Quotulatiousness

February 25, 2010

Macleans profiles Canadian Olympian Cherie Piper

Filed under: Cancon, Sports — Tags: , — Nicholas @ 12:54

Nancy Macdonald has an article up at Macleans about our favourite hockey player, Cherie Piper:

It all started with an ugly injury in a college game between her Dartmouth Big Green and Providence four years ago. When she tore her ACL, she says, everyone at the New Hampshire rink heard the “pop.” It came midway through Piper’s final NCAA season — just nine months after her triumphant return from Turin, where Canada won gold and she finished second on the team in scoring. Following surgery, Piper didn’t get back on the ice for six months, and missed a full year with the national squad.

And just as she was regaining her fitness and timing, her dad Alan died of a heart attack; he’d been Piper’s coach and mentor, had first put her on skates at age eight in a Toronto boys’ league, and ferried her across the city to games for years. “It was tough to finish the season,” says Piper, then with the Mississauga Chiefs of the Canadian Women’s Hockey League. The rink was no longer a refuge; hockey suddenly became a grim reminder of all she’d lost.

[. . .]

In the summer of 2008, she left Ontario for Calgary, joining the Oval X-Treme of the Western Women’s Hockey League, to focus solely on hockey. But it was too late. Last year, she was cut from Canada’s roster for the World Championships in Finland, where Poulin got her start with Team Canada. Piper, a two-time gold medallist, was devastated and considered giving up the game altogether. At the time, coach Mel Davidson didn’t know whether Piper would pack it in and go home, or “dig in, and say ‘Mel, you made a mistake and I’m going to prove it to you.’ ”

Cherie and her teammates take on the US women’s team for the gold medal tonight. We’re certainly going to be watching and cheering.

February 24, 2010

Tweet of the day

Filed under: Cancon, Humour, Sports, USA — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 17:37

colbycosh:
Remind me how this clownish, feeble US team beat us? Oh, right, our goalie in that game was 52 years old and tripping balls on peyote.

February 23, 2010

Own the podium? Pwned!

Filed under: Cancon, Sports — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 08:39

The much-criticized, so-called unCanadian “Own the Podium” dream is done, stick a fork in it:

Own The Podium has officially gone from a winning blueprint to wishful thinking.

Chris Rudge, CEO of the Canadian Olympic Committee, conceded Monday the goal of finishing first in the medal standings at the Vancouver Games is not going to happen.

“There’s going to be a lot of questions asked about Own The Podium,” Rudge acknowledged. “We will eviscerate this program in every detail when we’re finished. It’s painful to go into the autopsy while the patient is still alive and kicking.

“We’ll quantify the success of the program in terms of total medals after the Games are over. We’re still working as hard as we can to make sure these athletes get the support they need and know we are behind them.”

The Canadian public invested heavily in OTP. Of the $117 million invested in athletes, $66 million of it was taxpayer dollars. VANOC, the organizing committee for the Games, covered most of the remainder through corporate sponsorships.

Canada finished Monday with 10 medals (5-4-1), in fifth place and far behind the Americans with 25. The Germans were second with 21 followed by Norway with 14 and Russia with 11.

In some ways I’m surprised that nobody is winding their collective watches over the “dearth” of bronze medal performances by Canadian athletes: of the 10 medals won so far, only one of them was bronze. If you’re looking for silly things to worry about, isn’t that a good placeholder?

Update: Adriana Barton talks about the odd phenomena where bronze medal winners are often happier than silver medallists.

Third-place winners have upward thoughts (“at least I won”) that increase satisfaction, researchers have found, whereas those who come in second tend to have downward “if only” thoughts that decrease happiness.

Canadian women beat Finns 5-0, will face Team USA for gold on Thursday

Filed under: Cancon, Sports — Tags: , , — Nicholas @ 07:48


Photo by Julie Jacobson

Finland provided much more challenge for Canada, with excellent goaltending turning back many shots, but eventually they broke through. Cherie Piper scored the opening goal on a pass from Meghan Agosta, while Agosta broke the single Olympics scoring record with her ninth of the games. Haley Irwin scored twice, and Caroline Ouellette got the other goal for Canada.

They will face Team USA on Thursday for the gold medal. This matchup was expected, as both Canada and the US have been dominant in their respective games through the preliminary and semi-final rounds, tallying 86 goals between the two teams, and allowing only 4.

Update: Colby Cosh is pessimistic about the men’s team making it all the way to the top podium:

Even on the explicit, historically derived premise that Canada has the strongest team in the tournament, it would be hard to peg our chances of winning gold at much higher than 25%. On Desjardins’ pretty reasonable estimates of underlying national team strength, the figure is not close to 25%. I crunched the numbers, leaving room for the possibility of being helped somewhere along the way by an upset of a strong rival, and I get about 19%. That’s assuming we have a 100% chance of beating Germany tonight, when the real figure is probably more like 93-95%.

February 22, 2010

Tweet of the day

Filed under: Cancon, Humour, Sports — Tags: , , — Nicholas @ 16:07

damianpenny
I don’t want to say Canadians are angry, but I just saw a billboard demanding that Martin Brodeur produce his birth certificate.

Aftermath

Filed under: Cancon, Sports, USA — Tags: , — Nicholas @ 08:21

To Americans, it was a hockey game. To Canadians, however, it was a disaster beyond belief or comprehension:

With a hard-earned, thrilling victory Sunday, the United States surprised Canada, both the hockey team and the nation.

The Americans did it exactly as General Manager Brian Burke and Coach Ron Wilson built them to do it — through speed, relentless diligence and unflappable goalkeeping. They withstood a furious Canadian attack, hitting as hard as they got hit, and prevailed despite the deafening roars of the red-clad crowd at Canada Hockey Place.

“For these young guys I think it was great to win in an atmosphere like this,” Wilson said. “Everything was stacked against us, but we came out on top.”

The entire nation is in mourning, black armbands, sackcloth, and ashes all round. The shock was so unexpected that Vancouver police had to close down the bars — where stunned hockey fans were desperately trying to find oblivion in alcoholic excess. The Prime Minister may be forced to call for a national day of penitence and prayer to assuage the angry Hockey gods.

Or so I’m told . . . ours was one of the few television sets in the country not tuned to the Olympics. We will, however, be watching Canada take on Finland in the women’s semi-finals tonight.

February 21, 2010

Sports bulletin: Canada defeats US 16-2 in hockey

Filed under: Cancon, Military, Sports, USA — Tags: , , — Nicholas @ 12:36

But that’s not the Olympic match-up, that’s in Kandahar:

“Half of our team is in Iraq” was one of the good-natured excuses offered by U.S. troops to explain Canada’s 16-2 victory over the United States in a ball-hockey game on Sunday that had all the passion, but none of the drama, expected of the Olympic ice hockey tilt between the two countries later in the day in Vancouver.

The lopsided score was a fair indication of the play before a crowd of nearly 1,000 often deliriously happy soldiers at the smartly laid out ball-hockey rink that Canada built at Kandahar Airfield in 2006.

Honestly taken aback by a Canadian offer to balance the game by swapping a few players when the score stood 10-1 in Canada’s favour, U.S. army Col. Mark Murray, invoked the immortal words of Gen. Anthony McAuliffe, commander of the 101st Airborne, who responded to a Nazi ultimatum to surrender during the Battle of the Bulge, by replying: “Nuts! It will be a cold day in hell before we do that.”

February 20, 2010

“Are you stupid?”

Filed under: Humour, Media, Sports — Tags: , , — Nicholas @ 13:10

My new Olympic hero, with a gold medal in press relations, Sven Kramer:

Update, 25 February: If you felt that Kramer was showing Hubris in the clip above, you might also feel that Nemesis showed up right on schedule, too:

After 25 laps around the Richmond Olympic Oval, Sven Kramer of the Netherlands crossed the finish line Tuesday and raised his arms in triumph, having secured — or so he thought — his second Olympic record and gold medal of these Winter Games.

Within seconds, Kramer’s celebration turned icy cold. When his coach, Gerard Kemkers, caught up to him during his cool-down lap, he palmed his head and delivered the bad news: Kramer was disqualified for incorrectly changing lanes with eight laps remaining in the 10,000-meter race.

Kramer, who has dominated the distance since finishing seventh at the 2006 Olympics, spiked his glasses upon learning his fate. He looked as if he wanted to punch Kemkers, who later accepted full blame for what happened. He said he glanced up from recording split times, became momentarily disoriented and barked at Kramer to switch to the inner lane.

February 19, 2010

Canadian dominance of hockey at the Olympics

Filed under: Cancon, Sports — Tags: , — Nicholas @ 09:37

The men may be struggling (just scraping through against the Swiss yesterday), but the women are doing their best juggernaut imitation. It’s getting lots of attention, but not always the kind the organizers were hoping for. After their 18-0 demolition of the Slovak team to open the tournament, they’ve handily beaten the Swiss (10-1) and the Swedes (13-1).

I don’t follow hockey at all, but I’ve been trying to catch these games, as Elizabeth’s god-daughter is Cherie Piper:

One sign of just how dominating Canada has been in the preliminary round of the Winter Olympic women’s ice hockey tournament is that Scarborough native Cherie Piper has nine points in three games — and she’s only in fifth place in scoring. And that’s just on her own team.

Canada rolled through their opposition, like a hair dryer through snow, outscoring their opposition 41-2, defeating, in order, Slovakia 18-0, Switzerland 10-1 and Sweden 13-1.

And through that the Scarborough native contributed a ‘modest’ four goals and five assists.

Piper already has two Olympic gold medals to her credit, including the last time around in Turin where she was co-leader in goals-scored and second in total points for the tournament.

Their preliminary round is over, and they’ll be facing the 2nd place team from the other pool (either the US or Finland). Sweden, the other team to advance will face the 1st place team.

Update: It’ll be Canada vs Finland, US vs Sweden. Winner of each game goes to the gold medal match, losers go to the bronze medal match.

February 17, 2010

Is “Own the Podium” the end of Canadian niceness?

Filed under: Cancon, Media, Sports — Tags: , , , , , — Nicholas @ 09:23

In another common refrain, Canada’s “Own the Podium” slogan appears to be doing irreparable damage to our international image . . . according to a few bored reporters. Again, it seems to shock and dismay people that Canadians might actually want to compete and win in the Olympics — apparently that’s not “Canadian”. Dahlia Lithwick looks at some of the “we can’t believe it” coverage:

Someday, someone is going to explain to me why it is that journalists so frequently speak about Canadians as though we are all about 2 feet tall and 7 years old. See, for instance, this exceedingly strange New York Times piece about how those tiny little Canadians are building a “giant laser” or some such thing, in order to bring home more Olympic medals than ever before. Look! Look at all those funny little Canadians in their funny little hats, trying to be good at sports! Look at them spending their whole allowance on a top-secret program to create a human slingshot for speed skaters and “super-low-friction bases for snowboards and [to find out] whether curling brooms really melt the ice.” The Seattle Times describes this effort as “Canada’s non-nuclear Manhattan Project.”

It was bad enough when they were calling us “un-Canadian” and “inhospitable” just for wanting to win medals. It got uglier last Friday when Georgian luger Nodar Kumaritashvili was tragically killed in a practice run. The Canadians’ decision to limit outsiders’ use of Olympic facilities before the Games began — a maneuver that every other host country pulls — got spun as “an unfortunate nationalistic impulse” that put patriotism ahead of safety. The subtext: When Canadians care about winning just as much as the rest of the world, can there be any more warmth and goodness left in the universe?

The flip-side of all this is . . . the world barely even knows that Canada exists. Why do we get all worked up about how the world “sees” us? More evidence that Canada still needs to grow up a bit and get over the teenage angst. It’s unbecoming in teenagers, but it’s much worse for a nation.

Of course, this effort to caricature Canadians has been aided most of all by Canadians. You know you’re suffering an international feistiness deficit when your prime minister begs his fellow citizens to show the world a little more testosterone. “We will ask the world to forgive us this time,” declared Stephen Harper in an effort to rouse Canadians into showy displays of patriotism, “this uncharacteristic outburst of patriotism and pride, our pride of being part of a country that is strong, confident and stands tall among the nations.”

What’s strange about all this deep Freudian analysis is that Canada has done pretty darn well on the hardware front in recent years. It jumped from 13 medals in 1994 to 24 at Turin in 2006. Canada ranks seventh overall in winter medal wins. Not bad for a country of 33 million people where per capita spending on Olympians has historically been a fraction of what some other countries spend. Is it possible that Canada has been doing just fine at the Winter Olympics but nobody ever bothered to notice?

However, I have to take issue with one thing she writes:

It has always seemed to me that sweeping efforts to identify a Canadian national character are pointless. It’s a vast country built on compromises between French and English, Canadians and the British. The nation differs so fundamentally from east coast to west that, Olympics notwithstanding, it’s hard to know what a Newfoundlander and a British Columbian might find to talk about.

Get two Canadians together from different parts of the country, and they’ll immediately have something to talk about: their shared loathing of Toronto . . .

Fleet Street, in unison: “Worst. Games. Ever.”

Filed under: Cancon, Media, Sports — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 09:10

British journalism is a bit less respectful than the Canadian variety (not that “respectful” is all that common here). British journalists also tend to look for lines of attack, rather than lines of inquiry. It works for them: the British newspaper scene is far more entertaining than anywhere else in the world, but it doesn’t do much for those in the scrutiny of the Fleet Street flashmob. Vancouver and the VANOC folks are squarely in the crosshairs at the moment, and bored British journalists are bringing their patented approach to Olympic criticism:

If there was a gold medal for premature Winter Olympic whining, the British would be perennial occupants of the middle podium.

Right on schedule, on the fourth of 17 event days, U.K. scribes have written off the Vancouver Olympics as a “worst-ever” Games in the making, an “abomination” for producing the accidental death of a luger and an organizational “fiasco” for slow buses and venue meltdowns.

Well, in fairness, never before at an Olympic venue has there ever been a weather delay or mechanical breakdown. Only in Vancouver have these things ever . . . oh, what? There have been problems before? Funny, the way it’s being reported — with ice-ruining machines and immobile buses — you’d think this was an absolutely unprecedented series of disasters.

There’s no obvious explanation for why London reporters are the most caustic of the contingent, having elevated Vancouver-bashing into an unofficial Olympic sport.

Perhaps they’re dreadfully bored. After all, the BBC alone has more personnel at the Games than the kingdom’s entire 52-member Olympic team. There’s also dispiriting news that bookies back home predict the U.K. will experience a medal shutout in Vancouver, with only an outside shot at the curling podium.

What’s that? You think they could have a motive for painting the Vancouver games in the worst possible light?

Guardian columnist Martin Samuel went postal in his attack in the aftermath of the luge fatality. “Canada wanted to Own The Podium,” he snarled. “This morning they can put their Maple Leaf stamp on something more instantly tangible: the nondescript little box carrying the lifeless body of Nodar Kumaritashvili back to his home in Bakuriani, Georgia.” Good grief.

Other U.K reporters predict financial disaster for Vancouver, a defensive move given that London’s 2012 Summer Olympics are already $1.8-billion over budget.

They complain of heavy-handed customs officials and no-nonsense security, which is a tad rich from a country where police will have the right to enter homes without a warrant while Olympic officials storm residences or enterprises near Games venues to search for protest material.

Of course, Canadians are not being as polite in response to what they see as provocation from the British press:

Not surprisingly, thin-skinned Canadians are filling British newspapers with backlash sneers and jeers.

“London will be worse (in 2012). It will also be dirtier, smellier, and have worse teeth,” mocked one offended Canuck. “Just because you long ago abandoned any ambitions in the world – or for that matter basic sense of identity or dignity – and became a lethargic nation of elitist whiners who no one really likes, don’t fault those younger nations who do enjoy and embrace life,” snapped another.

Which will, in turn, provide more fuel for the fires. Exactly the sort of reaction they were hoping to get.

February 16, 2010

QotD: Football

Filed under: Football, Humour, Quotations — Tags: , — Nicholas @ 13:11

The Super Bowl is one of those great annual events that is uniquely American — except for the Roman numerals. I think those still belong to the Vatican.

If you missed it, the final score was Saints, XXXI and Colts, XVII.

The Super Bowl represents what we Americans are all about: creative commercials occasionally interrupted by violence. During the six-hour broadcast, there were only 11 minutes of actual, live football action. Some of the commercial breaks were so long that, when we finally came back to the game, I had forgotten which teams were playing.

And what better Norman Rockwell-esque ritual could I have with my kids than to watch 20 erectile dysfunction commercials to every snap of the football? “Daddy, why are those people in bathtubs watching the sun set?” I just tell them the people lost their homes to foreclosure.

Football is a lot like sex: countless hours of advertising how good it will be with only 11 minutes of actual action. Then, for me, there is always that awkward moment at the end when my credit card is declined.

Ron Hart, “Super Bowl: Uniquely American – except the Roman numerals”, Orange County Register, 2010-02-10

Things I did not know about Curling

Filed under: Humour, Sports — Tags: , — Nicholas @ 12:35

I’ve been living under a bunch of misapprehensions about the “sport” of Curling. I admit, I haven’t subjected these revelations to any peer review or fact checking, but if the climate “scientists” can get away with that kind of sloppiness, why can’t I?

* The movie Death Race 2000 was loosely based on curling.
* Curling has been described as shuffleboard plus ice plus chess times football plus ninjas times a grizzly bear plus a nuclear explosion minus badminton.
* Curling is banned in most of Europe due to making their heads explode with its awesomeness
* The stones in curling are made from brimstone mined from the very depths of hell.
* Placing a stone perfectly in the house has been rated the hardest act in any sport, harder than hitting a fast ball or catching the golden snitch.
* Due to the excitement, curling is not recommended for the elderly, those with heart conditions, pregnant women, and people who suck and don’t like awesome things.
* In ancient times, only the greatest, strongest warriors were chosen to play curling… and housewives good at sweeping.
* No one is sure where curling came from, but most guess it was a collaborative project of Chuck Norris, Mr. T, Jack Bauer, and Fred Thompson.

It’s not surprising that more Canucks are lefties than Yanks

Filed under: Cancon, Sports, USA — Tags: — Nicholas @ 08:38

Although this is about hockey, not politics:

What is the difference between a Canadian and an American? The old question is coming up again here at the Olympics, with answers involving eagerness for war, ketchup, the pronunciation of toque or the ability to identify poutine and the Tragically Hip.

But none may be so simple as how one holds a hockey stick. According to sales figures from stick manufacturers, a majority of Canadian hockey players shoot left-handed, and a majority of American players shoot right-handed. No reason is known for this disparity, which cuts across all age groups and has persisted for decades.

Most Canadians, like most Americans, are naturally right-handed, so the discrepancy has nothing to do with national brain-wiring. And how you hold a pencil, say, has little or no bearing on how you hold a stick. A left-handed shooter puts his right hand on top; a right-hander puts the left hand there.

February 15, 2010

QotD: “I was disappointed in the opening ceremonies because . . .”

Filed under: Bureaucracy, Cancon, Media, Quotations, Sports — Tags: , , , , — Nicholas @ 13:00

Holy smack people. We spent about a billion gazillion dollars on this thing. Every fourth person in the country has had their picture in the paper after getting a chance to carry the Olympic torch on some weird relay race around the country. We’ve been warned that anyone hinting these games aren’t the absolute bestest thing that ever happened in Canada will be drawn up on treason charges. And when the thing finally gets underway (hallelujah!), all we can think of is finding people who are “disappointed” because their particular race/creed/colour/language group wasn’t better represented.

My God. Vanoc should have asked Stats Canada to drawn up a statistical breakdown of the country, and then awarded spaces at the ceremonies strictly on that basis: 4.2 French-speaking non-Quebec First Nations people; 0.6 Presbyterian Metis single mothers; 1 Catholic that everyone else is allowed to make fun of; exactly 50% female representation, subdivided among the top 34 national racial, ethnic and religious groups; no men.

Then everyone would be happy, right? Actually, I doubt it.

Kelly McParland, “I was disappointed in the opening ceremonies because . . . (fill in beef here)”, National Post, 2010-02-15

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