Why Andi Petrillo is moving to Olympic prime time at the CBC

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Andi Petrillo chuckled as she retold a story from her early days chasing a dream of becoming a broadcaster.

She was in her early 20s, working on-air for a community access cable channel north of Toronto where junior hockey — featuring teams such as the Aurora Tigers, Newmarket Hurricanes and Thornhill Thunderbirds — was a programming staple.

“I jokingly take credit for Connor McDavid’s career,” she said after a laugh. “I ran into his mom once and she said Connor used to watch those shows all the time and was obsessed and they started going to games.”

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Hockey’s prodigal son wasn’t the only one to take note. Petrillo’s talent and vibrant on-air personality helped her climb the long ladder of Canadian sports media, where she is now set to claim one of the industry’s most coveted rungs: Prime time host for the CBC for the 2024 Paris Olympics.

The 44-year-old will conduct the all-important 7 p.m. to 2 a.m. EDT window, where she will incorporate an expert panel to tell the story of Canadian athletes who have already been in competition. She will be working with two-time Olympic hurdler Perdita Felicien, former Olympic water polo captain Waneek Horn-Miller and pro snowboarder Craig McMorris.

With longtime host Scott Russell announcing plans to retire following Paris, Petrillo is now the logical heir as this country’s highest-profile host for the marquee showcase.

She is neither Russell nor Ron MacLean nor Brian Williams, to name three of her more accomplished predecessors. Those who work with her — as well as those who watch her from home — know Petrillo has her own distinctive voice.

“She’s a phenomenal broadcaster and she’s so authentic,” said Chris Wilson, the CBC’s general manager of Olympics. “When you meet her, she’s exactly like she is on air, and I think the viewer can pick up on that.

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“She’s almost like a singular talent in this space and I love watching her.”

In the mayhem of live TV, where distractions and developments can attack a host at almost any time, and from multiple directions, poise is one of Petrillo’s more prominent traits.

“Her ability to vamp on the air — or do everything in one take without a (teleprompter) — the average sports fan doesn’t think of those things,” Wilson said. “That’s just one of the things that make her so good. When you are behind the scenes and you see how easy she makes it look when it’s really not that easy — I really admire that talent.”

While she would obviously prefer to be on the ground in Paris — as Russell will be from CBC’s main broadcast position with the Eiffel Tower as a backdrop — Petrillo is enthused about a Europe-based Olympics. Especially one removed from the cloud of COVID.

“It’s nice to have a sense of normalcy and the pomp and circumstance around the Olympics that these athletes most definitely deserve,” Petrillo said. “They deserve the big ceremonies. They deserve the crowds. They deserve the chaos. In many ways that’s what makes the Olympics so special. A city wherever the Olympics are held is just buzzing.”

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If there was a sobering side to her work as a studio host from Toronto over the past two Games, it was the absence of those emotions. There was always a degree of enthusiasm from Canadian medal winners, but Petrillo felt the exuberance was muted.

“It was very heartbreaking interviewing some of them coming out of Tokyo (in 2021) and Beijing (2022) and as excited as many of them were about their performances — especially if they came home with medals — they all just said we did it with nobody in the stands or no family there so that was pretty heartbreaking to hear.”

That empathy — combined with a natural curiosity— are personality traits that help make Petrillo a terrific interviewer, a strength that shines through when she goes to air.

“She has this tremendous energy for anything that she does and she’s also totally committed to whatever she does,” Russell said. “She’s curious. She’s hard-working. She asks the right questions. She’s great at what she does and working with her as I have for the past eight or nine years has made me a better broadcaster.”

These will be Petrillo’s sixth Games in a host role at CBC, a well-earned position at the zenith of a career path that has never stagnated. Always driven to push forward, she moved from community cable to Leafs TV and other over-the-air channels under the Maple Leaf Sports & Entertainment umbrella, before graduating to “Hockey Night In Canada.”

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It was there that Petrillo’s broadcast horizons expanded and eventually veered towards Olympic expertise that would help lead to a pair of Canadian screen awards.

She’s had many broadcasting influences in her career — from James Duthie and Michael Landsberg at TSN to so many of her CBC colleagues, including Russell and MacLean.

Of all the voices, though, she counts Terry Leibel as the most profoundly motivational. In 2003, the longtime CBC Olympic broadcaster became first female to win a Gemini Award for their work in sports.

“When I was watching her and mesmerized by her, I think it was because I wanted to be her, without really knowing it at the time,” said Petrillo. “There was something about watching that woman host the Olympics that resonated with me. There was always something about the Olympics that I loved.

“Of course, Brian Williams was the voice of the Olympics and watching him for so long was a big thing. But as a young girl I gravitated toward a woman.”

Petrillo reached a potential crossroads in her career during the 2012-13 NHL season, when owners locked out their players during a labour dispute. With no Hockey Night games to fill her schedule, she shifted to assignments at CBC Sports and entered the Olympic realm — learning about sports such as cross-country skiing and biathlon and bobsled.

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“I loved it and that caught the eye of my boss at the time, Trevor Pilling,” said Petrillo. “They saw my willingness to report and educate myself on different sports and I had a ton of fun doing it. My bosses wanted me to be an Olympic host and I haven’t looked back.”

And now, she is ready for prime time.

“This is my first time doing prime time which is very exciting and something you always work toward, but because of the time change, it’s also my first time doing a show with zero live sports,” Petrillo said. “So instead of setting people up for the action, my role is reacting to the action. I’m excited by it.

“There are big audiences still in prime time and a lot of people rely on that coverage. You watched Brian Williams and then it became Ron MacLean, then it became Scott Russell and now it’s Andi … woah.

“I don’t take that for granted. I’m fully aware of the responsibility and he honour that comes with hosting the Olympics in prime time for Canada. I’m really ready to relish the moment.”

And just as a nascent hockey prodigy did early in Petrillo’s broadcast career, Canadians from coast-to-coast will be along for the ride.

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