Okotokian Chris Cedersrtand is looking back at his time on Canada's Ultimate Challenge.

The show's first season premiered on February 16 with its season finale having aired on April 6.

In it, 24 Canadians making up six teams were taken across the country to compete in a series of grueling physical tasks at various Canadian landmarks.

Cederstrand's red team ended up as the second team to be eliminated, though across five episodes in the eight-episode series.

One big highlight was interacting with his team's coach, Olympic runner Donovan Bailey.

"Donovan's an incredible individual. He's one of the GOATs of athletics in Canada and the world. We both had some very similar ideologies around sport. Me having competed on the world stage with sledge hockey and him and athletics, we had very high compete levels."

When Bailey contracted COVID and could only communicate remotely, he named Cederstrand team captain.

Being a reality show, it wasn't without drama, with Cederstrand's team sharing a few dramatic moments. A kayak challenge in the Red team's final episode was particularly tough for him.

If it were all about drive, Cederstrand knows he'd have gone all the way.

"When it comes to these types of things, if it was something that was very competitive, everything was all "compete," that might be a different story, but as far as the drama side of things, I'm not about that. My mentality and the way I approach things definitely created some drama on our team because we didn't have people with the same ideas on what we wanted to do with competing... It was 'finish first,' it's not just about finishing. There's no wood medals in sport, especially in a point-based system. To me, you should never be happy with 'I finished.' You need to be able to go out there and say you left it all out there."

Cederstrand was thrilled to see so much of his country, but it wasn't always easy.

"As much as I love the Yukon, we went going at a horrible time. We ended up having a wildfire that closed one of the roads and a mudslide that closed the other. My best way to describe it was like the first time when COVID hit and the grocery stores were stripped. They couldn't get produce in; they couldn't get anything into the stores. Most of us, we're athletes, we're eating healthy, and we walked into the grocery store and we're like 'What's going on?' You can't buy veggies; you're allowed to buy one thing of egg whites and one thing of milk. It was a crazy situation."

With that said, he's glad to have had time to stop and take in the sights and sounds of each location.

"Playing sports and playing hockey, generally whenever we travelled in Canada, it's in the winter time and you're either at the rink or the hotel. It's hockey the whole time, you don't get the chance to go out and sightsee a lot of these places. This was definitely a cool situation that way."

In terms of the competition itself, Cederstrand enjoyed seeing the strategy at play with the team dynamics. As the only adaptive athlete among all the competitors, he also took pride in showing his capability.

"You had to play a jockeying game and a smart game with where you used your competitors. That was based on a lot of different things... Obviously, I'm not going to be the guy that's doing a crazy incline going up the hill, that's just not going to be my cup of tea being an adaptive athlete. But any of the challenges we did, it was a great thing to get out there and compete as an adaptive athlete to show people it's possible. You don't need to put limitations on yourself, go out there and essentially do what you want to do. That was some of my premise for going on the show."

The entire first season of Canada's Ultimate Challenge is available to stream on CBC Gem.

Related Stories