On Vacation .... Back in August

On Vacation ... Back in August

The Snow, Ice and Sweat Tour

Here are some images from our tour out West with Canada's Winter Olympians:

Olympic speed skating champ Clara Hughes gritting it out.

Ditto for training partner Kristina Groves.

Jeremy Wotherspoon (right) tossing the medicine ball with Jamie Gregg.

Ski racer Britt Janyk takes flight.

Janyk gives teammate Emily Brydon a back massage ... Good thing she's not wearing her ski boots!!!

A Chance to Treat Yourself and Help Perdita Help Right To Play

Looking for something to do to start the summer holidays off on a fun note?

The Canadian Track and Field Championships get underway tomorrow at Varsity Stadium and run through Sunday, featuring the likes of Olympic bronze medallist hurdler Priscilla Lopes-Schliep, rival Perdita Felicien, world 800-metre silver medallist Gary Reed (featured today in a nice piece by Dave Feschuk), world 400-metre indoor champ Tyler Christopher and shot putter Dylan Armstrong, who missed an Olympic medal by a centimetre, among many others.

This is a rare opportunity -- last time it happened was 1968 -- in a great setting right in downtown Toronto and kids under 12 get in free. Adults pay $20, youth (13-17) pay $10 and a four-day pass is $50. You can buy tickets at Ticketbreak.com or at the stadium.

Felicien launched a neat initiative this week to help the the athlete-driven humanitatrian charity Right To Play. She is donating $12.46 for every race she runs this season – symbolic of her fastest time ever – and asking Canadians to join her in doing the same as she seeks to raise $7,000 by season’s end.

The popularity of Right To Play could be seen last week at a fund-raising golf tournament in Canmore last week spearheaded by Olympic cross country ski champion Beckie Scott. It was a veritable Who’s Who of Canadian Olympic sport.

RANDY STARKMAN PHOTO

Being Embedded with B2Ten the Highlight of Pre-Olympic Swing

CALGARY

Just one more day left in a two-week, pre-2010 Olympic swing out west with multimedia ace Chris So. Haven’t killed each other yet; though it’s been nip and tuck at times. (Just kidding. … I think.)

It’s not hard to pick out the highlight in what’s been a very cool journey that’s given us a chance to hook up with more than 30 athletes who are working their butts off to get ready to represent Canada in Vancouver.

It has to be the B2Ten retreat in Banff.

It was a lot more than just the chance to get to know 16 of Canada’s top athletes better – from young lions like figure skater Patrick Chan, moguls skier Alex Bilodeau, and cross-country skier Alex Harvey to veterans like Olympic moguls champ Jenn Heil, skeleton racer Jeff Pain, an Olympic silver medallist in 2006, and goaltender Kim St. Pierre, a two-time Olympic gold medallist.

CHRIS SO/TORONTO STAR

Heather Moyse trying to climb onto the podium in 2010.

It was definitely the vibe of the whole thing that made it special.

B2Ten is an initiative started after the 2006 Turin Olympics by Heil, her coach/boyfriend Dominick Gauthier, a former Olympic moguls skier and Montreal businessman J.D. Miller.

With Miller’s financial connections and Gauthier’s guidance, Heil created a team of experts around herself led by strength and conditioning ace Scott Livingston, who recently retired from the Montreal Canadiens.

Heil felt that support group played a huge part in her winning Olympic gold on opening day at the 2006 Turin Games and she wanted other athletes to benefit from the kind of help she’d been getting.

Enter the creation of B2Ten. The “B” stands for a business-like, methodical approach to the whole thing. The “2Ten” is for the 2010 Games. You can’t use 2010 or you risk being sued by the Olympic trademark Stazi.

What B2Ten tries to do is give athletes that little extra help they otherwise couldn’t afford to get onto the Olympic podium.

In the case of someone like Chan, that means working with a spins coach who’s helping him hone that part of his game, as well as a dartfish video specialist who’s aiding him in better understanding what it takes to do that elusive quad jump.

No direct money goes to the athlete. It’s about such things as getting better equipment, help with transportation or housing or furniture.

The money comes from Canadian businesspeople who want to help the athletes out because they respect what they’re doing. They don’t even get a tax receipt from it. Maybe the most impressive thing about the four-day retreat is that there wasn’t a single corporate logo to be seen.

No, the most impressive thing was the camaraderie between the athletes and the other people involved. The athletes were exposed to people like Johann Olav Koss, winner of three speed-skating gold medals in a home Olympics at Lillehammer, Norway in 1994, and founder of Right To Play; Laurie Skreslet and Sharon Wood, the first Canadian man and woman to climb Mount Everest, and a wide array of health professionals.

They had some activities during the retreat designed to take the athletes out of their comfort zone, including mountain climbing (Pictured above is bobsleigh's Heather Moyse, the pride of P.E.I. who now resides in Toronto. Chris So endeared himself to the troops by falling in the river while snapping his photos.)

It was an eclectic and interesting group (would love to name ‘em all, but this post is a bit windy as it is.) Let’s just say there wasn’t a participant at the event that you couldn’t spend hours talking with and still want to keep chatting away.

B2Ten considers itself a “top up” for the athletes. The main providers are organizations like the national federations, Sport Canada, the Canadian Olympic Committee and Own The Podium, the program started to help Canada to become the No.1 medal winning nation.

There’s been some resentment about the amount of attention B2Ten has garnered at times, but people like COC boss Chris Rudge has recognized its value and played a big role in helping the group stage a recent fundraiser for Chan.

With support for athletes sure to take a huge dive after the 2010 Games, an initiative like B2Ten may become more important than ever.

Kristina Groves: Close Encounters with Steel Poles

(Canadian speed skating ace Kristina Groves checks in with her latest edition of The Grovesline on the Road to the 2010 Winter Games.  She writes here of how Aldous Huxley and a much too close encounter with with a steel pole while skating at the Richmond Olympic Oval have reminded her of the importance of mindfulness. Her motto may well become: "Attention. Here and now, boys. Attention."  (Groves is a supporter of Right To Play and Clean Air Champions.")  

When I was home in Ottawa at the end of March for a week of rest and recovery, I happened one day to spend a few moments scouring my parents’ bookshelves with the intention of taking some books out on loan to help occupy my mind throughout the upcoming season. The shelves are packed with all kinds of classic and contemporary titles, very few of which I’ve read, most of which I have not. These same books have been on these same shelves for my entire life and I tend to recognize all of them, not for their titles, authors or literary acclaim, but more for their cover designs, colours and graphics. Strangely, even though I was a fanatical reader when I was a kid, I rarely ventured to these shelves for my fix. I figured now might be the time to actually read some of them and, considering I will need to fill the odd hour or two this year with some restful downtime, this would be the perfect prescription.

CHRIS SO/TORONTO

I borrowed about four or five books. Notably, ‘Late Nights on Air’ by Elizabeth Hay, winner of last year’s Giller Prize, and ‘The Age of Reason’ by French writer and philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre. When my Dad asked me what I picked, I mentioned these as well as ‘Island’ by Aldous Huxley. He replied with, ‘Oh, heavy one’. This one caught my eye because many years ago I read ‘Brave New World’ by Huxley and enjoyed it tremendously.

‘Island’ is the first one I picked up. Within minutes I found myself going back to the beginning and starting over. And again, a few pages in I went back to re-read paragraphs, two, even three times more. I put the book down. The next day I started it again. I made it a few pages further, and slowly felt I was adjusting to the writing and absorbing at least a small amount of what I was reading. Still, I did not get very far, and far from feeling hooked, like when you can’t put a book down and spend hours devouring every word to find out what happens, I was simply confused and a little defeated.

The one bright spot for me amongst the early pages was a little nugget of a lesson about being mindful. On the island of Pala, Huxley’s utopia off the coast of India on which the story takes place, mynah birds had been trained to fly around squawking, “Attention! Here and now, boys. Attention.” Early in the book, the injured main character flows in and out of consciousness, wondering what he is hearing. We learn later on that the birds were so trained to remind island inhabitants to be mindful of the here and now, to be present, to be in the moment: To pay attention to attention. I liked this part, and even though I had no clear idea of what else was going on, this point struck a chord with me, as I am at the least mindful of trying to be mindful. (This is the stage you might get to before you can actually claim to be truly mindful.) So, I heard the mynah birds in my mind, and it helped me through my daily doings a little more mindfully. It unfortunately did not help me much in getting through, or even getting, ‘Island’.

I plugged on, barely. I started to avoid reading because I found this particular read to be a little stressful. Eventually I would give up, postponing ‘Island’ by instead starting, and finishing, ‘Late Nights on Air’ within days.

All the while I was in Richmond, B.C. for our first stretch of training there. Being back on the ice so early in the season, the earliest ever, and being in a new training environment, in addition to having some trouble kicking a stomach bug I picked up at our training camp in Tucson, left me feeling a little out of sorts. Our second day on the ice, I did not feel too well in the morning and briefly considered staying home to get some rest. But being the kind of athlete I am, I didn’t, even though in my aching gut I knew I probably should have. Lesson number two – listen to your gut.

That day I stepped onto the ice and skated a few easy laps. This time of the year is sometimes a good time to make changes to equipment, tweak blade positioning, etc. My coach, Xiuli, suggested I move one of my blades just a smidge, to help me achieve better blade placement on the ice. I resisted at first, having no feel on the ice yet, but relented and moved it for that practice. The first couple of laps felt technically fine, but physically I was still off. I skated up to Xiuli and told her as much, ‘I feel tired, my energy is low and my brain is just not here right now. I’m not focused.’ Having said all that, I started another set of easy laps, my brain in a fog.

As I exited a corner and started on the straightaway, the culmination of three factors came into play leading to a fairly unfortunate end. One, as mentioned previously, my brain was M.I.A. Two, I caught my left outer edge, not yet used to its new position, meaning it took control of me and took me down. And three, my fall trajectory put me in the path of one of the tall metal poles bolted into the gym floor situated on the inside of the oval. These poles are used to hold up the tall netting which surrounds the entire floor and prevents the basketballs and volleyballs from ending up on the ice.

It happened so quickly, even though I was skating what I would refer to as, ‘really, really slow.’ Being on the inside lane gave me no time to react or move out of the way. I could only shriek in fear as I slid towards this giant pole. I don’t even know how I hit the pole, but thankfully I did not hit with my head or any lower body appendage. Still, I was so mad!! Repeatedly I swore, ‘who put those *$#%ing poles there?’ I was the third skater on the National Team to fall and crash into one of these poles.

There is no other rink in the world set up like this, and admittedly they take down the poles during competition, but concerns raised when the poles were installed fell on deaf ears. I came away with a sprained wrist, of all things, and a kinked up neck and shoulder. Otherwise unscathed, I was undeniably very lucky.

The alarm bells rung throughout the oval staff and immediately plans to solve the problem were put in place. We are now protected from the poles and netting by a line of mats, the same ones used to line the outside of the track. Genius!

So I ended up with a few extra days off and some easy training, which is probably what I needed in the first place. And although the poles were indeed an unnecessary hazard, and although I probably shouldn’t have moved my blade so early, in the end the biggest fault laid squarely on my own shoulders. I was not paying attention to what I was doing. I was not connected with my skating. I did not heed Attention! I was not Here and Now, Boys! Those words rung sorely through my mind as I recuperated during those empty days in my still, hot apartment. How lucky I had been, and how easy it is to lose that edge, the edge that keeps me from such incidents on a daily basis. Moment to moment, if I am not connected with what I am doing, I am doomed.

And so, yet another lesson learned. Thankful for this experience, I am more aware, more conscious and more present in what I do.

Maybe when I pick up Huxley’s ‘Island’ again I will get it. Maybe all I need to do is. Pay. Attention. Here. And. Now. Boys!

Here’s Kissing Home Field Advantage Good-bye at 2010 Olympics

CHRIS SO/TORONTO STAR

Dave Wood wants home-field advantage in 2010.

So this is how home field advantage is going to play out for Canada at the 2010 Vancouver Olympics:

Tim Gayda, vice-president of sport for the Vancouver Organizing Committee (VANOC) , said whenever they are unsure if something is an unfair advantage for Canada – he termed it falling into the “gray zone” – they call the corresponding international federation to see if it’s okay.

Well, if that’s the case, you can kiss a good portion of home field advantage good-bye.

For one thing, almost all the international federations are Eurocentric.

So just imagine when the query comes in from VANOC about whether it’s okay to allow the Canadians a certain thing – say a couple of extra accreditations for ski technicians – what do you think the response from the International Ski Federation is going to be?

Nein!!!.

You can understand the dismay of Canadian cross-country team leader Dave Wood and veteran Sara Renner, who explained their frustrations in a story in today's Star. They’ve seen this play out at other Olympics and how the host country has taken every possible advantage they can get.

Yet what all they seem to be running into is more and more bureaucracy from VANOC at every turn as they seek to benefit from being the host country.

There’s all this talk about Canada trying to Own The Podium, attempting to be the No. 1 medal winning nation at the Games. Every medal is going to count.

The Canadian cross-country team is not a powerhouse – the maximum they could probably hope for two medals; it’s not inconceivable they can be shut out.

So it’s paramount they receive all the help they can get from being the host nation at a Games.

Is it so un-Canadian to expect that?

Gayda himself said in this article in the Seattle Post-Intelligencer last year that: "There is always going to be a home-field advantage in every sport."

There are some who would beg to differ right now.

----

(The original story filed on this issue had to be shortened considerably for today's newspaper because of space considerations – something about the U.S. Open, maybe? Here’s part of the story that didn’t make it into print.)

Tim Gayda, vice president of sport for VANOC, said they are just trying to ensure fair conditions for everyone.

He said it wasn’t feasible to have their ski grinding equipment on site nor would it be fair to only let the Canadians be the only team with a grinder there.

Gayda said the Callaghan Backcountry Lodge was considered off limits originally for security reasons, but the RCMP concluded 10 days ago it was not a security risk. He said it was a “fluke” that the Italians were meeting with people from the private facility the next day. He said the Canadian team could negotiate to use the site, too.

On accreditation, Gayda said that the Canadian Olympic Committee is being provided with extra accreditations and would be deciding how to allocate them.

Gayda said that space is very tight at the competition site and that they have to abide by the rules of the federation in terms of assigning wax cabins, but he was confident in the end they could find extra space for the Canadian team.

He said the cross-country venue is still considered a construction site as they are putting up seating scaffolding, broadcast compounds and wax cabins, but the Olympic trials could be held there if the event wasn’t open to the public.

Gayda said it was critical they provide “an even and fair field of play for everyone.” He said that any request they get from a Canadian team that falls into the “gray zone,” they check with the corresponding international federation to see if it is permitted.

“The last thing we want is a Canadian to win a gold medal and the silver medallist points the finger at VANOC and says we gave an unfair advantage to the Canadians,” he said.

But Renner said traditionally host countries have gone out of their way to help their own teams.

“It’s really frustrating because I know what happens in countries that host Olympic Games and World Cups and the advantage the teams are given without even question,” she said. “It’s just ‘We’re proud of our nordic team. We’re going to give them the very best.’

“So to have it not happen in Canada is disappointing. But at the same time, it’s not a performance deterrent. We’re bigger than that. We’re stronger than that. But it is unfortunate. It’s not the nicest message.”

-----

An error was made in the original blog post today.  It said that Tim Gayda of VANOC said the Canadians "could not" negotiate to use the Callaghan Backcountry Lodge, too. Gayda actually said they could also negotiate with the private facility to get space there, too. That was my mistake in adding the "not." My apologies for the error.

Tough Guy Bobsledders Show Their Feminine Side

There’s no question that men’s bobsleigh tends to attract alpha males, so what gives with the Canadian team producing an all-girl lineup when it comes to offspring?

Driver Lyndon Rush of Saskatoon and wife Krysta welcomed their second daughter, Amelia Lily, into the family recently. His brakeman, Lascelles Brown, has four daughters, while Olympic champion Pierre Lueders has two girls and teammate Ken Kotyk has one.

Rush said that Brown, who’s convinced that his fifth child on the way is also a girl, has a theory on this.

“That really dominant males only have daughters,” said Rush.

His growing family – his oldest daughter, Olivia, turns three in July – is not the only thing that has Rush excited these days. His dream of getting better equipment for the 2010 Games has come through – he made a public pitch after finishing fourth behind Lueders in the pre-Olympic two-man World Cup in Whistler.

With the help of the athlete support group B2Ten, he was able to raise $80,000 to get a new two-man sled and he was able to raise another $100,000 on his own to buy a new four-man sled. He said he got a lot of help from the communities around central Alberta – he lives in Sylvan Lake, near Red Deer – and his hometown of Saskatoon.

“It’s like a dream come true,” he said. “If I would go back a year and somebody told me the equipment that I’m going to be using next year, I would have never believed it. I’m in the best stuff the world. I can’t wait for the season. It’s going to be awesome.”

On The Road to 2010 with Canada's Winter Olympians ...

RICHMOND, B.C. -- Here are photos of speed skaters Denny Morrison (top photo) and Jeremy Wotherspoon (bottom photo)  tuning up on Saturday for the 2010 Winter Olympics.

That's the ice in the background at the Richmond Olympic Oval. The skaters are already busy on that, getting further acclimated to its unique qualities for the Games next February and working on their getting into their skating rhythms for the big show.

My apologies for disappearing on the eve of the Festival of Excellence last week. Through a scheduling snafu -- totally self inflicted -- I found myself in Richmond, B.C., starting Thursday morning for the start of a two-week western swing to meet up with Canadian athletes getting ready for the 2010 Vancouver Winter Olympics.

Hooking up with the long track speed skaters is our first stop, this being the last time to catch the entire team at the Richmond Olympic Oval at the same time before the Games.

This is one busy collection of athletes. If they aren't on the ice, they're in one of several weight rooms in the cavernous and scenic Oval pumping iron and being put through agility exercises under the watchful eyes of one of their trainers. 

They do a fair bit of cross training.  They think nothing of a four or five-hour bike ride before or after an on-ice session. They can sometimes be found at the local Minoru track doing some sprinting ... and there's always a bit of badminton.

Badminton was introduced to the team as a training option by Finn Halvorsen, the program director who lost his job last March because his harsh management style was causing major friction on the team.

Coach Michael Crowe said there was a study in Scandinavia that showed that good speed skaters had a lot of the same qualities as good badminton players. It was concluded one of the main factors was the lunging involved in badminton was similar to the speed skating motion.

“Finn told me about this study where they took athletes from different sports and made a few general tests – a push-up test, a sit-up test, a chin-up test, a squat test,” said Wotherspoon. “He said most of the sports were all about the same across the board, but when he said when they got to badminton they had to tell them ‘You can stop now’ because they could have just gone forever.”

Wotherspoon’s not quite at that point yet. His recovery from a broken left arm that knocked him out in the second race of the season is going well, but he still has some weakness compared to his right and some pain in and above the elbow. It makes it hard for him on the first couple of reps during the bench press.

“But for some reason after a couple of reps, it either loosens up or just gets used to that pain,” he said. “I think the more I’ve done it, the more it’s backed off little by little. On ice, I don’t really feel anything with it. It doesn’t seem to be hurt.”

Cindy Klassen, winner of five medals at the 2006 Turin Olympics, is being brought back to full speed gradually after surgery on both knees kept her out all last season.  It should not be underestimated what she's going to have to overcome to become a serious contender again.

This is definitely a group worth watching.

Durham Duel: Rivalry Heats Up For Lopes-Schliep and Felicien

The Durham Duel. Whitby’s Priscilla Lopes-Schliep vs. Pickering’s Perdita Felicien.

 It’s got the potential to be the best rivalry in Canadian track and field since the Donovan Bailey/Bruny Surin days and, in some ways, it really gets its start tomorrow night at the Festival of Excellence at Varsity Stadium.

THE CANADIAN PRESS FILE PHOTO

The beginnings of a rivalry at the 2004 national championships.

Make no doubt about it, it’s the biggest race for the two hurdlers since Lopes-Schliep staked her claim as Canada’s No. 1 in the event with a bronze medal at the 2008 Beijing Olympics.

Until then, she had always been in Felicien’s shadow. But no more. She currently has the world leading time in the women’s 100 metre hurdles of 12.52 seconds. Only 3/100ths of a second separated the duo last weekend at the Prefontaine Classic in Eugene, Ore., with Lopes Schliep finishing third, one spot ahead of Felicien and 2/100ths behind winner world champion Michelle Perry of the U.S..

That’s the thing, either Canadian is going to have to be at her absolute best to win against a strong field that includes Americans Damu Cherry, who equaled Perry's winning time in Eugene but had to settle for second, and Virgina Powell.

Unless memory fails (and it would not be the first time), Canada has not had two competitors in the same event make the podium at the world or Olympic level since Bailey and Surin. That rivalry was very acrimonious at times, especially when they were arguing over who’d run the anchor in the relay leading to the 2000 Sydney Games.

Lopes-Schliep vs. Felicien doesn’t seem to nearly match the big-ego sprinters for rancor, but one does get the sense there’s an edge to it. They seemed pretty buddy-buddy around the time of the 2004 Athens Games, but not so much now.

For her part, Lopes-Schliep demurred this week when asked if they were friends.

“I mean we see each other on the track, it’s cordial and stuff,” said Lopes-Schliep. “I mean we’re competitors and everyone’s friendly. … I don’t know. … We see each other and it’s ‘Hi.’ That’s the way it is with most athletes. We all wish each other the best.”

Both agree the rivalry is good for Canadian track and field.

“I think any talk of a rivalry is good,” said Felicien. “From where I’m standing, I think it’s good. It keeps everyone on their toes. It keeps everybody fresh. I would love to have an Olympic medal. It’s the one major medal that has eluded me.

“But truly at the end of the day at this point of my career, I feel like I’ve accomplished a lot. That’s the one thing that I want to get. But I can’t gauge what I want to do off of what anybody else has done. I think there’s enough to go around for everybody.”

Still, it might be a good thing they don’t have to run a relay together.

 

 

Pickering Sprinter Anson Henry: Perchance To Dream ….

THE CANADIAN PRESS PHOTO

Anson Henry says look to the stars and numbers will come.

Pickering sprinter Anson Henry gets the chance on Thursday to line up against Jamaican star Usain Bolt at the Festival of Excellence. Not only does he say he’s not intimidated, but he’s got Bolt-like aspirations of his own.

“Any sprinter who believes in themselves will just look at Usain as the guy who has the stars aligned for him right now,” said Henry. “He’s in a position they believe they can be in themselves.

“As far as him being intimidating, to some sprinters maybe, but to other sprinters who really believe that they can run that fast, they’re just looking at him as someone who has it together right now.”

Pretty heady stuff for a 30-year-old who has yet to crack the 10-second barrier (his personal best is 10.02), but sprinting can really be a mental game and the graduate of Dunbarton High School definitely believes in his own potential.

“His performance at the Olympics was as close to perfect as you can get,” said Henry. “The way I look at it is if I was to get my stuff together and the stars aligned for me, I could be running just as fast. He was able to put it together and he was very impressive. There’s no way around that.”

While there’s a lot of speculation on just how fast Bolt will go, Henry doesn’t believe there’s not been enough appreciation about how fast he’s already gone.

“The way that he did it, people think that 9.6 is like nothing,” said Henry, knocked out in the second round of the 100 metres in Beijing. “But running 9.6 is really no joke because really breaking 10 seconds you’re flying. Really, if you can run 10.1, you’re flying. If you’re running 9.6, that’s almost unheard of.

“If he never gets back to 9.6 again in his career, I wouldn’t even necessarily be surprised by that. Because it’s blistering fast. Going faster than that will be very hard. He could still have a very successful career being able to run 9.8 and maybe 9.7s. You never know if he’s ever going to be in that shape again. Only time will tell.”

Henry said people should discard their expectations and just enjoy the show.

“People should just let him run. It’s going to impressive regardless. If he runs 9.5, then people are going to be like ‘Hey, when are you going to run 9.4?’”