The PowHERful Podcast with AJ McCord

CONFIDENCE | Kaysha Love exudes the kind of confidence that is so true and solid it’s contagious. The Team USA Bobsled star shares her journey from gymnastics to track to bobsled, detailing how she’s stayed true to herself every step of the way. In this episode you’ll learn how Kaysha and her teammates get their sleds to Europe (spoiler alert it’s RIDICULOUS), what her favorite part of the sport is, and the ...

SUPERMOM | Canadian free skier Cassie Sharpe has added a new job title to her resume since her last Winter Olympics: mom. She says while it’s her favorite one yet, she’s still Cassie the pro skier too. While juggling both titles can be a bit chaotic when trying to travel the world and compete in the halfpipe, she dives into why she’s embracing being one of the trail blazers among female action sports athletes who ...

PURPOSE | At 20 years old snowboarder Maddy Schaffrick thought she would never pick up a snowboard again. The sport that had been her life, her career as a pro snowboarder out of Steamboat Springs, Colorado had wrecked her, ruined her, and left her wondering what on earth to do with herself as someone who spent very little of her adolescent years in the ‘regular’ world. She became a plumber, then a coach to little kids ...

CALM | Skeleton racer Mystique Ro has officially locked in her spot for Team USA and is heading to her first Olympics! In this [BEST OF] episode, get to know the daughter who grew up as one of the oldest of 11, how that chaos led her to an individual sport she calls her “kernel of chaos,” and what she’s learned from the trail blazers who came before her about creating a legacy that’s lasting in this episode ...

ADAPTABILITY | Sophia Kirkby is making her Olympic debut, along with her sport of women’s doubles luge, in large part thanks to her ability to adapt. She started luge at 7, but switched to doubles in her early 20s. Her father, her biggest cheerleader and the man who got her into the sport, passed away, now she carries his words on her gloves on race days. This episode is for those who’ve loved and lost, who’ve cha...

FEAR | In this [BEST OF] Episode of The PowHERful Podcast, AJ McCord sits down with Olympic Great British free skier Zoe Atkin. The Stanford student is entering the 2026 Winter Olympics as one of the top contenders to bring home a gold medal in free ski halfpipe. In this episode she gets vulnerable about her relationship with fear and how one psychology class at Stanford changed the way she approached the fear that would sometimes ...

OPTIMISM | At first Anna Gibson thought the idea of joining Team USA’s ski mountaineering training camp was a bit ridiculous. She’s a professional trail and track runner, and diverting into ski mountaineering, a sport that will make its Olympic debut in Milan-Cortina, wasn’t in her 2025 plans. But then she asked the question ‘what if?’ and had the courage to look at the positive possibilities. Instead ...

As women’s sports continue to rise, women’s surfing isn’t just riding the wave — they’re leading it. Lakey Peterson, a veteran of the World Surf League Championship Tour, represents a pivotal generation of female trailblazers. She recalls a time when winning a contest earned her $15,000, while the male winner of the same event took home $100,000. Since then, she’s witnessed the league evolve, ach...

Picking yourself back up after a fall is never easy but it’s something competitive mountain biker Jess Blewitt knows how to do all too well. When you look at her last few years it would be so easy to focus on the injuries, but that is far from what the first ever female entrant to Red Bull Hardline has done. Instead she shares a lesson about the power of presence and managing fear in a world where we're constantly told if we'...

Paris 2024 marked another meaningful step forward for equality in Paralympic sport, but the work is far from over. As winter Paralympians look ahead to their own moment on the world stage in Italy, they’re also bracing for the all-too-familiar media narratives that often reduce their complex journeys to a single moment or medal.

In this episode, 2x Paralympian Dani Aravich joins us to unpack what it means to shift the lens. T...

Hammer thrower Janeé Kassanavoid was poised to make her first Olympic team in 2024 and then, she missed her throws at the Olympic Trials in Eugene. This past weekend, she returned to the scene of one of her greatest disappointments and rewrote her Hayward Field history - making her third World Championship team. Her story is the one of overcoming disappointment, of owning what went wrong and believing you are more than your ...

As athletes, and often as women, we're frequently told we must fit ourselves into a nice neat box of what society defines our role to be. Luckily, Kristine Anigwe never subscribed to that belief. Now the former WNBA player is building her fashion empire, one she started when she was still an active player. KA Originals has been in the spotlight as both she and many stars around the W have rocked her fits. In this episode of The Pow...

She’s a 2x Olympian, 6x World Champ and multiple X Games medalist and yet, the road has been full of struggle and perseverance few knew about for BMX freestyle rider Hannah Roberts. In this episode she shares how she manages the pressure and privilege of being a trail blazer, as well as how learning to deal with things as they come has helped her navigate the ups and downs. It’s a lesson hard-learned, but she easily sha...

Trailblazer. Badass. “One of the boys.” Vicki Golden has been called all that and more, but to her, it’s simple: she’s a rider.

Raised on two wheels and fueled by the grit her late father instilled in her, Vicki has broken barriers in the world of motocross, and she’s still pushing limits today. Her story is one of resilience, determination, and a love for the ride.

This episode is a reminder that no m...

Welcome back PowHERful Pod Squad! Season 3 is kicking off with a lovely, fierce, 2x Olympic skateboarder who’s rarely without her ukulele. Through our partnership with the X Games we’re catching 2x X Games medalist Bryce Wettstein fresh off her bronze in Salt Lake City at the X Games 30th Anniversary celebration. The San Diego native shares how she discovered her authentic self, and how serving that has served her more ...

In the season finale of The PowHERful AJ McCord sits down with Katie Uhlaender, a 5x Olympic skeleton athlete who, at 40-years old, is trying to do the unprecedented and make a sixth Olympic team. In this episode Katie gets vulnerable, sharing the doubt she faces as she pursues this massive achievement, and the advice her dad passed along to her at 18 she still leans on to this day. 

And a note from AJ: I cannot thank you ...

Ever heard of skijoring?? We hadn’t either until two Colorado State students explained the sport that began out of practicality and has grown into an entire experience in mountain towns across the west. Marley and Megan, plus their trusty steed, Apollo, explain how they got into a sport that involves being towed over jumps behind a horse, the most shocking thing about being young women in this male-dominated space, and their ...

Zen may not be the first thing that comes to mind when you think of the sport of skeleton but it’s exactly what Mystique Ro embodies as she tries to make her first Olympic team. As one of 11 children, quiet is not something she often had growing up and it’s something she runs to on the ice track now. In this episode of The PowHERful Podcast she shares how her introduction to the sport was far from conventional, and how ...