Game Change by Ken Dryden

Ken Dryden, goalie, lawyer, author member of parliament, has written an important book.  Game Change The Life and Death of Steve Montador and the Future of Hockey focuses on the very real crisis hockey faces as evidence mounts that concussions are shortening the lives of its players.
https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/557796/game-change-by-ken-dryden/9780771027475/

Montador was a serious, hard working player from a young age until his own untimely death at the age of 35.  He played mostly as a defenseman for six NHL teams in nearly 600 NHL games.

The more or less routine (for hockey) hits to the head from those games and years of minor, junior and AHL took a toll on his brain.

He was diagnosed with chronic traumatic encephalopathy (CTE) in a post mortem examination.
Steve was a victim of how the game has changed, says Dryden (pictured below.)

Ken Dryden - photo by Sergey Smirnov

Hockey is about speed.  It is its “defining element.” And “over time it has learned to become faster.” 

“The ice got better, skates got better, coaches got smarter, shifts got shorter, players got fitter, rules changed.   Now more than 140 years after that first game in Montreal, there is almost nothing that stands in the way of speed, or the consequences of speed: the increased number of collisions: the force of those collisions; the increased severity of brain injuries.”

Dryden has two ideas for change.  They aren’t that complicated.

The idea of finishing your check should be eliminated.  Even within the current rules it is interference.  The book discusses many situations where concussions resulted after a player passed the puck or merely was skating without the puck and was hit.

Secondly, all hits to the head should be against the rules.  Dryden compares it to football where rules have been put in place so that any hit to the quarterback’s head is a penalty.  There is no reason hockey can’t do the same.

Dryden lays the responsibility for making these necessary changes on Commissioner Gary Bettman.

Dryden frequently refers to Bettman as a clever lawyer suggesting who hides behind legal technicalities to avoid dealing with the real problem of concussions. Bettman should convene a meeting of experts and pose the question how of how to reduce the frequency and force of blows to the head.   The experts will have an answer, Dryden believes.

Hockey purists will resist, stuck as all purists are with memories of good old days that didn’t really exist.

For example, Gordie Howe is considered one of the great players of all time.  That is because the right winger could score goals, played good defense and was tough.  The Gordie Howe Hat Trick (a goal, an assist and a fight) is held up as something equivalent to the ultimate game.  But as Dryden notes in more than 2000 games in the NHL and WHA, Howe (who scored nearly one thousand goals, made more than 1,300 assists and served 2,000 minutes in penalties) only achieved two Gordie Howe Hat Tricks.

Hopefully, Dryden’s call for change will be heeded but one wonders if the views of  those Rock’em Sock’em hockey types will hold sway.

Winfield and the "Seagull"

Are you aware of how important a date August 4 is in the history of Toronto and the planet?

Yes, I remember where I was when JFK was shot (Grade 9 English Class, Nelson High School). When Apollo 11 landed on moon I was working at the #2 Rod Mill at Stelco in Hamilton.  And I have a clear memory of September 9, 1956 when this six-year-old surreptitiously crawled down the back hallway, apparently undetected by unsuspecting parents, to watch Elvis gyrating on the Ed Sullivan show.

Dave Winfield - Hall of
Famer and Gull Slayer

I also remember where I was thirty four years ago (August 4, 1983) - an historic date. That day at Toronto’s Exhibition Stadium Dave Winfield  “slew a gull.”  My memory is foggy, as the Stadium often was, though. I guess I should have taken notes.

Along with about 36,000 others I was taking in the game from the cheap but covered seats in left-centre field at what later became known as the Mistake-by-the Lake.   Burlington Post reporter Dennis Smith and I spent four dollars each for our seats (Could they really have been $4.00 dollars then?)  Between innings I had my 7x50 Dienstglas binoculars trained on this bird.  It had been sitting in the same place in right-centre field for several innings.  While I looked at the gull through the binos,  it was smacked by a baseball.  Someone sitting near us called out:  “Winfield killed that poor pigeon.”

The “pigeon” was indeed dead.  A hapless ball boy was dispatched to cover and remove the dead bird.  While some booing began I, clearly identifying with that ball boy, flashed back to a similar incident in my past.   As a student Steelworker I had been ordered by the foreman to “bury that poor effing cat” that had been found dead in Stelco’s #2 Rod Mill.  Poor ball boy.

As I’ve suggested some of the details of this important day are lost to me.

The Toronto Star says the charge against Winfield, later dismissed, was “cruelty to animals.” I can’t say I remembered that specific but for some reason I do recall Winfield’s manager’s response to the charge:   Said Billy Martin: “Cruelty to animals?  That’s the first time he’s hit the cut-off man all year.” 

I remember, too,  that the birding community was irked.  Peter Whalen of the Globe and Mail wrote about it. His column lamented the fact that the deceased bird was continuously referred to by the media and public as a “seagull.”    There is no such species, as any birder worth his feathers would tell you.  It was a ring billed gull or larus delawarensis, if you prefer.

Imagine the audacity of a wannabe world class city hauling an American celebrity off to the Hogtown Hoosegow?  I recall, then Metro Chairman, Paul Godfrey grovelling to the Americans over our  misfeasance.   But didn’t that have to do with getting a NFL franchise for Toronto?

All these memories coming back to me……

Oh, and where were you on August 4, 1983?

The Queen and Prince Philip in the North Grandstand...
but not that night

Where they are now. 

Dennis Smith, who attended the game with this Blogger, is semi-retired and does freelance work for the Burlington Post including a regular Entertainment column.  Dennis reminds me, often, that another team  played at the CNE in the ‘Year of the Dead Bird.’  That team, the Toronto Argonauts, won the Grey Cup in 1983.

While the Toronto Blue Jays lost to the Yankees that August day they did go on to record their first winning season in 1983 winning 89 times against 73 losses.  This year they are on pace for a record of 76 wins and 86 loses.

The #2 Rod Mill was opened by the Steel Company of Canada (Stelco) in 1966.  Once North America’s largest manufacturer of hot rolled wire rods, the mill closed for good in 2004.

Dave Winfield is now 65 years old.  A Hall of Famer,  he was member of the Blue Jays 1992 World Series Championship team.

Bob Wood lives in Port Rowan Ontario and hasn’t attended  many games at the SkyDome/Rogers Centre.  He preferred the Mistake-by–the-Lake even if they were cruel to animals there.

Jimmy Breslin on Branch Rickey

The American journalist and author Jimmy Breslin died on March 19^th this year.

Jimmy Breslin

Over the years, I had occasionally read his column and essays in magazines.  Some time back I read one of his novels – World Without End, Amen, I think.

Upon his death, it was easy to find some of his better-known pieces like Digging JFK Grave was His Honor http://www.newsday.com/opinion/digging-jfk-grave-was-his-honor-jimmy-breslin-1.6481560 and, after John Lennon’s death, A Part of Cop’s Past Live Dies. http://www.nydailynews.com/news/national/archives-jimmy-breslin-tells-aided-john-lennon-article-1.2039625

In 1986 Breslin was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for Commentary "for columns which consistently champion ordinary citizens".

He could write.  I figure I can learn something (well, many things) so I picked up his last published book Branch Rickey.

Breslin liked to talk with his subjects. Rickey, who died in 1965 was long gone by 2011.  Nevertheless, the author was confident he could “rely on big-name historians… and that this (experience) would be immensely pleasurable.”

The historians disappointed Breslin.  “History writers should be put not in jail but under it.”

Breslin’s book used a lot from Arthur Mann’s earlier work on Rickey that had formed the basis of The Jackie Robinson Story, a 1950 film (starring Robinson himself and Sandra Dee).

Branch Rickey

Although I knew a fair bit about Rickey and the story of him bringing Robinson up to major league baseball, I certainly picked up new insights from Breslin.

Robinson was some athlete. It is arguable that baseball wasn’t even his best sport.  

Seventy years ago today (July 26^th), at Pittsburgh’s Forbes Field he stole home and hit a home run in the same game. 

That feat is perhaps a good indicator of his athleticism.  1947 was his rookie season with the Dodgers.  His numbers that year were .297 (Batting Average), .383 (On Base Percentage- OBP), 29 stolen bases and 12 home runs.  He retired with a lifetime .311 batting average and a.409 OBP.

I have vague memories of Robinson at the end of his career.  I’m sure I didn’t fully appreciate what he had to endure in order to excel over 10 seasons with the Brooklyn Dodgers.

Robinson stealing home in 55 World Series.  Yogi Berra says he tagged him out 

Rickey and Robinson faced incredible bigotry.  Significant portions of white America at large, sportswriters and the other owners weren’t interested in change.

The owners, for example, issued a statement in the summer of 1946.  That was the year that Robinson was tearing up the International League playing second base with the Montreal Royals. Entitled Race Question the statement read in part: 

“Baseball will jeopardize its leadership in professional sport if it fails to give full appreciation to the fact that the Negro player and the Negro fan are part and parcel of the game. Certain groups in this country, including political and social-minded drumbeaters, are conducting pressure campaigns in an attempt to force major league clubs to sign Negro players.  Members of these groups are not primarily interested in Professional Baseball.

Signing of a few Negro players for the major leagues would be a gesture-but it would contribute little or nothing towards a solution of the real problem. Let’s look at the facts:”

Those “facts” identified requirements of a major league player.  Things like technique, coordination and discipline. You apparently need seven years in the minors to gain these skills and attitudes.

As a result, the “young Negro player never has a good chance in baseball.  This is the reason there are not more players who meet major league standards in the big Negro leagues.”

Fifteen of sixteen owners voted for this declaration.  Rickey’s was the only opposition.  I guess you could call him a social-minded drumbeater.

Branch Rickey

This particular statement the owners issued was in response to the Ives-Quinn Act of 1945.  Sponsored by the New York Republican Irving Ives, it was the first state law to prohibit discrimination in employment on the basis of race, creed, color, or national origin. Rickey, a Republican himself, had lobbied hard for this legislation.  Its passage meant that the Dodger boss had the legal backing to bring Robinson up to the majors.

It goes without saying that Rickey was a principled man. He jeopardized his own major league career, he was a catcher, as he had promised his mother he would never play on Sundays. Managers weren’t impressed.

Rickey earned a law degree, practiced for a day or so before returning to his alma mater to coach baseball.  And baseball was where he stayed.

Branch Rickey invented the baseball farm system changing the “look of baseball long before he ever heard of Jackie Robinson.”

Rickey was a baseball man but “nowhere in his religious training did he take a vow of poverty.” He sold hundred of players and took a 10% commission on their sale.  

When future Hall of Famer Johnny Mize wanted too much money, Rickey sold him for $50,000 and took his 10%.  That was 1941 and Rickey’s salary was $50,000.

Rickey understood better than anyone that there was a business case for Negro League players to play in the major leagues.

He did a great thing in American life, says Breslin.  Later in the McCarthy era, together with Robinson, he got caught up in attacking actor/singer Paul Robeson alleged communist views and later threw in with Richard Nixon.

Breslin would have told them that “the wise shoemaker sticks to his trade and maintains a mouth filled with nails.”

Rickey argued that, “ethnic prejudice has no place in sports, and baseball must recognize that truth if it is to maintain stature as a national game.” 

That was a tough case to make and he made it.

Baseball and society are better places for his contribution.  Breslin’s too.

Chuck Ealey Quarterback

More than four years ago, I was asked to do a couple of stories for Forever Young http://foreveryoungnews.com related to the 100^th Grey Cup. TSN had commissioned a series of eight documentaries on the Grey Cup and to my delight I was asked to write on the 1972 Cup and specifically one of the heroes of that game, Chuck Ealey.  I’ve reworked those stories in honour of Black History Month.

The 1972 Grey Cup held Dec. 3 at Hamilton’s Ivor Wynne Stadium was decided by a last-second field goal. The Hamilton Tiger Cats won an exciting match 13-10 over the Saskatchewan Roughriders. Rookie quarterback Chuck Ealey was the star of that game and that whole season for the Cats.

The game represented much more than the typical east-west Cup contest and this is why: Ealey shouldn’t have been in a position to earn the game’s MVP award, because in a just world he would have been quarterbacking in the National Football League.

Bowl victories and an undefeated college record (35-0) at the University of Toledo weren’t enough to get Ealey drafted by an NFL team. Prior to the draft, his agent sent a “well-thought-out, professional, not harsh” letter to all NFL teams, Ealey recalls.

The essence of the letter went like this:

“The only position I’m interested in playing is quarterback. Thank you for your consideration.”

He wanted to play QB because clearly, that was the position where he excelled. But an Afro-American had no chance to compete for a quarterback position in the NFL of the seventies. There were no takers among NFL general managers.

“There was an overall stigma in the NFL at that time that African Americans were not to be playing quarterback,” recalled Ealey. 

And so, Ealey, the quarterback, moved on.

This story isn’t unique, of course.

I talked with Charles Officer who directed the movie Stone Thrower.*

Charles Officer, Director

Officer, had considered doing a “bigger picture” that would have looked at other Afro-American quarterbacks who came up here to play. Standouts like Warren Moon, Condredge Holloway, Damon Allen and Bernie Custis all had to come north for their opportunity.

In 1951,Custis, a star quarterback at Syracuse University, was drafted sixth overall by the Cleveland Browns. But the Browns had no intention of letting him play the pivot position so let him go to Hamilton. Custis became the first Afro-American regular starting quarterback in North America. Earning all-star recognition in ’51, he was moved to halfback the next season.

“It’s the same story,” says Officer. “Bernie Custis coming up here and then getting switched over. He had to come here for a reason.”

Officer, an Afro-Canadian actor, writer, director and former semi-pro hockey player, believed that by documenting Ealey’s journey he could tell the bigger story of what was going on in American society in the seventies.

Meanwhile, Jael Richardson, Chuck’s daughter, has been on a journey of her own, recounted in her 2012 book, similarly called The Stone Thrower: A Daughter's Lessons, a Father's Life.** Richardson was born after her father’s football career had ended. As an adult, she would go to Ohio with her Dad.

“When we went back to Toledo, people would start screaming ‘Oh there’s Chuck Ealey’ and ask for autographs,” Jael’s father recalls.

“She’d go, so who are you? What did you do?”

Jael and Chuck go to Portsmouth

Ealey acknowledges that he “never shared a lot of story of how I got here.”

It is hard today to fully appreciate the barriers Chuck Ealey faced growing up poor in the racially divided city of Portsmouth, Ohio, a typical American small town. Portsmouth was the kind of a place that valued football players but didn’t let black children swim in their public pools.  Located on the Ohio River and bordering Kentucky, the city was a significant pass-through point on the route of the Underground Railroad and the opportunity for freedom in Canada for fugitive slaves.

Ealey remembers the prejudices that held him and others back and contrasts that with the freedom “to do things a lot differently” that he found when he arrived in Hamilton.

“There were none of the issues that socially held you back or that seemed to hold you back in the States,” he stated. And so, Ealey was able to continue with his winning ways that memorable rookie season, 1972, in Hamilton, all the way to the Grey Cup win.

Director Officer documents how Ealey, denied the opportunity to play quarterback in his native land, essentially followed that same path that slaves had taken to get to Canada. 

As Officer told me of his movie:

“It is a significant African American story that has everything to do about being Canadian.”

-----------------------------------------------------------------------

*You can find Officer’s movie these days on youtube at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xmL1EvtQy3E

**The Stone Thrower - A Daughter's Lessons>  A Father's Life. A Memoir

is available at https://www.dundurn.com/books/stone-thrower

Daniel Nestor

Yesterday my CBC Radio sports guy said there were no longer any Canadians left in the Australian Open.


He was wrong.  Daniel Nestor had moved into the quarter finals of Mixed Doubles. (Now he is in the semi-finals.)  


I’m not a huge tennis fan. But like other Canadians my interest has been piqued over the last year by the rise to prominence of Thornhill’s Milos Raonic and Montreal’s Eugenie Bouchard.  Right now they are ranked 8th and 7th respectively.


But Nestor, at 42 years of age, has been playing tennis at a high level for more than two decades.


I wrote a little piece on Daniel Nestor in 2011 after he had captured 75th doubles title and the season ending Year End Championships.


Since then he has won 11 more titles and two more Grand Slams not to mention being a key player in returning Canada to tennis greatness with a berth in the David cup World semi-finals in 2013.

Ten Random Highlights and Context to Daniel Nestor’s Remarkable Career.

1.  “Is Bill Clinton for Real?”  asked Time Magazine the week Number 238 ranked Daniel Nestor knocked off world Number 1 Stephan Edberg 4-6, 6-3, 1-6, 6-3, 6-4 in January 1992 Davis Cup match in Vancouver.


2.  The year 1994 marked the first of Nestor’s doubles wins (this one with Bahamian Mark Knowles.)  His last win earlier this month with Rohan Bopanna marks the 22nd consecutive year and counting with at least one win.


3.  Nestor has won those 86 Career Men’s doubles championships with nine different partners from eight different countries.  Five times he triumphed with Montreal’s Sebastien Lareau including the 2000 Olympic gold medal.


4.  What can be said about Nestor’s longevity?  Ed Belfour was the NHL’s rookie of the year in 1991 when Nestor broke in as a pro.  Belfour retired in the 2004 season.  That year Nestor won Team of the Year honours with Knowles.  Twelve days after Nestor’s historic win over Edberg, the Atlanta Falcon’s traded twenty-two year old QB Brett Favre to Green Packers.  Favre had yet to complete a pass in the NFL but had been intercepted twice on four throws. 


5.  Nestor was born in 1972 (September 4th).  That is the same birth year as baseball’s Carlos Delgado (retired 2009) and NFLer Drew Bledsoe (retired 2006).  Hockey’s Jaromir Jagr, born in 1972, is the only active NHLer older than Nestor.


6.  But it is not just longevity Daniel has won the big tournaments as well.   Eight Men’s Grand Slams (French 4, Wimbledon 2, and  Australian and U.S. one each.1, with three different partners) and three mixed doubles grand slams (two Australian and one Wimbledon)  also with three different partners.


7.  He doesn’t always win.   But in addition to those 86 titles he has been a finalist 55 times.


8. Davis Cup began in 1900. It’s now the world’s largest annual international team competition in sport with 122 nations taking part in 2014. Nestor has excelled in these contests as well.  In singles, he has won of  fifteen of his thirty matches.  In doubles he is 31 wins against nine defeats.


9.  In spite of all of these achievements, Nestor has never won either the Lou Marsh trophy or the
CP  Athlete of the year.  While he and Lareau won the CP Team of the year in 2000 it would seem that more recognition is due.


10. Daniel created the Daniel Nestor Charity Event along with Karl Hale and Peter Henry in 2003. Karl and Daniel grew up together in North York, and decided  to give back to our community by organizing this annual event.  The event has raised over $1,000,000 for North York General Hospital.

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

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

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.

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 11^th 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. 

---------------------------------------------------------

 

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.

 

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.

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 19^th.

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 11^th. I’m following  Crawford on twitter at @RosannaCrawford.

Read more about the team in this CTV report http://www.ctvnews.ca/sports/jean-philippe-le-guellec-among-canadian-biathletes-hoping-to-reach-podium-in-sochi-1.1615798#ixzz2pp5fcmWC