of doing things slowly and by hand.

So what other willow branch traditions are we losing right now simply because we aren't willing to take the time to tie the knot?

That is definitely something to chew on.

Well, I went online and I listened to some of Julia Wilson's music and I can see why everybody likes him.

He has got an amazing voice.

I saved a link for that music and I put it on our show notes@cuzwilson.com well if you want to find some of his wine in the usa, it's under the brand name and I'm probably going to screw this up.

Dali Nostromani and Integrity Wine is their distributor.

But don't confuse it with Wilson Daniels.

They are Wine Distributor by Wynn Wilson and Jack Daniels in California.

Yep, don't get that one confused either that Jack Daniels in California is not even related to the Jack Daniels Whiskey.

It's a little confusing here.

Here let me.

Here let me explain.

Jack Daniels with an S is the co founder of the wine distributor Wilson Daniels.

It is not related to Jack Daniel with no S who funded the famous Jack Daniels Tennessee Whiskey or commonly known as Jack Daniels with an S. But his name didn't have an S. Do you remember last week's question?

It was what country was the founder of Wilson Sporting Goods, Thomas E. Wilson, born in and where did he live the first nine years of his life before moving to Chicago where he started the Wilson Sporting Goods Company.

The answer is Canada.

Thomas Wilson was born in Canada and he moved to Chicago but He died in 1958.

Now this is kind of interesting because Chip Wilson was born in California but he moved to Canada.

There he started Lululemon and and he sold some of that stock to become part owner of Amherst Sports.

Last week's episode we learned that Amherst Sports owns Wilson Sporting Goods.

So it's kind of like it's gone full circle.

Where Wilson started Wilson's Party Goods and now Wilson owns Wilson Sporting Goods again.

Pretty cool, huh?

This week's cuz Wilson question is, since the USA has about 44,451 people whose first name is Wilson, how many countries have more Wilsons as their first name than the USA does?

Here's a hint.

The country of Tanzania in Africa has almost as many people who go by Wilson as their first name as there is in the United states.

They have 41,961 Wilsons, therefore didn't make the list.

But there are several countries who have more people that go by Wilson than the United States.

Can you guess some of them?

Now it's time for the things category.

Since the Winter Olympic Games include the sport of figure skating on ice, I wanted to include this story about a Wilson who won an historic gold medal at the U.S. figure Skating Championships 60 years ago.

And just last year he was finally inducted.

I want to start today with a headline that popped up recently.

This was in January 2025.

That honestly confused me for a second.

Yeah, it caught a lot of people off guard actually.

Right.

So it was about the US Figure Skating hall of Fame and they were inducting a man named Etoy Wilson.

An absolutely legendary name in the skating world, though, you know, not necessarily a household name for everyone.

Exactly.

But here is what threw the headline celebrated him as the first black man to be inducted into the hall of Fame.

Which is amazing.

Incredible.

Yeah.

But then I started looking at the actual timeline.

I looked at when he was competing and he won his national title in 1966.

1966, right.

So I'm doing the math here.

And that is a nearly 60 year gap, almost six decades between the big win and the hall of Fame induction.

So why the delay?

Well, that gap is exactly what we are here to talk about today.

I mean, the headline is the happy ending.

Sure.

But the real story, the deep dive for you all today, is about why it took so long and honestly, more importantly, the absolute underground warfare it took to get him on the ice in the first place.

Warfare is a pretty strong word for figure skating.

In this case, it is the only word that fits.

We are looking at a stack of sources today that includes a few fascinating oral history from the LA84 Foundation.

We've got archival articles from Skating Magazine and of course the recent coverage of the induction itself.

And when you piece all of that together.

You realize pretty quickly that this isn't just a sports story.

Not at all.

It reads like a heist movie.

A heist movie.

Okay, I like that.

It really is.

It's a story about a rule book loophole.

A woman who bought her first skates from a pawn shop.

Get this, a 6 foot by 6 foot sheet of ice hidden inside a bedroom.

Okay, well, you definitely had me at ice rink in a bedroom.

That sounds like a complete disaster waiting to happen.

Yeah, but before we get to the architecture of that whole situation, we have to talk about the architect.

Because ah.

Toy Wilson is the history maker.

But who is the mastermind behind him?

That would be Mabel Fairbanks.

You honestly cannot tell the story of ah, Toy Wilson without completely understanding Mabel Fairbanks.

She was his coach.

She was his coach, yes, but she was also just this force of nature who was never actually allowed to compete herself.

She paved the way for everyone else.

Let's unpack her story first.

Because reading through these notes and the oral history, her early life reads less like a biography of an elite sports coach and more like a Dickens novel set in the 1920s or 30s.

It really does.

It's incredibly tough.

Mabel was born in the Florida Everglades.

Her heritage was a mix of seminal English and African American.

But very early on she was orphaned

and abandoned, just left to fend for herself.

Yeah, the sources are a little hazy on the exact timeline just because of how chaotic her situation was.

But she essentially ended up in New York City as a young child completely on her own.

And when we say on her own, we aren't talking about, you know, bouncing between foster homes or couch surfing.

We are talking about living on the streets.

Literally on the streets.

There is this one specific detail in the oral history where she talks about sleeping on a stoop.

Right.

The scoop story.

And she says people would literally step over her.

They had to step over a child to get into their building, and they just did it.

She entirely invisible to them.

That specific detail is so crucial for understanding her psychology later in life.

Just imagine being a child trying to sleep on concrete.

And the adults passing by don't even acknowledge your existence.

You develop a certain kind of armor.

Right.

You have to.

You learn very quickly that if you want something in this world, no one is going to hand it to you.

You have to take it.

She also mentioned sleeping in Central park on piles of newspapers.

And it's just wild to think about that profound level of survival mode and then trying to connect it to figure skating, which is arguably one of the most Expensive, pampered sports in the entire world.

It is the ultimate contrast.

And that is exactly where the serendipity comes in.

She's working as a babysitter.

She had finally clawed her way off the streets into some kind of employment.

And she sees people skating on a frozen pond in Central Park.

And something just clicks for her.

Something clicks.

She's totally mesmerized by it.

So she takes her earnings, and she goes to a pawn shop.

She has exactly $1 to her name, and she buys a pair of ice skates.

And here's the first little oops moment, right?

She bought black skates.

I love that detail.

She bought black skates.

She didn't know there was a dress code.

She had absolutely no idea.

In the skating world, traditionally, men wear black boots and women wear white boots.

But she just saw skates that cost a dollar, and she bought them.

She put them on and just started moving.

But obviously, the real barrier for her wasn't the color of her boots.

It was the venue.

There's this story about the Gay Blades Rink in New York that I think perfectly illustrates what she was up against from day one.

Yeah, this is the scene where that armor we just talked about really comes into play.

She saves up her coins to pay the entrance fee for the indoor rank.

She stands in line, she gets to the ticket window, and the ticket seller looks at her, a young black girl in the 1930s, and just says, go away, little girl.

He wouldn't even take her money, refused it entirely.

But Mabel didn't leave.

She just went right to the back of the line and tried again and again and again.

And finally, the manager of the rink notices this commotion at the front desk.

And this is the turning point, right?

But it's not a nice one.

It is a turning point, but, no, not out of kindness at all.

The manager looks at her, and she had upgraded to new skates by then.

And he tells the ticket seller, just let her in.

She can't do any harm.

Meaning she's going to get on the ice, fall flat on her face, get embarrassed, and leave on her own.

Exactly.

He thought he was letting her in to fail.

But Mabel got on the ice, and she didn't fall.

In fact, she had this incredible natural aptitude for edges.

She was learning back crossovers, which is hard.

It was a fairly tricky move for a total beginner.

And she was learning it faster than the white students who were actively paying for private lessons.

And that kind of raw talent caught people's attention.

It caught the eye of a legendary instructor Named Howard Nicholson.

And this kicks off what I like to call the shadow training era of her life.

Shadow training, what does that mean?

Well, she was talented, undeniably so.

Even legends like Maribel Vinson, who was a nine time US champion, wanted to teach her.

But they knew the politics of the sport.

Maribel told her very bluntly, I will teach you, but we have to keep it a secret because they are not going to allow you in competition.

Wow, that is just heartbreaking.

You're basically being told you are good enough to be a champion, but you are categorically not allowed to even try.

And it wasn't just competition.

She was barred from the entertainment side too.

She tried to get into the big touring shows like ice volleys and ice capades.

And what did they say?

The producers told her straight to her face, if we put you on the ice, the audience will walk out or the white cast members will go on strike.

So she is totally locked out of competition and she is locked out of the big shows.

I mean, most people would just quit.

Most people would.

But Meibel Fairbanks didn't quit.

She improvised.

Since she couldn't skate in the big arenas, she and her manager, the guy she calls Uncle Wally, they built their own venue.

Okay, this brings us back to the bedroom rink because I need you to explain the actual physics of this to me.

You said it was a six foot by six foot tank.

A six by six tank, yes.

It was this portable wooden frame and they lined it with plastic, they would fill it with water and freeze it.

Sometimes they would use crushed dry ice if they were traveling and needed frozen fast.

And yes, she actually kept one set up in her bedroom to practice on.

I just.

My rug in my living room is bigger than 6x6.

How do you figure skate on a literal postage stamp?

You can't build up any speed.

You can't build speed.

And that is actually her secret weapon.

If you think about it, if you are on a massive Olympic sized rink, you can hide a lot of bad technique with speed and momentum.

Yeah, you just sort of glide through.

Rare, you just keep moving.

But on a six foot sheet of ice, if you lean too far, you hit the wall.

If you don't control your edge perfectly, you just stop dead.

So she was forced by her circumstances to become a perfect technician, a master technician.

She practiced spins that stayed in one exact spot.

She practiced turns that were razor sharp.

Yeah, and then they took this tank on the road.

They called it the chitlin circuit of

ice because they were performing in nightclubs.

Nightclubs, cabarets, theaters that catered specifically to black audiences.

Places that had never seen figure skating before.

She brought the sport to the community because the sport refused to let the community in.

And because the US was so fiercely segregated.

She actually left the country for a while too.

Right.

The notes mention she went to Mexico and Cuba.

She became a massive international star.

But I wouldn't call it a vacation.

The sources detail how she was in Mexico during political revolutions.

She literally had to escape a theater during a shootout once.

That's terrifying.

And then in Cuba, a wealthy suitor proposed to her.

He promised her this whole life of absolute luxury.

But the one condition was that she could never return to the United States.

And she said no.

She completely refused to be exiled.

She knew her mission wasn't just to be comfortable somewhere else.

It was to break the barrier back home.

So she eventually moves to Los Angeles.

And this is where the whole story pivots.

How so?

She realizes, I am too old to compete now.

The window for me personally as an athlete has closed.

But I'm going to make sure it opens for the next generation.

So she switches from being an athlete to being a strategist.

Exactly.

She shifts into coaching.

But immediately she runs into the exact same wall.

The Los Angeles skating clubs, which were the absolute gatekeepers to competition back then, would not accept black members.

Just flat out refused them.

Refused them.

And here's the catch.

To compete in the United States Figure Skating Association Nationals, you had to be a member of a recognized club.

It's a classic catch 22.

You cannot compete without a club.

And the clubs will not let you in.

Right.

And most people just stop there.

But Mabel Fairbanks decided to sit down and read the rule book.

You mean the actual text of the bylaws?

The fine print of the bylaws.

And she found a loophole.

There was a provision in there for something called individual membership.

What does that mean?

Essentially, if you lived in a rural area far away from any established club, you could pay your dues directly to the National Association.

So the rule was meant for some kid out in rural North Dakota.

Not for someone living in downtown LA who was actively being discriminated against?

Precisely.

It was a complete bureaucratic oversight.

They never imagined it would be used this way.

But Mabel realized that the national association wanted the membership dues way more than they wanted to police every single individual application.

So she had all her students sign up as individual members.

But didn't the association ask questions like, hey, why aren't you joining the LA Club right down the street from you?

That was the Big gamble.

Every time they send in a form, it was a huge risk.

So Mabel told her students to write on the application that they were too busy with school to join a formal club.

Too busy with school.

That is absolutely brilliant.

Isn't it?

It's this incredibly boring bureaucratic excuse that no one is going to question.

It gave the association a plausible reason to accept the money without having to address the racial issue at all.

She literally hacked the system with paperwork.

Wow.

Okay, so she gets them registered, they are officially in.

But now they have to actually go out and skate in front of judges who probably aren't thrilled to see them on the ice.

And the judges held all the power.

Remember, figure skating is a highly subjective sport.

If a judge simply does not like you, you lose.

Period.

Mabel knew this.

That is exactly why she developed her coaching philosophy, which she called better than better.

Better than better.

I love that phrase.

But what did she mean by it?

Practically, it actually came from a conversation she had with a judge named Henrietta Nelson.

Mabel asked her flat out, what do my students need to do to pass?

And the subtext there was crystal clear.

Being just as good as the white skaters was never going to be enough.

If there was a tie, the black skater would lose.

Right.

The tie always goes to the established.

Exactly.

So they had to be so undeniably superior, so far beyond everyone else, that a judge would look completely foolish for failing them.

She was essentially training them to beat the bias itself.

She was.

And when the training wasn't enough, she fought the judges directly.

There is a story in the oral history about a judge who just flat out refused to pass.

Mabel's students just failed them on principle.

So what did Mabel do?

She didn't just take it.

She started a massive letter writing campaign to the National Association.

She exposed the bias with actual data showing the low scores versus the flawless performances.

Until that specific judge was finally removed.

She was like a one woman legal defense team.

She was the shield.

She took all the hits.

And standing right behind that shield was a young boy named A Toy Wilson.

Okay, so let's talk about a toy.

He finally enters the picture.

In the 1950s, right, a toy was actually discovered at the Polar palace in Los Angeles.

Now, for you listening, you really have to picture this place.

The Polar palace was not some run of the mill community center.

It was the place where the Hollywood elite skated.

We're talking Natalie Cole skated there.

Gregory Peck's kids were there.

And Mabel Fairbanks was the absolute queen of that rink.

She was.

The sources describe her gliding around the ice in these custom gold or pink skates, Keeping her head held high, she was known around the rink as bold and beautiful.

She completely commanded that space.

And a toy's mother, Thelma, brought him there, and Mabel instantly took him under her wing.

But she wasn't exactly a soft, grandmotherly coach, was she?

Because I read a story in the sources about, well, let's just call it Corporal Punishment on Ice, the spanking story.

Yes.

Soya is just a kid at this point.

He's very talented, but he's a kid, so he's easily distracted.

At the rink, the beginners were relegated to the corner patches, which are basically the boring corners of the ice, where you just practice basic edges over and over.

Itoya was daydreaming, staring up at the ceiling.

Bad move with Mabel around.

Very bad move.

Mabel skates over in front of everyone.

And by the way, Peggy Fleming, the future Olympic champion, was on the ice watching this.

Mabel picks a toy up, turns him over, and spanks him right there on the ice.

I mean, today, that obviously gets you fired immediately, but back then, back then,

and in that specific context, it was a very clear message.

She was telling him, you do not have the luxury of being lazy.

Not ever.

She knew that because he was a young black boy, he was going to have to work twice as hard to get half as far.

She was strict because the world he was entering was going to be completely brutal to him.

And she was right.

Because when Ah Toy finally made it to the US nationals in 1965, making him the first African American to do so in the novice division, the reality of the country hit them really hard.

It did.

The competition was in Lake Placid.

Ah Toy and his mother arrived ready to compete, and they were immediately told they could not stay at the official

competition hotel because it was whites only.

Whites only.

Just imagine the mental game there.

You are trying to focus on your routine, on your jumps, on the biggest moment of your life, but you aren't even allowed to sleep in the same building as your competitors.

You are being explicitly told you do not belong before you even lace up your skates.

It was entirely designed to make him feel inferior, but he didn't let it work.

He placed second that year.

And then came 1966.

The Nationals were held in Berkeley, California, and this was the year everything finally came together.

But the performance itself wasn't perfect.

I read that he actually fell.

He did fall on his very first jump, a double lutz.

He hit the ice hard.

Now, if you watch modern skating today, if you fall on your opening Jump.

You are usually done.

The gold medal is completely gone.

True.

But this is where we need to explain how figure skating actually worked.

In 1966, it wasn't just about the big jumps in the free skate that you see on TV today.

Back then, there was an entire segment of the competition called school figures.

Figures.

What is that exactly?

It is literally tracing figure eights onto the ice.

You stand on one foot and you carve a perfect circle into the ice.

Then you turn and carve another one.

It is incredibly boring to watch.

It is incredibly difficult to do, and it requires insane, absolute edge control.

And how much of the total score was that worth?

It was worth 60% of the total score.

60%.

So the jumps were actually less than half the score?

Exactly.

And remember Mabel's bedroom rink?

Remember the 6x6 tank?

Oh, my goodness.

Right.

That tiny little rink forced a toy to have absolute perfect control.

He couldn't skate fast in training, so he learned to skate deep into the edges.

His figures were flawless.

So even though he fell in the free skate, his lead from the figures from that better than better technique Mabel forced on him was so massive that he won the US Novice men's title anyway.

That is incredible.

The actual constraints of his train of the tiny little tank created the champion.

Exactly.

He became the first black skater to win a US national title.

He finally broke the barrier.

So he wins.

He is a national champion.

The logical next step for him is the Olympics, right?

It should have been.

But this is where the story takes a very pragmatic turn.

Attoi actually retired from competition in 1969.

He decided not to chase the 1972 Olympics.

Why, though?

He was right on the trajectory.

He looked at the landscape of the sport.

He had broken through at the novice level, sure, but the senior level, which is the Olympic level, was even more intensely political.

The judging bias was still very much there.

And frankly, he needed to make a living.

So he chose to go to Loyola Marymount University instead.

It is a really sobering reminder that raw talent doesn't always conquer the system.

Sometimes the system just wears you out.

It does.

But he didn't leave skating entirely.

And this is the great full circle moment of the story.

After college, he joined the Ice Follies.

Wait, the same show that told Mabel Fairbanks, we don't hire black skaters?

The very same show.

Otoya became the first black skater in the history of the Ice Follies.

He walked right through the door that Mabel had been banging on for 30 years.

That is poetry.

And after that, he had a whole other Life, too.

He became a very successful production accountant for television.

He just moved on with his life.

But the recognition from the stage skating world that stood completely still for almost 60 years.

It wasn't until people like Ty Babylonia, who is another mixed race skating legend, really started pushing for his legacy to be honored that the hall of fame call finally came.

So January 2025, he finally gets the jacket.

He finally gets to give the speech.

He does.

And Ty Babylonia is actually now working on a project to get Mabel's life story onto the screen, which feels so necessary because if you don't know about that 6x6 tank, you really don't understand the history of the sport.

It changes entirely how you look at that gold medal.

It wasn't just athleticism.

It was pure strategy.

It was a long con played against a deeply segregated system.

Mabel Fairbanks played the ultimate long game.

She knew early on she wouldn't be the one standing on the podium.

She accepted that.

But she made absolute certain that someone would be.

She used a rule book loophole and a tiny patch of indoor ice to force a massive institution to change its ways.

It really makes you think about the what ifs.

Ah Toy Wilson said that when he stood on that podium, he heard the voices of everyone who told him he couldn't do it.

But he also heard the people who said he could.

Ah Toy made it because he had Mabel.

She found loophole she fought the judges for.

So the question I am left with today for you listening is this.

How many potential champions out there and not just in skating, but in science or medicine or art, are currently standing outside the door locked out simply because they do not have a Mabel Fairbanks to find the loophole for them?

That is the real question.

Who is reading the fine print for them right now?

Definitely something to think about.

Well, it took long enough for a toy to be inducted, but at least he was still alive to receive that honor.

Congratulations.

Now it's time for Wilson's in the News.

The company we covered in last week's things category is Amherst Sports.

And they own Wilson Sporting Goods.

And who is their president and CEO, you ask?

Well, I'm glad you did because they appointed Carrie Ask to be president and CEO of Wilson Sporting Goods.

Have you ever heard anybody's last name Ask?

I have it.

That's pretty cool.

Next Wilson in the news is professional basketball player Asia Wilson.

And she's launching her first global tour as a Nike signature athlete.

Lainey Wilson teams up with Wrangler for a summer clothing collection.

Junior ROTC cadet Keandre Wilson was awarded a prestigious scholarship.

And the last one is a 185-year-old company in Brazil called Wilson Sons Ultra Tug is being sold to Houston's Tidewater Inc. For $500 million.

Well, I've never heard of Wilson Sons Ultra Tug.

So who are they?

Oh, they're just a little maritime services company with more than 80 tugboats and it's the largest port in maritime logistics operator in Brazil.

Here's the funny thing.

In one paragraph describing Wilson's history and 1862, the name Wilson was included seven times.

In one paragraph there's a link in the episode for this article and go there and try to read that paragraph and see if you can make heads or tails out of it.

Now there's links for all the Cuz buzz stories in our show notes on our website@CuzWilson.com well, I hope you see why today's episode needed to be longer.

There's a lot of Wilson's in this one, and especially Wilson's of color.

So make sure you share the Cuz Wilson show with every Wilson you know and share a post on your social media too.

Well, until next week.

See you Cuz the Cuz Wilson is a product of name and culture media and we use the Internet for research and Google's AI product called NotebookLM for narration and static images.