Ticats.ca
Sam Giguere is all about power and speed, be it on the football field or bobsled track.
During his first Canadian Football League season with the Tiger-Cats in 2012, the chiseled receiver recorded 41 catches for 549 yards and a touchdown while starting all 18 games. Giguere followed up his rookie year in the CFL by making his debut for the Canadian bobsled team on the World Cup circuit.
Let’s go back for a minute to the spring of 2012, before Giguere signed with the Ticats in early May, when he emailed Bobsled Canada expressing his interest in trying the sport.
| Expectations are high |
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With a year of CFL experience under his belt, Ticats receiver Sam Giguere is ready to take on a whole new role on the offensive side of the ball…Read More. |
Soon after, the 6-foot, 215-pound athlete was on a plane to Calgary to try his hand at bobsledding. Apparently the Canadian coaches liked what Giguere showed during his week out west and he was offered a spot on the team.
“It’s a really exciting sport. You feel a lot of adrenaline when you go down the track – the speed is incredible,” Giguere explained. “It’s a great group of athletes on the Canadian team, a lot of guys that have played football before, some in the pros, some in CIS.”
“It’s very similar to football in that you need power and speed. For me being a brakeman the 50 metre start on the bobsled track is where I’m working really hard. For those first five seconds or so I have to give it all I got. It’s just like running a ‘go’ route on the football field.”
The similarities in both sports allowed Gigure to make a quick transition from football to bobsled after the Ticats 2012 campaign came to an end. He went back to Calgary to train for about a week and a half before joining the rest of the Canadian team in Europe.
“There are three Canadian teams on the World Cup circuit. Canada has a very strong crew, about 15 guys deep,” Giguere said. “When I started the bobsled season I was in Canada three because I had never competed in the sport before.”
In his first campaign on the track, the Sherbrooke, Quebec native competed in both two-man and four-man sleds. Giguere’s first ever World Cup competition was certainly an interesting one.
“My first four-man race was in Winterberg, Germany. I did the two-man and the four-man that weekend. The two-man we finished 12th and I remember the first race I had trouble getting in the sled, but I managed to pull myself in,” Giguere recalled.
“The following day I did the four-man and we crashed after the first run into the finish line. We still managed to finish in 10th place even with the crash – that was my first crash on a bobsled. It was scary, even though it was a very mild crash, to go back up and go down the track, my neck was stiff and I wasn’t really sure that I wanted to do it anymore. But we still went and pushed a great time and kept our 10th place.”
As the season progressed, Giguere did as well. Midway through the World Cup schedule he was promoted. And by the time the Canadian team made their final stop of the year, Giguere was primed for a strong finish.
“The last World Cup race of the season was in Sochi, Russia, I was in Canada two then. On the new Olympic track we finished seventh, which was personally my best result,” Giguere said. “We pushed two great times in Sochi and we beat Canada one in the four-man.”
“We finished on a high note. Especially with Sochi being the venue for the Olympic games next year, it was easy for us to gain confidence and look forward to the games and expect a good result.”
Giguere is looking to carry his positive momentum from the bobsled track onto the football field for the 2013 season. In preparation for the upcoming Ticats schedule, Giguere reflected back on his rookie campaign in the CFL and saw some glaring improvements he wanted to make in his game for his sophomore season. 
“I think the biggest adjustment was the play clock,” Giguere said. “The game is so much faster up here than it is down in the United States, in between plays there is a lot less time.”
“When I got into training camp last year I was really heavy and my cardio wasn’t very good. So I made sure this year to come back lighter and really focused on my speed endurance so that when the game is on, and the play clock is real short, I don’t get as tired and I can still perform.”
Increased speed endurance will help Giguere become more effective in the Ticats new offensive system being implemented by coordinator Tommy Condell. Each Tiger-Cats receiver within the offensive scheme will be asked to motion all over the field before the snap of the ball and know each receiver position.
“It’s the nature of the offence – you don’t want to have any defences structured just to be able to take away one important part of the offence and then everything else breaks down,” Condell explained.
“Coach Condell really puts emphasis on the fact that to be successful on the field we have to be able to move around and play many positions,” Giguere said. “So guys, not just myself, but everybody has been put in different spots.”
Condell, who doubles as the Ticats receivers coach, believes Giguere is going to have an important role as a receiver in his offence. If he knows his assignments and prepares in detail for each game then the production is going to take care of itself.
“It’s gotta be [a breakout season],” Giguere said. “I have to contribute to the success of the team better than I did last year. So for me I have to step up, there is no other way.”
