IOC deserves benefit of the doubt on this one

The news this morning that Canada’s Supreme Court won’t hear the last-gasp appeal to include women’s ski jumping in the Vancouver Olympics comes as no real surprise. It also makes eminent sense. The instant women’s ski jumping is ready to be included, it will be there.

I am no wild fan of the International Olympipc Committee and never really have been. That said, the one thing for which the IOC deserves credit, beginning with the latter reign of His Excellency Juan Antonio Samaranch and continuing through the current regime of Jacques Rogge, is the inclusion of women’s sports in the Games.

The IOC has bent over backward to bump up the number of women’s sports in the Olympics, obviously a good thing. So the IOC surely deserves the benefit of the doubt on this one; women’s ski jumping went through the process and was deemed to be not grown-up enough for inclusion. The athletes are dedicated and hard-working, of course. But that isn't the issue. If the IOC, which sorely wants more women’s sports, says it isn’t ready yet, in terms of depth of talent pool or whatever, then that would seem to be the case. Why would they go the other way?

The IOC surely would have taken a mulligan on women’s hockey; the game is dynamic and growing in Canada and the U.S., but other than one major upset of the U.S. at Turin, it would be one of the least competitive sports on the Olympic calendar. There are the two powerhouses and then everybody else. No doubt that competitive imbalance is making the IOC a little more cautious about jumping too soon.

When women’s ski jumping is grown up enough, it will be included. Perhaps for Socchi in 2014. Things take time, although in our modern society everyone seems to want what they want the instant they want it. There’s a process and ski jumping needs to go through it to the IOC’s satisfaction. The Supreme Court quite properly had no business entering the process after the lower courts ruled the way they did.

 

What if the bear went after Carmen Miranda?

LAKE LOUISE, Alta. -- The Fairmont Chateau Lake Louise, an historic old hotel perched on the rim of a lake whose name you can probably guess, is the kind of place everyone should stay in once. Its spectacular views and sense of old-timey luxury ease the pain of $11 beers and $18 hamburgers.

After 11 nights of the place, though, with every corner of the place explored, the  shops combed through and the lake trail walked, that old reliable showed up: TV. And what an in-house channel the Chateau has.

There’s a loop that includes the usual propaganda, but also a 1942 musical called Springtime In The Rockies, allegedly filmed at the hotel, although there’s no sign that the 20^th Century Fox film crew ever set foot in the joint. Great shots of the lake and mountains, though, and in addition to the magnificent scenery, this probably was one of Betty Grable’s best pictures, which, granted, isn’t saying a whole lot. But Edward Everett Horton is the rich bumbler about to be parted from his money, John Payne chews the scenery and the great Carmen Miranda, she famous for the bananas on her head, is her usual outstanding self, wobbling around in English, dancing, smiling and stealing scenes. No fruit on her head, but she’s sometimes right there in front of stock shots of Lake Louise. Hubba-hubba.

It’s a typical old Fox musical, which is to say MGM was doing them much bigger and better back then. But it’s not terrible and, when it’s minus-23 degrees and snow is falling, it’s not entirely the worst option.

The other great show on the in-house loop is a half-hour instructional video that tells you how to handle a chance meeting with a bear. You’d think this might be worth about three seconds: “Hey, run like hell.’’

But no. It breaks down the way to back gracefully away while “reading’’ the bear. If it’s an aggressive bear, you supposedly get big and get loud and then fight back when it arrives. (Yeah, right). At some point, play dead, although that doesn’t sound too hard. If it’s a non-aggressive bear, speak in low tones while staying big, backing away slowly. They also showed you something called bear spray, which is a big aerosol can you hang on your belt and blast yon ursa before he rips your throat out. Very comforting.

Now, a guy watched this about eight nights after his first late-night walk and thought to himself, “Don’t these damn things hibernate in winter? That’s what they told us as kids.’’ The answer at the hotel was, “Most of them.’’

Most and not all? It might be time for another crack at Carmen.

 

What if the bear went after Carmen Miranda?

LAKE LOUISE, Alta. -- The Fairmont Chateau Lake Louise, an historic old hotel perched on the rim of a lake whose name you can probably guess, is the kind of place everyone should stay in once. Its spectacular views and sense of old-timey luxury ease the pain of $11 beers and $18 hamburgers.

After 11 nights of the place, though, with every corner of the place explored, the  shops combed through and the lake trail walked, that old reliable showed up: TV. And what an in-house channel the Chateau has.

There’s a loop that includes the usual propaganda, but also a 1942 musical called Springtime In The Rockies, allegedly filmed at the hotel, although there’s no sign that the 20^th Century Fox film crew ever set foot in the joint. Great shots of the lake and mountains, though, and in addition to the magnificent scenery, this probably was one of Betty Grable’s best pictures, which, granted, isn’t saying a whole lot. But Edward Everett Horton is the rich bumbler about to be parted from his money, John Payne chews the scenery and the great Carmen Miranda, she famous for the bananas on her head, is her usual outstanding self, wobbling around in English, dancing, smiling and stealing scenes. No fruit on her head, but she’s sometimes right there in front of stock shots of Lake Louise. Hubba-hubba.

It’s a typical old Fox musical, which is to say MGM was doing them much bigger and better back then. But it’s not terrible and, when it’s minus-23 degrees and snow is falling, it’s not entirely the worst option.

The other great show on the in-house loop is a half-hour instructional video that tells you how to handle a chance meeting with a bear. You’d think this might be worth about three seconds: “Hey, run like hell.’’

But no. It breaks down the way to back gracefully away while “reading’’ the bear. If it’s an aggressive bear, you supposedly get big and get loud and then fight back when it arrives. (Yeah, right). At some point, play dead, although that doesn’t sound too hard. If it’s a non-aggressive bear, speak in low tones while staying big, backing away slowly. They also showed you something called bear spray, which is a big aerosol can you hang on your belt and blast yon ursa before he rips your throat out. Very comforting.

Now, a guy watched this about eight nights after his first late-night walk and thought to himself, “Don’t these damn things hibernate in winter? That’s what they told us as kids.’’ The answer at the hotel was, “Most of them.’’

Most and not all? It might be time for another crack at Carmen.

 

All stop signs are not created equal out here

LAKE LOUISE

The big red stop sign is more of a suggestion than something drivers can actually obey on some of these mountains roads.

You get a rental car with a sewing-machine engine and tires as bald as a baby’s butt and it’s a fishtail just to get out of a parking space, much less handle the ups and downs of the snow-covered mountain roads.

There’s this little thing called momentum when driving on snow and ice. You get stopped on even a gentle hill and there’s almost no way of getting going again without the back end taking off on a bootleg. It’s like driving a stickshift in San Francisco; get stopped at the wrong point on the wrong hill and good luck getting going again without rolling into the guy behind you.

Anyway, that is one kind of stop sign around here. But there was another one Thursday, almost right at the start of the third training run for Friday’s women’s downhill race. Great Britain’s Chemmy Alcott finished her run, batting leadoff, and Canada’s Britt Janyk was scheduled to start second.

Moments later, on the scoreboard, up went the big red stop sign. Uh-oh. That can’t be good news. It means the race has been stopped for any number of reasons, including a crash.

A handful of Canadian reporters, many of whom had just gotten off a conference call with John Kucera, who badly broke his leg in a spill here last Sunday, nervously began to wonder whether Janyk had gone down near the top of her run. There was no TV monitor and no information other than the stop sign.

A couple of minutes ticked by and we all turned anxiously to the helicopter, which idles nearby, ready to head up with the gurney to evacuate skiers who have damaged themselves.

Good news, though. The scoreboard went to green and soon after, Janyk posted an interval time. It was a false alarm. A little gate repair was required.

“I think Chemmy busted a gate,’’ Janyk said a couple of minutes later, after she had arrived at the bottom of the hill “I was held in the start.’’

Good thing we have one less stop sign around here to worry about.

Tiger busted and now it's his business, not ours

One of these years, Elin Nordegren might end up as the No. 2 money winner on the PGA Tour.

The unsurprising news that Tiger Woods has, indeed, been caught with his pants very publicly down, ratted out by a cocktail waitress who is creating this ultra-modern brand of reality TV, at least changes the questions now.

For instance, Where were you going at 2:25 a.m.?

What does it matter now? He was busted by his wife, who may or may not have taken a piece out of him before he cracked up his car. That’s now the least of his worries.

Unless there’s a divorce in the future – and sometimes there is and sometimes there isn’t – this story, which began with that breathless (and flat wrong) bulletin last week that he had been “seriously’’ hurt in a car wreck, has pretty much run out now.

Woods made an apology on his website, he has suffered the shame and humiliation of being found out twice, once by his wife and, officially, by the rest of us. Whatever he has suffered as fodder for the 24/7 news cycle surely pales in comparison to what his wife has gone through and will continue to go through.

No one will ever look at the two of them the same way again. Woods now goes back to being the best golfer in the world, one with the same failings as millions of others: He thought too much with the little head.

Finally, though, he is doing something right and that had to happen eventually. He said what he had to say, forced into it by tape-recorded revelations from his lady friend, and if he is smart, he will say no more about it. He owes his fans golf and no more and his sponsors, with no charges laid other than a traffic ticket, are free to determine whether they wish to hang in with him. (Here’s guessing most do.)

The rest of it is personal, how he makes it up to his wife and his family, or if he can. And if he can’t, well, depending on the pre-nup agreement, think of that first paragraph.

And once again the rest of us need to remind ourselves that the best athletes aren’t necessarily the best people, that the two characteristics can, and often do, run on very different tracks. Once upon a time, the first part was all we concerned ourselves with; athlete infidelity was never a news subject. If it were, there wouldn’t have been enough newsprint.

Now, it comes up more than occasionally, if the subject is “big’’ enough, like a U.S. President, or Alex Rodriguez, or now Woods. At some point, “their’’ business became everybody’s business and reputations were flushed forever.

Tiger Woods can't make this one go away

Well, it probably won’t be long now until Tiger and Elin show up on 60 Minutes, holding hands and setting the record straight. Just like, you know, Roger Clemens did.

    Whatever happened between Woods and his wife, in the wake of (since denied) suggestions from the National Enquirer that he had been having an affair, he’s taking a pounding here. His agents and handlers and press people should know that people will talk and figure things out for themslves, that when no reasonable explanation for a minor car crash at 2:25 a.m. is forthcoming, that others trying to put two and two together is par for the course.

    They won’t be the first or last married couple to have difficulties, if that is indeed the case. And who wouldn’t understand that any high-profile public figures in that situation would prefer privacy?

That said, let’s just say that if Elin went after his car with a golf club – a 9-iron would seem to have enough loft here – and, distracted, he took out a fire hydrant and bumped a tree in the process, well, that makes more sense than anything that has been told to us.

    One thing about Woods: He is the suing kind. If the Enquirer story was wrong, as maintained by the New York socialite in question – a woman who certainly seems to have bagged her collagen limit, by the way – then Woods can cue his lawyers.

He has done it before; remember when he won a judgement against an Irish magazine that published fake nude photos of his wife before the Ryder Cup a couple of years ago. He also has sued the maker of his yacht for using an unauthorized plug from Tiger and won the suit. He also went after an artist at Augusta who paints and sells portraits of past Masters champions. He didn’t win that one.

    So he has options if, indeed, he has been libelled and Elin had nothing to be angry about. In which case, he still needs to come up with a reasonable explanation as to what happened at that time of night and the way he is canceling meetings with the police, it doesn’t sound as if he has one for them, let alone the rest of the world. And they’re the ones who will be laying charges, if it gets that far.

    None of this will go away simply because Woods and his people want it to go away. He’s too much of a world brand, a world brand with a carefully nurtured image,  for people to stop asking reasonable questions. Finding a friendly “interviewer’’ who will let him (and them) spin a bunch of nonsense isn’t going to get it done.

   

Here's one landscape that did change today

LAKE LOUISE, Alta. – Okay, Tiger Woods got cut up a little, apparently, and it isn’t as serious as first indicated. Tim Finchem and everybody else in pro golf can start breathing normally again. The sporting landscape as we know it didn’t change drastically and now the joke will go around that, well, Woods has had a lot of trouble with his driving lately.

So back to a landscape that did change, the beautiful picture postcard here, where a crisp, clear and stunningly sunny morning gave way to cloudy in a hurry. So what, you might ask?

Well, in the middle of a World Cup training session, it turns out to have a large effect on things. The course, in what the skiers call flat light, changes character and tends to slow down. This surely is a relative term because these guys move awfully quickly, even the “slow’’ ones.

I had almost forgotten that it’s always a gas at the bottom of a ski hill, watching these fearless athletes turn from dots far up the mountainside into, mere seconds later, snow-throwing skiers screeching to a halt mere yards away. These guys are seriously fast; on-course wobbles detected on the large video screens are easily recognizable and translate into the precious tenths and hundredths of a second that separate the very best from the second flight.

    Michael Walchhofer, the Austrian star who has won 14 World Cup races, Olympic silver in 2006 and the 2003 downhill world championship, was the quickest down a course where he won six years ago. The rest of the field lines up behind him, separated by degress of those precious fractions of a second. John Kucera, who won here in 2006 and is the reigning downhill world champion, is the best of the Canadians, a solid fourth albeit nearly a second off Walchhofer’s time.

    After the first flight of skiers had gone, clouds blew in, obliterating the sunshine and changing the course drastically. There was even snow at the top of the hill and most of the later skiers got far from the best of it.

    There’s a keen sense of anticipation here for Saturday’s race. It’s the first race of the World Cup speed season in a year in which the Olympics looms very large.It’s held on a course on which Canadians have done well in the past and look at the list of fastest qualifiers, which is a good indicator, although not always definitive, of the contenders..

    Behind Walchhofer, whose credentials are easy to recognize, comes Bode Miller, the talented U.S. problem child who has returned to the U.S. team fold this year after last season spent doing his own thing – which included avoiding every podium.

    Ski fans, at least, can fasten their seat belts.

Too much snow and almost too many elk

LAKE LOUISE, Alta.—They cancelled the skiing here Thursday because it is snowing.

Does this make sense? Is this not like cancelling a swim because it is raining? Or bagging the kite-flying because it’s too windy?

Well, no, not quite. The second training run for Saturday’s opener of the World Cup ski season, speed division, the men’s downhill, was wiped out because snow just isn’t what you need in the air. On the ground, yes, but there’s a problem with visibility because these guys are traveling something like 130 km/h and seeing where you are going at that speed would be something of a help, no?

Speaking of visibility, you can’t see Lake Louise from the beautiful (and expensive) old headquarters hotel here and the lake is about 125 feet away. So . . . we sit.

Organizers also would like competitors to be on some kind of reasonably level footing, too, and enough snow is falling that will change the character of the course for the 93 skiers entered.

They ran the first practice run Wednesday, with Robbie Dixon in fourth as top-placed Canadian, and they will try again Friday, scheduling another attempt at 11 a.m. local time. The weather forecast is calling for more of the same, so if they don’t get in a second run Friday, they can still run the race as scheduled Saturday with only the one practice session.

Europeans finished 1-2-3 Wednesday and perhaps they feel at home because of the prices in the hotel here. It’s pushing $8 for a coffee and a morning muffin. It’s like being in Switzerland, with less yodelling.

None of this snow, by the way, translates into a blanket of the white misery for the Grey Cup, which is slightly more than 180 kilometres east of here Calgary this coming Sunday. It was dry and mild at Calgary when the plane got in Wednesday night. On the drive over, the snow didn’t start until about the final 60 kilometres. There were also numerous enormous horned animals by the side of the highway, always a treat to skim past on a pitch-dark night. Signs warned of elk crossing and that must have been them. Too bad I forgot my Taser.

Ames got 'out of my own way' at the right time

Stephen Ames figured he might have passed a very large hurdle by winning his fourth career PGA Tour event this past Sunday – and not only because the win pretty much puts his 2010 schedule back into his own hands.

No, Ames, on the phone from his home in Calgary, suspects he might have passed a very large mental block by doing something he has never done before: State a goal and then go out and meet it.

“Right. I’ve never done that before,’’ Ames said of his Saturday night suggestion that he needed to shoot 64 Sunday to get into a playoff at the Children’s Miracle Network Classic at Disney World. “It’s something I have been trying to work on. Usually, with me, it’s a matter of me getting out of my own way. This is something I want to do, maybe put out a number, or a goal to think of, and then to just go out and let it happen.’’

If this sounds complicated, think of it this way: Ames’ physical game has always been stronger than his mental outlook. He has been a fine ball striker for a long time, but many is the time he walked off the course and said he didn’t have it between the ears. This time he did, winning the playoff over George McNeill and Justin Leonard.

His short game, which has been the main focus of his recent work with coach Sean Foley, paid off; he was getting up and down from everywhere and chipped in three times for the week.

Ames had fallen to No. 71 in the world before this win, which lifts him to No. 49 and makes a huge difference for him.

“Now I can pick and choose. It gets me back into the Masters, gets me into the World Golf Championship events,’’ he said. “It makes a big difference, without a doubt.’’

The Masters invites the top 50 world-ranked players at the end of the previous year, which means he should be in automatically for next April unless there’s some kind of dramatic shakeup at Dubai this coming weekend. He isn’t playing again until the Mercedes, the winners-only event that opens the season in Hawaii.

Ames and his family – and his 10-year-old son Ryan was there at Disney, walking the course with him – spend Christmas in Hawaii. He had planned the play the second week of the season, at the Sony Invitational, and now will play them both.

“I’m playing a lot early, ‘’ he said. “Now I’m in both tournaments in Hawaii, San Diego, Los Angeles, and I guess the (Accenture World) Match Play.’’

That tourney, a WGC event, is limited to the low 64 in the world rankings. He might have got to that point otherwise, but there’s no question about it now.

Hey, Belichick: What about my bet?

What in hell is Bill Belichick thinking? That was the question asked of the television set Sunday evening – possibly not in the most modulated tones – by a man who had a money-line position on the New England Patriots to beat the Indianapolis Colts.

Everyone who cares surely knows what happened by now. The Pats, facing a fourth-and-two at about their own 28 and the clock ticking down toward two minutes, decided not to punt the ball. They led by six points, 34-28, and Peyton Manning, the icy-eyed assassin who runs the Colts offence, had just shredded the New England defence a couple of minutes before for a TD that brought them to this point, after being down 13 points with four minutes to go.

Belichick called a time out, elected not to punt, then saw his play call come up a foot short of the first down that would have allowed the Patriots to pretty much kneel out the game. On a juggled pass, no less. Given a field of less than 30 yards, Manning easily drove the Colts to the winning touchdown. The 35-34 margin didn’t cover the point spread – the Colts had been favoured by 1 1/2 – but, again, goodnight to all us saps who bet the Pats on the money line.

In the cold light of day, I now know what Belichick had been thinking: He was thinking, basically, “My defence can’t stop this guy going 75 or 80 yards. This isn’t the Tedy Bruschi-Rodney Harrison defence any more. Most of those guys are gone. I now have a better chance to gain two yards, with Tom Brady as my quarterback, than I do stopping Manning at this point, whether he’s going 30 yards or the length of the field.’’

Afterward, there must have been 11 Patriots walking off the field looking sideways at the coach and good luck, Bill, getting this defence fired up to shut down Drew Brees on Monday night in two weeks. This great big public vote of no-confidence will be an obstacle for Belichick to overcome within his own locker room before they play New Orleans.

This has to be the first time I’ve ever sat there and said, “What the hell is Belichick doing?’’ You watch some of the NFL stuff and it’s terrible. Andy Reid’s clock management is ridiculous, to name one of a dozen. And about 25 of these coaches seem to specialize in the five-yard pass play when it’s third-and-seven. Almost everybody in the league coaches not to lose and that’s why Belichcik seems head and shoulders smarter than most of them. His halo slipped a little here, though – even for those who didn’t bet the Pats on the money line.

And speaking of NFL gambling, how about all you fantasy players out there with Maurice Jones-Drew? With 90 seconds left against the Jets, he shut down a toughdown run and took a knee at the one-yard line so the Jags could take two more knees, kill the clock and kick the game-winning field goal on the final play. How did you all enjoy that play? It didn’t affect the regular gamblers, the Jets not coming close to covering and the total already having gone over the number. But some fantasy players must have gone berserk.

This wasn’t some split-second decision, either. Jones-Drew had been instructed to stiff himself.

“They said get as close as you can and take a knee,’’ he said. “I was looking for someone to tackle me.’’

“Sorry to my fantasy owners,’’ Jones-Drew added. “I apologize. I had myself today.’’

Well, that surely makes some of them feel better.