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.