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CALGARY – Javelin thrower Liz Gleadle realizes that, on paper, she is technically a summer athlete.

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But the 27-year-old Pan Am gold medallist considers herself as much a survivor of the wicked Canadian elements as hockey players, speed skaters or even downhill skiers.

You see, Gleadle splits her time between Vancouver and Lethbridge, Alta., in training for the Rio Olympics, and she endures brutal conditions at times in both locales.

“You’re throwing the javelin for an hour-and-a-half in the rain in Vancouver, and it’s hard,” says Gleadle, one of 12 Olympic hopefuls featured in the Canadian Olympic Committee’s Rio 2016 brand campaign Ice in our Veins. “Your hands are frozen. You can’t feel your fingertips, and throwing a wet javelin is absolutely miserable. It makes your hands even colder, because you’re holding steel.”

In Lethbridge, winter temperatures can drop below -20 C with winds gusting off the Rocky Mountains at 60 km/h.

“It definitely hardens you up,” she says. “Whenever I go to a meet, I always know there’s no condition that could possibly bother me.”

No wonder Gleadle is one of the poster children of a campaign that builds off the 2014 #WeAreWinter slogan that resonated with Canadians during the Sochi Games.

Quietly, with no fanfare, Gleadle and 11 of her Olympic counterparts slipped out to a remote location on Georgian Bay in February to shoot 40 hours of video footage. The resulting ad campaign launched online Wednesday morning. Come July 1, the spots will be shown on TVs across the nation.