Morning links, Day 11

At 2 p.m. Eastern today, we'll be doing another one of those live hockey flagellations chat sessions here at the blog, Damien Cox and Paul Hunter joining me, at least in the digital sense. Do drop in, and bring your best. On to the links:

Still on the hockey for a bit, and with that chat in mind, the U.S. men are now 3-0. Repeat: 3-0. Best record in this Olympic men's hockey tournament (not good enough for NBC's main network, mind you). And - they're coached by Ron Wilson (that sound you hear is Leafs Nation doing a Danny Thomas with their morning coffee). More to the point, they're backstopped - and carried - by Ryan Miller. Now what to do with the Canadian goaltending? Roberto Luongo will surely get the assignment Tuesday against Germany (in a qualification game). Beyond that, Michael Farber at SI.com says that's the last we'll see here of Martin Brodeur, with yesterday's 5-3 U.S. win meaning Canada suddenly has a long road ahead - or perhaps it's not going to be long at all:

When -- if? -- Canada plays Russia, Brodeur likely will be the best goalie ever to open and close a bench gate. Coach Mike Babcock was circumspect about the identity of his goalie against Germany. Dipping into football-coach mode, Babcock, the straightest of straight shooters, said he would have to look at the videotape on Sunday night. This probably won't flatter Brodeur, who couldn't look worse in slo-mo than he did in real time against the swift and feral Americans, who beat Canada in the Olympics for the first time since 1960.

And I loved this Reuters report of the game, obviously pitched at readers for whom hockey is a foreign country:

To the uninitiated, ice hockey looks more like ultimate fighting with skates and sticks than a healthy pastime to trim the tummy in winter.
The competitors may have the ability to glide across the frozen surface as gracefully as the cast members from Disney on Ice but they prefer to use their blades for less aesthetic purposes.
They zigzag across the ice sheet from one collision to another, crashing into each other with all the sinister intentions of a wild rhino.

Wild rhinos and ice sheets? That's our game!

If you didn't manage to stay up for it, Cheryl Bernard's Canada rink finally was taken down last night, by the reigning world champion China in the most anticipated meeting of the first round - Bingo for Bingyu, as the China Daily headline reads.

Still on curling, Kevin Martin's unbeaten men's team is into Thursday's semifinals. Martin's team faces the U.S. (noon Eastern) and the Americans have looked to an unlikely curling fan and motivator: Carl Lewis.

After an overnight, speed-skater Denny Morrison took the blame for his post-race comments on Saturday:

There should be no mistake: I put all the blame on my shoulders. What I was doing was looking for answers. The answer was I wasn’t skating well technically. I didn’t skate the race I should have at the end. I just finished my race. I was emotional. ... I guess it came across like I was pointing fingers. But the fact is I didn’t get it done.”

And finally, on a day billed (incessantly) as super Sunday there was genuine tragedy as Joannie Rochette's mother Therese died of a heart attack after arriving here on Saturday. In all this competition in the arena and the bonhommie on the streets, here was a reminder how precious and fleeting these moments are. Rochette will compete in the women's skating starting tomorrow. The Canadian figure skating team, a tight bunch, have rallied around her, starting with the Ice Dance pair of Tessa Virtue and Scott Moir. Virtue-Moir nailed their flamenco routine last night, and go into tonight's free dance final with a commanding lead. Beyond winning and losing, though, and however it works out on the ice, the whole country sends along its sympathy to Ms Rochette. 

Morning links, Day 10

Not your usual Morning Links, but hey, it's Sunday and think of it as a break from the usual roundup of Korean TV commercials featuring Brian Orser.

About last night - at Richmond Olympic Oval, where some remarkable back and forth came out of the Canada camp following Denny Morrison's disappointing ninth-place finish in the 1500m (pictured), following on his demoralizing 13th-place finish in the 1000m, which made for a - can we think of a third synonym here? - let's just say a downer of a night for the Maple Leaf. Randy Starkman's report is excellent, and makes for the kind of reading that should make Own the Podium officials choke on their Bran Flakes. Again. The contrasting post-race talk out of the winner's camp and their Canadian counterparts points to if not some solid explanations, then at least a case study in how and how not to stick with the programme approaching the Olympic Games.

First, from Morrison, who made the remarkable admission that he gave up in a training session the day before, or as he said, "put on quite a show". Not good, that:

“I don’t know, in the last lap, you saw I just lost all my speed. I basically exploded is the term. It wasn’t that I wasn’t trying hard, it wasn’t that I gave up. I wasn’t putting it technically in the ice the way I should have been.
“That’s something that for whatever reason I’ve lost the last 12 or 15 months. It’s kind frustrating to be getting closer and closer to the Olympics and knowing I’m skating poorer and poorer, especially when I get tired.”

Morrison went on to say he was affected by Own the Podium rules splitting up his training relationship with American star Shani Davis, but that began three years ago and these are issues that should have been put to bed long before this point. 

Here's coach Marcel Lacroix, absolving himself:

"The program was giving him what he needed for the last three years,” said Lacroix. “He got a world record with his technique in the program. He was the silver medalist in the world championship last year in the 1,000. Bronze medallist in the 1,500 metres. So, what? Before it was working? Now it’s not working? Now it’s the program?”

Lacroix went on to describe Morrison as being lost, in Randy's words - I wasn't there, having gone on Shani Davis duty - a vague term that suggests more questions than it answers.  

So what's this all about?

It's easy, and almost always wrong, to point the finger solely at an athlete when performance doesn't peak. Even a recreational athletes understand the value of a good, consistent and well-thought-out programme for the best chance of hitting the optimal result on the day. In the case of an elite athlete and support staff, where hundredths of a second figure in the outcome, even minor details can be significant. Lacroix doesn't think missed workouts or a poor taper, say, are the culprit. I'm no expert in this sport, but I can't see how training couldn't have played a part. 

But here's something to consider: On the clock, anyway, Morrison's 1500 time Saturday night (1:46.93) was actually better than the 1:47.05 he finished third with last year in Richmond's test event, the world single-distance championships (his 1000m last week, which he took responsibility for, was 1.3 seconds slower than that time). 

Last night's winner, 29-year-old Dutchman Mark Tuitert, was a surprise to finish on the podium, let alone defeat the heavy favourite Shani Davis (in winning, Tuitert was almost two seconds faster than in 2009 at Richmond, a huge leap). Tuitert has ability - he was the Euro champion in 2004, a long time ago, but bad luck (his pro team's sponsor, the Dutch bank DSB went bankrupt in October - yes, that's the same one that backed the U.S. team; an ad agency jumped in to back Tuitert's team, while Stephen Colbert rescued the Americans) sickness (a debilitating mono eight years ago) and close losses have bounced him around some. The Dutch I talked to after in the MPC and out in the streets were stunned by his showing. 

Here's Tuitert, on the programme that got him here (my italics added):

The last eight years I didn't win much in the 1500. I was really good - two times second in the world championships - but what can I say? I always had the confidence that I would be able to win the 1500 in a big competition, whether it's the world championships or the Olympic championships. Every training I did last year was with that in mind, with that confidence. This year didn't come out that way, but I kept training. We devised a plan together with our staff and Jac Orie, the coach, a plan from many years back and we have had a lot of lost races the last two years ... but the last couple of weeks it came together and I felt good. This was the first time I really felt like I was holding back in training. I haven't felt like this in years. This is what I've trained for. The programme we designed worked. It's so rewarding to see it come together on this day."

Quality training = result. No high-priced sports psychologists or CO2 tracking or state-of-the-art training ground can paper over that essential. Tuitert will be back as part of the Dutch pursuit team, reprising a role that landed him and his mates a bronze medal in Turin four years ago. The Canadians will be in that pursuit race, too. They talked bravely last night of turning it around like they have at World Cups - only, this ain't the World Cup.  

Whew. On to the links (Finally!):

Kevin Martin is a perfect 6-0 in men's curling, and was inspired Saturday in a tense encounter against Britain by a crowd that spontaneously burst into O Canada when the game came down to the last rocks.

French-language RDS commentators have been slapped for making stale Johnny Weir references. JABS (RIP) blogging buddy Neate Sager wants a moratorium on Weir sniggering - hear, hear. Perhaps they were just listening to these guys.

Medal projections: Nate Silver likes Canada AND curling

Nate Silver of FiveThirtyEight numbers-crunching fame is at it again. Silver made his name in baseball sabermetrics, then took his calculator to the '08 U.S. presidential election (49/50 states correctly called isn't bad at all) and last year's Oscars, landing himself on several top-geek lists along the way. Now he's in the Vancouver 2010 medals projection business:

What I've done is to compile the projected medal winners in the 86 Winter Olympic disciplines from five six nine sources that forecasted individual winners; these are the Associated Press, USA Today, Sports Illustrated, McClatchy-Tribune, Examiner.com, Canwest, and (for some events only) ESPN.com and betting odds at Ladbrokes and bwin. Nothing terribly fancy here: I've taken a simple mean of the number of medals that each country was expected to win in each discipline, as averaged across the nine sources.

He's also a curling fan, which along with his latest medal projections has to warm a few Canadian cockles. As of the latest numbers - as of this writing, anyway; the figures are being updated daily - here's how Silver's got it working out:

Canada 32.4 medals (13.5 gold)
Germany 31.4 (9.6)
USA 30.4 (11.6)
Norway 20.4 (6.9)
Austria 18.6 (5.1)

Morning links, Day 5

Big day ahead, with men's hockey and both bonspiels getting underway. Here's a few things to set you up for the day.

The age-old practice of waxing skis is a little more complex than it would seem, including the final, last-minute layer on the skis - not wax, actually, but pure flourocarbons. From wired.com:

“During the technical inspection of the course, I’ll take the snow temperature and humidity,” says Schiller. “Then I’ll pick the right fluorocarbon for the flatter sections of the course, where gliding speed matters the most.”
These pure fluorocarbons, which come in powder or solid form, are insanely slippery, and shockingly expensive. A 15 gram block can run $109, or a cool $3,290 a pound.

Remember Lindsay Jacobellis? Sure you do. She's the U.S. snowboard racer who, way out in front four years ago in Turin, blew the gold medal with some shameless hot-doggery - then wouldn't own up to it afterward. Well, she's back, and along with her in the field vying for favourite status in the betting is World Canada's Maelle Ricker, fourth in Turin and then out with one of the more memorable descriptions for the Olympics' most lamented of spots: "Placing fourth is like seeing the love of your life on the subway but never getting to meet them." 

One more time with the video (no commentator; if you're impatient, skip ahead to 1:30 for the unshining moment):

And finally, in honour of today's opening of the curling, here's a Swedish comedy troupe called Galenskaparna, and their take on it all. Full marks if you can make it to the end: