Biography
Daniel Marisi was born and raised in Saskatoon where, as a teenager, he
gained considerable fame as an athlete (football, basketball, and
wrestling). He got his master's degree in phys-ed at Saskatchewan and then a
PhD in educational psychology at the University of California, Berkeley. He
joined the Department of Physical Education at McGill in 1971 and helped
define the department's curriculum in motor learning, sport psychology, and
research methodology. Jacques Dallaire was born in Oshawa and spent most of
his early teenage years at nearby Mosport Park. He got his master's in
exercise science at the University of Ottawa and his PhD in exercise
psychology at the University of Alberta. He joined McGill, where he met
Marisi, and in 1983 they co-founded the McGill Motor Sport Research Group.
From '83 through '99, they guided the mental training of nearly 500
high-performance racers from 35 countries, including 60 Canadians (Ron
Fellows, Miguel Duhamel, Patrick Carpentier, Greg Moore and Scott Goodyear,
among them). They were founding members of the International Council of
Motorsport Sciences and their understanding of the role of physical
conditioning and cognitive function, the limits of the human body and the
opportunity to improve contributed in many ways to the significant
developments in driver safety seen in recent years. In 1999, Dan Marisi died
and Jacques Dallaire was faced with some difficult choices. In the end, he
remained true to the vision created by the two of them. Since then, Jacques
has made many television appearances to talk about their work and numerous
TV and magazine features have focused on the work of Marisi and Dallaire.