Saturday, December 27, 2014

Unbroken

Unbroken opened in Canadian theatres this week.

The first reviews I read were not that positive.  I'll have to go and judge for myself.  Here is the trailer. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XrjJbl7kRrI

The book is a compelling one.
I read the book a couple of years ago.
It is a well researched by Laura Hillenbrand, author of Seabiscuit, a story that is often cited as one of the best sports books of all time. In Unbroken Hillenbrand documents the story of American Louis Zamperini – Olympic athlete, World War II veteran and survivor of Japanese Prisoner of War camps.

I knew a little about Zamperini’s athletic achievements – including an eighth in the 1936 Berlin Olympics 5000 metres – but nearly nothing of his war experiences. Zamperini and his pilot floated 46 days in an open raft after crashing their B-24 in the Pacific. After the crash, bombardier Zamperini spent more than two years in captivity. Hillenbrand goes into great detail about brutal, almost unimaginable conditions faced by POWs particularly in the Ofuna Camp.  (See picture to right.)
Somewhat coincidentally, shortly after finishing this book, wife Karen and I visited the site of a former German POW camp on Lake Muskoka.
The German POW experience in Canada stands in stark contrast to those of Canadian, American, Australian and other POWs captured in the Pacific. More than 30,000 German POW’s were held in approximately 25 camps across Canada.

You can read my story at http://foreveryoungnews.com/posts/2297-home-in-cottage-country-german-pows-in-Canada




Monday, December 1, 2014

Grey Cup Memories

My hometown team was in the Grey Cup this year.


In the lead up to the game I thought back, as many Canadians surely do, to memories of Grey Cups past.


As a kid, when I first became interested in the Canadian Football League, I thought the Hamilton Tiger-Cats were in the “Annual Classic” every year.




Read about Bernie Faloney's "shotgun" run back and how I made it into the 1989 near-victory parade and more at http://foreveryoungnews.com/posts/2890-bob-s-blog-grey-cup-memories-suburb-startled-by-reveller-firing-shotgun







Friday, March 7, 2014

Winter Paralympic Games Start Today



Earlier this year I posted a number of stories on the Winter Olympics.
Now the Winter Paralympic Games are about to begin in Sochi.  Opening ceremonies are today (Friday) with competitions starting Saturday.


These Paralympic Games are held every 4 years following the Winter Olympics.  They will last ten days with athletes from more than 40 countries participating in five categories of sporting events.


Winter Paralympic sporting events include:
Alpine skiing.
Biathlon (combines cross-country skiing and rifle shooting).
Cross-country skiing.
Ice sledge hockey.
Wheelchair curling.


In 2014, two medal events in para-snowboarding have been added to the schedule.  You’ll find lots more details at http://www.sochi2014.com/en


Politics and Sports


Last Saturday Toronto Star Sports columnist Cathal Kelly called for an athlete’s boycott of the Winter Paralympic Games in Sochi. http://www.thestar.com/sports/sochi2014/2014/03/01/canada_needs_to_step_up_and_boycott_paralympic_games_in_sochi_kelly.html


There have been boycotts before.  Did they do any good?  Did anything in the world of politics change as a result of these boycotts?  Probably not. 


Here is a story from the Star from last summer when there was speculation that the Sochi Olympic Games that just finished in February would be boycotted. The story does a good job of conveying the perspective of athletes who were burned in 1980 when the Moscow Games were boycotted because of the Soviet Union’s 1979 invasion of Afghanistan.


In advance of a possible boycott of Beijing 2008, I wrote a little piece on the recent history of such actions.  http://foreveryoungnews.com/posts/1231-the-spirit-lives-on


Re-reading that piece now, it seems I was a bit of a poseur for the Olympic movement.  “Faster Higher Stronger;” maybe I drank the Kool Aid.  There is more to consider.


Today’s situation, for example.  Right now, the host of the Para Olympics has invaded a sovereign nation.  A mere three hundred miles from Sochi, sixteen thousand Russian troops are in control of Crimea.
I’m thinking back to last summer when I read Laura Hillenbrand’s book Unbroken.  It is a World War II story of “survival, resilience and redemption.”  Olympian Louis Zamperini, the subject of the book, was an American Airman who crashed in the Pacific in WWII. He then spent 2 1/2 years in a Japanese POW camp.  Conditions were brutal.  


If not for the war, Zamperini might have been the first runner to crack the four-minute barrier for the mile.  (As you know, Brit Roger Banister achieved that milestone in 1954.)


Hillenbrand’s book is a great read.  Her observations on the 1936 Games where 19 year-old Zamperini finished eighth in the 5,000 metres are relevant to today’s situation, I think.


At Hitler’s Berlin Olympics, the Germans took these Olympics to a completely different level compared to previous games.  Did their games legitimize, to some extent, the Third Reich?  Yes, they did.


But after the Games were over things were different.  Hillenbrand recounts how American basketball player Frank Lubin stayed behind for a few days after the official closing of the Olympics.


“His German hosts had invited him out for dinner, so they cruised the streets in search of a restaurant.  A pretty place caught Lubin’s eye, but when he suggested it, his hosts balked: a Star of David hung in the window.  To be seen there, they said 'might prove harmful to us.’  The group found a gentile restaurant, then visited a public swimming pool.  As they walked in, Lubin saw a sign reading JUDEN VERBOTEN.  The sign hadn’t been there during the Games.”  


Lubin knew that “(s)omething terrible was coming.”


Can we compare Hitler’s Germany to Putin’s Russia? Canadian Foreign Affairs Minister John Baird did just earlier this week.


The athletes who are currently in Sochi have worked for four years and more to get to this competition. These athletes are probably the closest we get to real amateur athletes these days. Punishing them by imposing a boycott won’t correct injustices in Russia politics or change things on the international scene. Nevertheless,  participation in these two international events would seem   to endorse Putin’s repressive regime and the validate the obscene spending on facilities that has become the modern Olympics.
 
For this and other reasons, it has come time to rethink the Olympics.


I’ll come back to this in my next post.

Friday, February 14, 2014

Sochi 2014 - Eh to Zed


(This story originally appeared at http://foreveryoungnews.com/)


Albertville was the site of the 1992 Olympics where Kerrin Lee Gartner took the downhill skiing event.  While lee-Gartner was a consistent performer, with 46 top ten finishes in her carer she won only one other international race in her career.
Bandy, an 11 player a side sport played on ice on a Canadian football sized field, is a demonstration sport in Sochi. 

Clara Hughes, Canadian skater and cyclist, won four winter and two summer medals in her career.

Dineen, Kevin, pointless as a player in the 84 Olympics, is now the women’s team coach.

Eisler, Lloyd, a four time Olympian skater, twice won bronze with partner Isabelle Braseur. 

Fifty-two gold medals have been won by Canadian athletes since the first Winter Olympics held in Chamonix France in 1924.

Greene, Senator Nancy took gold in the Giant Slalom in Grenoble games in 1968.

Hurd, Alexander captured silver and bronze medals in Lake Placid in 1932, our only individual medal in those Olympics. 

Ice Hockey is the official name of the sport we like to call our own. In his book Memories of a Man Who Couldn’t Play (Doubleday, 1996.)  author David Adams Richards says “hockey is greater than ice hockey - the latter being a European invention.”

Jeremy Wotherspoon was second in the 500-metre speed skating event in Ngano in 1998.  Now 37, Wotherspoon failed to make the team in a comeback attempt earlier this season.  

Klassen, Cindy won a record five speed skating medals at Turin, Italy in 2006.

Lascelles Brown, Canadian bobsledder and medalist in 2006, competed for Jamaica in Salt Lake City, is back in the fold after pushing Monaco’s two-man sled for a time.

Military Patrol was a sport in the ’24 Games.  It evolved into the sport of Biathlon. Marian Bedard’s Lillehamer (94) medals in this sport are fondly remembered.

Nordic Combined puts ski jumping and cross-country together.  It has been an event in every Winter Olympics. 

Oslo hosted the ‘52 games where we won nothing but hockey.

Podivinsky, Ed’s downhill bronze in Lillehammer was well received after the lean years in Alpine Skiing that followed funding cuts after the Calgary Olympics.

Quinn, Pat coached 2002 Team Canada to their first Olympic gold medal since 1952 

Rover.  Seven a side hockey featured the rover position in 1920 when the Falcons, a Winnipeg team made up of players of Icelandic heritage, won the first ever Ice Hockey gold in the Summer Olympics.   

Skeleton was included in the 1924 Olympics but disappeared from the games until 1948, disappeared again until 02. In Turin (06) Vaughan Ontario’s Duff Gibson, at 39 years, became our oldest Gold medalist ever.

Toller Cranston, artist and skater, took a bronze in the second Innsbruck Olympics (76)  

Underdog Ross Rebagliati, who briefly had his Nagano snowboard gold taken away for testing positive for marijuana use, announced plans to open up a medical marijuana franchise last year.

Vancouver Olympics were expensive at $7 billion.  Would you believe Sochi14 will cost $51 billion according to latest estimates?

Vogt, Kathy speed skated in Lake Placid in 1980 as now husband Randy Gregg skated on defence for Team Canada.  Their kids, Jamie in Long Track and Jessica in Short Track skating both donned Canadian colours in 2010.  Jamie is back this year.  

Winter Pentathlon comprised of cross-country and downhill skiing, shooting, fencing and horse riding was contested in 1948 for the first and last time.

XIII or thirteenth winter Olympics were hosted by Lake Placid, New York. Skater Gaeten Boucher burst onto the scene here with a second place finish in the men’s 1,000 metres.

Yurkiw, Larisa downhill skier, qualified on January 11th and has been raising her own funds.   Read her blog at http://larisayurkiw.blogspot.ca/ at 

Zero medals. Our output in luge, ski jumping and Nordic combined. 

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Saturday, February 8, 2014

Olympic Memories - Innsbruck January 29 – February 9, 1964



(This is my sixth post related to the Sochi 2014 Olympics.  This story originally appeared at http://foreveryoungnews.com/)


It has been fifty years since the Innsbruck 64 Olympics.


Those games were a breakthrough of sorts as for the first time events were held throughout surrounding areas that is not a just one location.  This change pushed spectator attendance to over 1 million spectators. The only problem was snow, there wasn’t any.  The Austrian Army was required to carve out huge bricks of the white stuff from the mountains and transport it to luge and bobsled runs and ski slopes.  


Fifty-five Canadians competed in eight sports in Innsbruck very different from the two hundred plus Canucks who will contest 14 of 15 Olympic sports in Sochi this month.


The highlight for Canadians in these Austrian games was the surprise victory of Vic Emery in the four-man bobsled event.  Surprising, as fifty years ago there was no bobsled facility in Canada.  Emery his brother John, Peter Kirby and Doug Anakin practiced in a Montreal gym and apparently got in a few runs at the 1932 Olympic bobsled run in lake Placid New York.


Petra Burka captured bronze in women’s figure skating.  Seventeen-year-old Burka was coached by her mother Ellen who later went on to coach Toller Cranston and many others.  Petra won the world championship the next year in Colorado.


The pairs team of Debbie Wilkes and Guy Revell took the bronze, then later were awarded silver medals when it was decided that the second place finishers were professionals.  That ruling was later reversed.  Wilkes, who became a broadcaster, retired as a skater later that year at the age of 17.  


Another controversy occurred in men’s hockey.  Our amateur team finished fourth after the criteria for breaking ties in the standings was changed during the competition.


In 1976, the Winter Olympics came back to this west Austrian city when Denver withdrew as a host.

 

Saturday, January 25, 2014

Thirteen Days to Go

This is my fifth post leading up to the Sochi 2014.


I spent quite a bit of time getting some content together for Olympic stories that we are running in Forever Young Information.  Forever Young is Canada’s Adult Lifestyle Publication (www.foreveryoungnews.com)


The stories ought to be on line and on newsstands just in advance of the Olympics opening.


A lot of research went into putting together the stories.  I learned there is not enough space even in the Sunday NY times to mention all 200 plus Canadian athletes attending the February games.  Especially not when you are trying to provide some items of historical interest for the readers.


Social Media


Many of the athletes are tweeting.  Some are interesting.  Most seem to be thanking sponsors and well-wishers or chatting with fellow competitors.  Nothing wrong with that.   You can pick up the youthful enthusiasm of the athletes from looking at the tweets.

This morning for example Canadian Bobsledder  and self-described “Hawaiian born beach bum” and “carbon neutral athlete” captured his first ever World Cup two man bobsled victory.  You can catch his enthusiasm for his win and the third place finish of fellow Canadian Lyndon Rush at @justinkripps.


Owen Sound’s Larisa Yurikw took this weekend off from World Cup downhill skiing.  She deserves the rest, as you’ll see in my FYI story.  She’s been sick and her battery needs recharging. http://instagram.com/p/jjGxdojYY3/#


Following Sochi 2014


I’ve been thinking of how I’ll follow the Olympics with the nine-hour time difference to Sochi.  A terrific site I came across in my research is sportcafe_ca.  They have new and informed reports daily.


I also found @OlympicHearts through twitter.  Here you can hook up with Suzanne Sewell’s passionate reporting.


Interesting Fact


Meghan Agosta-Marciano (@MeghanAgosta) of Ruthven Ontario is on her third Olympic Hockey team.  In her first Turin in 2006, she notched a hat trick on her 19th birthday.  She turns 26 on this February 12th.  A nice way to celebrate the occasion would be another hat trick, particularly as our team is up against arch rivals the Americans on February 12th.

Wednesday, January 8, 2014

Our Biathlon Team is Getting Better


(This is my fourth post in a series of posts on the Winter Olympics leading up to Sochi 2014.)


Apparently, every male in Canada is occupied right now with the Men’s Olympic Hockey Team Selection.

Did Yzerman and his team pick the right guys? I have no idea.

I predict, however, there will be no lack of analysis on the matter until, well after it is all over.   The Men’s Quarterfinals begin on February 19th.

For my part, I’m trying to avoid the palaver and educate myself a bit on the sport of biathlon.  The eight-person team is actually competing in a World Cup event today through Sunday in Bavaria.

There will be five Olympic disciplines with a relay, mass start, pursuit and individual event for men and women.  For the first time there is a mixed relay going on February 19th.  

Here is some basic information on the sport. http://www.sochi2014.com/en/biathlon-about

Eight athletes were nominated last week to represent Canada.  They are:  

*Jean-Philippe Le Guellec – Shannon, Quebec.

*Nathan Smith - Calgary

*Scott Perras - Regina,

*Brendan Green - Hay River, N.W.T.

*Rosanna Crawford - Canmore, Alta.

*Megan Heinicke - Prince George, B.C.

*Megan Imrie - Falcon Lake, Man.

*Zina Kocher - Red Deer, Alta.

The team has been improving.  Le Guellec won a Swedish World Cup event in 2012.  That was the men’s 10-kilometre sprint. He just missed the Podium in an another event in Sweden last year and was sixth at the Vancouver Olympics.  It would seem he should be a contender.  But you have to come up with your best effort on the day of the event.

"There's no miracle recipe," Le Guellec told CTV news recently. "I worked really hard during the summer to put things in place to have a good season, and then during the season I'm putting things in place to have the best performances in Sochi. It all boils down to that essentially. There's no magic."

Calgary’s Nathan Smith is also getting better and had a top ten finish in the 12.5 kilometre pursuit event recently in Annecy-Le Grand Bornand France.

The Women are improving as well featuring a fourth place relay finish less than a month ago in France.  In today’s event they were 11th. I’m following  Crawford on twitter at @RosannaCrawford.

Sunday, January 5, 2014

Long Track Speed Skating

(This is my third post in a series of posts on the Winter Olympics leading up to Sochi 2014.)

I’ve been following the Canadian Long Skating Selection meet that took place in Calgary over the last week.   Intact Insurance sponsored the event.

Given past results, it surprised me that there seemed to be relatively little media coverage.  Did I miss it?

Looking at Ontario athletes there are some good stories.

Christine Nesbitt, the defending Olympic 1000 metre champ, seems to be rounding back into form after a couple of months away from competition.  The London native took the 500, 1500 and her speciality event the 1000 metres.

Ivanie Blondin of Ottawa took the women’s 5 km in 7:18.45 after earlier finishing second in the 3,000.

Toronto’s Jordan Belchos took the 10,000 metres by a large margin but will need another country to give up a spot for him to make the Olympics.

Probably the biggest surprise was  Vincent De Haitre’s victory in a decent time of 1:08.37 in the 1000.  Vincent, from Ottawa, is only 19 years old and amazingly has already captured another national championship (in Clara Hughes fashion) in a different sport.  He’s the Canadian elite I km Time Trial  cycling champ.  It is always amazing to me that athletes can compete at such a high level in different sports.

Two Sport Athletes

Along that line,  Bobsleigh does seem to be getting great TV coverage these days.
This afternoon I watched Russia Olga Stulneva  finish 11th in the two women bob event from Winterberg Germany.  She is a former Olympic track medalist having been part of the Russian team that finished second in the 4 x 100 metre relay in Athens way back in 2004.  There are a lot of track athletes in bobsleigh these days pushing sleds (American hurdler Lolo Jones was second in Winterberg) but Stulneva is the driver.

Team to be Announced

Back to Skating, the Canadian long-track Olympic team currently has the ability to send 18 athletes to the Games (10 women, 8 men).  Athletes will be nominated by Speed Skating Canada’s Olympic Selection Committee following and announced publicly on Jan. 22 at Calgary’s Olympic Oval.

I’m following some athlete's twitter accounts. You can find Ivanie Blondin at  @IvanieB while Jordan Belchos is at @jbelch89