Canadian Alpine Team Takes Another Big Hit

You gotta feel for the Canadian ski team right now with their incredible string of injuries.

Another skier, Francois Bourque, apparently suffered a ruptured ACL in his left knee in a super-G race today in Val Gardena, Italy. That's four skiers in five days -- Kelly VanderBeek, Larissa Yurkiw and J.P. Roy were lost earlier this week -- plus world downhill champion John Kucera to a broken leg three weeks ago.

“Some of them are real shots and some of them are longshots, but they're our best athletes," said Alpine Canada athletics chief Max Gartner on Thursday. "Every time somebody goes down, it's definitely going to be a big blow for our team. ... We've tried to develop over the past years athletes who can get to the start gate with good chances in Vancouver, but we don't have that many.”

Gartner is in Val Gardena, Italy with the men's team.

“I watch Jan Hudec come down the last couple of days and I'm just biting my fingernails that he's going to make it down to the bottom and get a little more confidence, because we're trying to get him up to speed for February.” said Gartner.

“Hudec, who is coming back from his fifth major knee surgery, will skip the two toughest downill courses on the circuit in Bormio, Italy, and Kitzbuehel, Austria.

Meanwhile, on the women's side, they struggled with how to manage things after losing two skiers in two days. Emily Brydon was third today in the downhill portion of a super combined event and 28th overall.

“Not to say we're not still optimistic because we've got a couple of great racehorses left still,” said assistant women's coach Roy Boyd. “But I guess now a tough thing for us is how hard do we want to push them. Do we save them for the big show? Can we do that? We've got a little thinking and discussing to do as coaches amongst ourselves and with the athletes.

“If we were to have a bigger team, yeah, you just keep pushing and pushing, but when you only have a few select potentials for podiums do you want to try to save them? But you have to be in the driver's seat and committed for every run.”

New Team for VanderBeek? Kelly VanderBeek's knee is a mess, but that needn't prevent her from being at the 2010 Vancouver Olympics.

It would make some sense for CTV to add the Kitchener native to their roster of commentators. VanderBeek is bright, personable, a great talker and would have the insights of a current ski racer, something that couldn't hurt their broadcasts. She could supplement the crew they've already put together.

Hot Dog: The Past That Peter Judge Can't Escape

As ceo of the Canadian Freestyle Ski Association, Peter Judge has done a great job in helping prepare the team for the 2010 Winter Olympics.

He's been forward thinking enough to allow a system where many of the athletes have individual coaches, yet get them to work together when it counts. It's been working superbly and you saw the results, for example, last week as the World Cup moguls season opened with three medals in two days on the women's side.

But there is a past Judge can't escape. An alter ego that follows him to this day.

The past is Hot Dog The Movie, a cult classic among freestyle skiers (Well, some of them.) It's kind of their Rocky Horror Picture Show.

It was a horror all right.

Among the movie's stars was David Naughton (best known for An American Werewolf in London), but the real star was Judge.

Judge was the stunt double for the lead character Harkin Banks. One gets the impression from a few posts on the internet that a guy could score free beer with that on his resume in most ski resorts. Rumour has it that Judge won freestyle skiing's version of the Oscar (The Chappy).

Anyway, time to watch the man's work. It was his strength in freestyle's now forgotten third discipline, ballet, that probably got him the gig in Hot Dog The Movie. (There's actually a Facebook group called “I Secretly Love Ballet Skiing" – it's Russian based and has 160 members. Poor fools. They all love Harkin Banks).

To watch Judge, er Harkin, do his thing, you can start at about the 2:34 mark of this clip. Enjoy.

Matt Morison's "Redneck Vacation"

 

Snowboarder Matt Morison calls it his “redneck vacation.”

The resident of Burketon, Ont., near Oshawa spent the summer with teammate and good friend Pat Farrell of Oakville in the B.C. interior. They equipped themselves in Kamloops with dirt bikes and a little fishing boat that they painted camouflage and, when they weren't training, just had a good time.

You can't underestimate the importance of the fun quotient this past off-season for Olympic athletes. A relaxed and happy athlete is more likely to be a productive one, as Morison showed in winning the opening event of the World Cup parallel giant slalom season on Tuesday in Telluride, Colo.

“I think going to Kamloops for me was one of the best decisions I've ever made,” said the 22-year-old, pictured above winning a bronze medal at last year's world championships. “The lifestyle was right up our alley. They set us up great with the gym at the university and we were in there every day working hard. And then we had the rest of the afternoon off.

“We got a few toys. The boys have to have a few toys. So we had dirt bikes and Pat and I would just go for hours and hours in the Kamloops Mountains and get totally lost, almost run out of gas and just barely make it back. I think the dirt bikes were great cross training.

“You know you pin it on the bike; you pin it on the (snowboard) course, you pin it on the gates. What Pat and I always say is 'Pin it to win it.' That was great.”

Morison and Farrell spent a lot of time fishing in a boat powered by an electric motor that they kept together with electrical tape.

“That thing would always let us down. We never learned to take a paddle. We were always paddling with a sandal or a net or something.”

The fishing was relaxing, but fed more than their souls.

“I think we pretty much survived the whole summer eating trout,” said Morison. “There's hundreds of lakes around the Kamloops area. So fishing was more for relaxation and for the soul, to chill out in the boat and stuff. It was just the ultimate summer for me. Every time I would get back on the snowboard, I'd be in such a good frame of mind from doing things I love to do.”

A wise strategy indeed.

Welcome Addition: Winning her fourth straight World Cup medal of the season wasn't the only good news last week for Canadian skeleton race Mellisa Hollingsworth – she snared a new sponsor in TAQA North Ltd., a global energy company for which her father works.

Their logo will appear on her sled when she competes this week in Altenberg, Germany, and on her uniform in the new year. She will still have her big Right To Play logo on the bottom of her sled.

Check It Out: Just want to put in another plug for the Sport At Its Best website being spearheaded by retired Olympic skeleton champion Duff Gibson. Lot of good stories about the power of sport and a great roster of contributors. It could be a great resource for teachers as they talk about the Olympics to their classes.

Message to Canadian Olympians: Expect the Unexpected

Skeleton racer Mellisa Hollingsworth was mentioning the other day how one of the main messages in the Olympic Excellence Series is that as an athlete you have to expect the unexpected in an Olympic year.

The series is hosted by the Canadian Olympic Committee and has featured past greats like Marnie McBean, Mark Tewksbury and Gaetan Boucher, sharing their experiences on what it takes to win at the biggest show on earth.

Hollingsworth brought it up in reference to the sideshow that has developed on the skeleton team around the issue of Michelle Kelly being pulled off the team twice now and then reinstated as part of a controversy over ineligible runners.

Well, the Canadian speed skaters now have an Olympic season surprise that can outdo the skeleton-ites – one of their coaches is involved bribery allegations related to trying to gain a spot for a skater at the 2006 Turin Olympics. (You can read about it here)

Let's clarify something right off the top: Ingrid Paul is ONE of the Canadian speed skating coaches. Listening to CBC Radio this morning, they made it sound like Paul is THE Canadian speed skating coach. It's been written that way in some quarters, too.

Speed Skating Canada has a large coaching and support staff. The skaters are broken up into training groups. Paul leads one of the groups. The strongest groups are led by Xiuli Wang, Marcel Lacroix and Michael Crowe. Paul's most important role is guiding the world record-breaking women's team pursuit unit, but the only skater in that crew she coaches individually is Brittany Schussler.

Anyway, Canada's speed skaters now face the possibility of questions on this matter, something they couldn't possibly have anticipated in the fall.

But it's there and they have to deal with it. It shouldn't become a distraction if it's handled right. For the most part, Speed Skating Canada has done an effective job of buffering the long track speed skaters from the media. Too much so, in the view of many reporters. But the athletes are not accustomed to a media onslaught and the thinking seems to be that it's better to protect them than try to get them used to it now.

The Paul story is likely to die down pretty quickly here, although it's a huge sensation at the moment in the Netherlands. As someone close to the scene said yesterday, it's a “she said, she said” situation. There appears to be no solid proof, no smoking gun. Paul vehemently denies it. Speed Skating Canada is supporting her, although t they used the qualifier "at the present time."

A Dutch colleague said based on past experience they don't expect anything to come out of the investigation by Olympic and speed skating officials in the Netherlands.

This story was reportedly originally planned to come out a few days before the Olympics. Its impact then would have been much greater.

And while the Dutch national broadcaster NOS decided to air their report earlier, who knows what other surprises are lurking out there for Canada's athletes en route to the Games?

Expecting anything and everything is not a bad approach.

Nesbitt Truly Views Herself as an Underdog

Some observations from TheStarkSide on this past weekend's action:

Christine Nesbitt's contention she's an underdog heading towards the 2010 Winter Olympics isn't gaining a lot of traction.

And you can understand why. Nesbitt has won all four World Cup 1,000-metre races this season – by an average of more than half a second, which is a huge margin in the event. She's won two of the four 1,500-metre races, finishing second in the other two by a combined 13/100ths of a second.

But it's not as if Nesbitt is trying to pull the wool over people's eyes. She genuninely sees herself as an underdog.

This is athlete who is incredibly hard on herself and even when she wins usually feels there's a ton of things she could have done better. That's part of what drives her. It's also why she's thinking that somebody who has as much to work on as she does couldn't possibly be a favourite.

She's also never been in the position before of being the dominant skater in her events. She's used to chasing German Anni Friesinger and teammates Cindy Klassen and Kristina Groves. She can't fathom the notion that she may be the hunted now.

Considering the way she's performing this season: If Nesbitt wants to think she's the underdog, we ought to let her go right on thinking it.

Richards Reprise: Probably the biggest development of the weekend was the re-emergence of former world champion Kristi Richards on the women's World Cup moguls scene, winning one event and finishing second in the other.

Richards struggled last year, her best result on the World Cup being an 11th and she finished in the 30s twice, including a discouraging 34th on the Olympic hill in Cypress.

Her return to form gives Canada a very potent 1-2 punch with reigning Olympic champion Jenn Heil, was fifth the first day and third on the second. Another encouraging sign was two top-10 finishes for 18-year-old Chloe Dufour-Lapointe.

Wotherspoon Rising: Jeremy Wotherspoon continues to show signs he's not done yet, finishing sixth in the men's 1,000 metres in Salt Lake City on Sunday.

He had some rough luck in the men's 500 metres on Saturday when the mechanism on his clap skate failed early in the race and he finished 20th out of 21 skaters. That will hurt his seeding for the Olympics, meaning he will race in one of the early pairs.

But it creates a potentially interesting scenario. If Wotherspoon can truly get his form back by then, he has the opportunity to post a time that the other sprinters will know they have to beat. In other words, maybe it gives him a chance to put the heat on the opposition. It could make for interesting TV.

But there's a lot of work to be done before then. Wotherspoon's opening 100 metres on Saturday was 9.69 seconds, not too shabby and a shade faster than the week before in Calgary but a tenth off what he went when he set the world record in Salt Lake City in 2007 in his first race back after taking a year off.

One thing that's probably been overlooked in Wotherspoon's comeback is the sheer violence of the collision that broke his arm in Berlin in the World Cup season opener and sidelined him for the rest of the year. The psychological challenge of coming back from that has been big.

The New York Times has taken note of the unique generosity of Wotherspoon's teammates. It was Muncel Ouardi, who gave up his spot on Saturday.

Tough Break: If things keep proceeding at this pace, the Canadian alpine team might not have to worry the problem with quota spots.

First, they lost their best overall skier John Kucera to a broken leg in the second downhill of the season. Now, it looks like one of their top technical skiers, Jean-Philippe Roy, will be sidelined from Olympic competition by a torn ACL.

As they say, that is ski racing. But it doesn't make it any easier for Max Gartner and the gang at Alpine Canada to take.

Allenby P.S. Delivers on Flat Stanley

My plea yesterday for a Flat Stanley  to take to the 2010 Winter Olympics has been answered by elementary school teacher Vicki Steele and her Grade 2 class at Allenby Public School in Toronto.

Steele is a Flat Stanley keener and has been part of the Flat Stanley Project for seven years with her Grade 4 classes. I wrote yesterday about the fun I had with Flat Stanley at the 2006 Winter Olympics (Can you spot him above among the flowers in Turin?).

Check out what Steele had to say about her experience with the Flat Man in her email sent yesterday:

“I have sent him to all corners of Canada to other schools, and to all corners of the Earth to visit my students'  friends and relatives. Flat Stanley has also traveled along with me and created travel journals to teach my students: he was in Germany with me when I got engaged, he has sent postcards to my students in the summer during trips, and he even attended my wedding!”

She continues:

“This year I am teaching grade 2. They are already big fans of FS (he recently returned from a visit with a Canadian nurse working on the base in Kandahar, Afghanistan). We can't wait for him to help us out with our next social studies topic of "Communities Around the World" - who better to help us with this learning than Stanley himself!”

There's more:

“I know my students would love to see Flat Stanley go to the Olympics as we have already been learning about them. As part of our mapping unit we have been watching the Torch Relay on the computer each day through the live webcam coverage and tracking its progress on a map, with students having the job of reporting its whereabouts daily. We have marked its Toronto arrival on our calendar and are having a "wear red" spirit day in our classroom next Thursday. Flat Stanley will then be going to watch the torch relay in person and report back to the class.”

I'm pretty pumped about working with a Flat Stanley-ite like Ms. Steele. If there are other Flat Stanleys out there, I can still try to find them a good home for the Olympics. My figure skating pal, the sublime PJ Kwong, has already offered to take a Flat Stanley with her. She's going to be an official announcer for figure skating at the Games. Might even be able to convince my grumpy buddy George Johnson of the Calgary Herald to adopt one. Everytime I see George, he wants to talk Flat Stanley.

Flat Stanley is a great stress reliever. He never gets uptight on deadline.

My Mistake: I wrote here earlier this week that Speed Skating Canada was bestowing rings on speed skating's SGN line (Strike Gold Now) – Brittany Schussler, Kristina Groves and Christine Nesbitt – for the world record they set in the team pursuit last Sunday at the World Cup in Calgary.

It's actually the people who run the Calgary Olympic Oval who deserve credit for that gesture. They give a gold ring with the image of the Brothers' of the Wind art work featured at the main entrance of the Oval to everyone who sets a world record there. Still no word on the cash bonuses they richly deserve.

Go Bruny Go: Bruny Surin is carrying the Olympic torch today. Couldn't happen to a nicer guy. Surin recently set a masters record in sprinting. Didn't realize he was so old.

(You just know Flat Stanley's gonna want to have his pic taken at such landmarks as this Speed Skating Canada Inukshuk unveiled this week)

Desperately Seeking Stanley

Here you see Cindy Klassen holding up all her hardware after her last race of the 2006 Turin Olympics – five glorious medals and ... one Flat Stanley.

If you don't know about Flat Stanley, he's pretty famous among kids and parents, has had many books written about him and is part of Grade 3 projects in many schools. You can check him out here. Kids in many schools make their own Flat Stanleys and then are supposed to send him off on an adventure. He was created by a Canadian school teacher.

Before the Turin Olympics, I was asked to take Carly Helfan's Flat Stanley with me to the Games — her father Morry is my childhood buddy (he's actually still stuck with me). I will admit I was reluctant at first. You're pretty busy during an Olympics putting in 18-hour plus days and I can be pretty anal. But I agreed to do it — and it was the best move ever.

Flat Stanley became an unofficial mascot of the Canadian reporters. George Johnson of the Calgary Herald is still talking about him and even wanted to take the Flat guy drinking even but there are limits.

It was a memorable Olympics for Flat Stanley — he hung out with Dutch speed skating fans, got his picture taken with the likes of Olympic champions Cindy Klassen, Clara Hughes and Chandra Crawford, went shopping with the CBC Radio's Bridget O'Toole, hung out with Kyodo News Service Reporter and all-around great guy Shinsuke Kobayashi, talked shop with public relations ace Chris Dornan even got run over by a Zamboni (See below. ... Thanks for that, Olympic ice man Mark Messer.)

Now, here's the problem: The 2010 Vancouver Games are coming fast and I don't have a Flat Stanley to keep me company.

Anyone got a kid out there who can help? We really showed the last one a good time — and got him back to Carly in one piece.

The Daily A-Buce: One of the great things about this beat is when new athletes emerge and they're not only talented athletically but interesting people as well.

There's a 20-year-old speed skater from Calgary named Anastasia Bucsis on the national team and she writes a very clever and entertaining blog called The Daily A-Buce.

She's rooming these days with Christine Nesbitt, quite a character in her own right, so she's obviously getting plenty of fodder.

You can also follow the back-and-forth banter of the two teammates on Twitter via http://twitter.com/cnezzy and http://twitter.com/anastasure

My Big Mouth: A Tool of the Week Moment

It is with some regret, not to mention a bit of embarrassment, that the latest winner of the Sunnyside Hardware Tool of the Week award is unveiled this week – it's me.

It has to do with my sense of humour – or rather my alleged sense of humour, as my wife and daughter refer to it.

On occasion, I try to keep things a bit light in the media scrums with a joke or a wisecrack here or there. It's usually to good effect as it can help to lighten the athletes up a bit.

One time it seemed to work really well was at last year's World Single Distance Speed Skating Championships in Richmond after Brittany Schussler, Kristina Groves and Christine Nesbitt won gold in team pursuit.

Well, after Schussler, Groves and Nesbitt – the SGN line, or Strike Gold Now (not sure that's gonna catch on but we'll try it a few times) – set a world record on Sunday at the World Cup in Calgary, I thought I'd inject a bit of levity with an oddball question.

“So, what are you going to do with the $5,000 bonus from Speed Skating Canada,” I asked.

“The what?” the shocked trio replied, collective jaws dropping. No exaggeration here, they were gobsmacked.

Surely, they had to know I was joking. This is amateur sport. Cash bonuses from federations for world records? About as likely as Tiger Wood inviting the paparrazi over for Christmas dinner.

Speed Skating Canada has never done it, to my knowledge. Hey, how could I know the speed skaters would think I was serious?

Well, two seconds later when they clued in it wasn't for real, they were crestfallen. TSN's golden-throated Rod Smith remarked afterwards that it was quite a moment. And I felt like a real schmoe. My better half was not surprised when I told her about it. Not impressed, either.

Turns out Speed Skating Canada is going to have rings made for the world record breakers to commemorate the moment, which is pretty cool.

I'm thinking of Tim Horton's gift cards to mend some fences. As for the five grand? Maybe a sponsor out there wants to bail me out?

P.S. Below is my sister, Fern Turner, showing off the official Sunnyside Hardware Tool of the Week t-shirt that she designed, free of charge (Hey, she's my sister!). Not that we're expecting a big run on them, but we're putting them up for sale on this blog for $20 each with all proceeds going to the the Star Santa Claus Fund.

If you're interested, please send a cheque – payable either to Jim Proudfoot Corner or to Star Santa Claus Fund – and mail it to Randy Starkman, Toronto Star Sports Dept., One Yonge St., Toronto, M5E 1E6. Tax receipts will be issued.

Dutch Treat Could Embarrass Canadian Fans

There's a lot of talk about all the pressure Canadian athletes will be under at the Vancouver Olympics. It says here that Canadian sports fans are under the gun, too.

How embarrassing is it going to be, for example, if Canadians are out-cheered by the Dutch speed skating fans at the Richmond Olympic Oval?

It's a very real possibility, one that we were reminded of this past weekend at the Olympic Oval in Calgary, where a less than impressive crowd showed up in an Olympic year to cheer on the team which will likely be the country's most successful at the Games. There was a good group of Dutch supporters who made the trip and, in most cases, they were probably the loudest fans there.

Le Grand Orange, as the Dutch fans could be called (apologies to Rusty Staub), have gotta be the best fans in sport, as has been said more than once in this corner.

They're knowledgeable, they cheer for everyone (but way more, of course, for their homeboys and homegirls), and they have an amazingly good time without beating anyone up or destroying property (though I have never been with them at bar closing time – something I hope to remedy at this Olympics.)

They were THE atmosphere at the Oval Lingotto during the 2006 Winter Olympics in Turin (see above picture of them with Flat Stanley). One has to think that might be the case again in 2010. Everybody out in Richmond is gonna want a passport to Heineken House, the place where the Dutch fans party.

Not So Cool Runnings: What a mess with skeleton racer Michelle Kelly and her troublesome runners.

Bobsleigh Canada Skeleton ceo Don Wilson took the hit for removing Kelly from last week's World Cup race in Italy and jeopardizing Canada's chances for three sliders at the Olympics, but Kelly – like every athlete -- must take responsbility for the state of her equipment.

Wilson said the problem has occurred three times this season. Kelly contends it's twice.

Doesn't matter. It's two or three times too many and is starting to wreak havoc on team chemistry in a sport where Canada has very good medal chances for the 2010 Games. At 35, Kelly is a veteran of over a decade in the sport. You gotta wonder what's going on.

Speed Skating: All Signs Pointing to the Podium

CALGARY – It's hard to imagine this past weekend's World Cup going better for the Canadian speed skating team in terms of a tuneup towards the big show in February.

Almost of the skaters seem to be in a really good place and the coaching staff and support team around them are coming together as a well-oiled machine.

Here's an update on some of the team's blade runners:

Christine Nesbitt: The firecracker from London, Ont., is maturing as an athlete and person at just the right time and is very hard to beat right now in the 1,000 and 1,500 metres. The good news is she knows she can be better and is never satisfied.

Kristina Groves: Groves is in a groove right now, a medal threat at every distance except the 500 metres.

Clara Hughes: She knows how to get ready for the big race. She's looking and feeling very confident about where she's at right now as she gets ready for her career curtain closer.

Brittany Schussler: She's on the cusp of a breakthrough, knocking on the podium door on a consistent basis and is a huge part of the puzzle of the women's team pursuit unit that set a world record Sunday.

Cindy Klassen: There are definite signs that she's not done yet, despite the struggles of trying to come back from double knee surgery and nearly two years away from racing.

Jeremy Wotherspoon: The chances of him rounding into form are looking much better after his first weekend of World Cup racing in more than a year. He's also beginning to appear and sound more confident and relaxed. The underdog position should suit him better.

Denny Morrison: He's back in his old skates and back on the beam after a shaky 12th-place finish in the men's 1,000 metres last month in the Netherlands. The competition is exceedingly tough in his two specialties, the men's 1,000 and 1,500 metres.

Jamie Gregg: Winning his first World Cup medal in the 500 metres was a big breakthrough Friday, although he's certainly still an outside shot for the Olympic podium.

Lucas Makowsky: Like Gregg, he also had a big breakthrough recently with his first World Cup medal, but the last thing you want to do is build these guys up as serious medal hopes. They're still learning the game.

Men's Team Pursuit: Their silver medal on Sunday – not far behind the Dutch and the world record – was probably the most significant development on the weekend, along with Wotherspoon's progress. They struggled badly their last two times out. But with newcomer Mathieu Giroux added to the lineup with Morrison and Makowsky, the M & M & M combo looked very dangerous in their first World Cup together.

Women's Team Pursuit: What can you say about Schussler, Groves and Nesbitt after they crushed the field by four seconds in setting a new world record Sunday? They are probably Canada's strongest best -- not just in speed skating, either -- for a gold at the Olympics right now.

Story Behind The Story: It was an incredible gesture by Jamie Gregg to give up his spot in the 500 metres on Saturday for Jeremy Wotherspoon, but it now emerges there may have been more motivation beyond helping a greatly respected and valued teammate.

Gregg is dating Wotherspoon's sister, Danielle, also a member of the team.

“He's a little scared of me,” deadpanned Wotherspoon. “He knows his limitations. He's getting a little more comfortable around me. That helped a little.”

Gregg joked it was payback for all the meals he's had at the Wotherspoon home.