Patrick Chan Bearing Hockey Scar – And Proud Of It

MICHAEL STUPARYK/TORONTO STAR

Patrick Chan working on another part of his game Saturday.

You don’t have to ask Canadian figure skating hopeful Patrick Chan twice about the scar he picked up recently playing hockey.

When queried about it Saturday at a clinic with former great Don Jackson for the Forest Hill Figure Skating Club, Chan skated right over and pointed proudly at the now fading scar at the bottom of his chin, just under a small blemish.

“I’m officially Canadian,” said the 18-year-old with a grin.

Chan is still pretty new to hockey, having only started about a year ago. The kid has definitely got the wheels, but learned the hard way about keeping his head up while he’s stickhandling. The accident happened during some recreational hockey at his training base in Florida, where he works under coach Don Laws.

“I was playing around, doing my own stickhandling and stuff and I look up and this boy’s coming towards me,” said Chan. “We tried to dodge each other, but we just ended running into each other. He was wearing a cage and ran into my chin. I thought I knocked my teeth out.

“He was like ‘Oh-my-god, you need ice, you need ice!” I was like ‘What are you doing? Why are you freaking out? I feel fine.' I touched it and it was bleeding and I can feel like a little split in my chin. I ran into the bathroom and right away I knew I needed stitches.”

While Chan proved he can take a hit, he also took four stitches and wound up missing a day of training.

“It was crappy, but that’s life, things happen, you can’t always live in a bubble,” said Chan.

True, but he’s smart enough that he’ll avoid any pickup hockey until after the Olympics next February.

What’s Scarier: Skydiving or Racing at Kitzbuehel?

Canadian downhiller Erik Guay got the chance to go skydiving this summer while the team was training in New Zealand.

So that puts him in the rare position to answer the question: What’s scarier, skydiving or racing on the treacherous Hahnenkamm in Kitzbuehel, Austria.

Turns out that inquiring minds want to know.

“People were asking me how stressful it is compared to Kitzbuehel,” said Guay this week. “I said Kitzbuehel’s way more stressful. You’re in control, you’re in the driver’s seat, you’re the one driving the skis. In that particular instance (skydiving), I wasn’t really controlling anything.”

An instructor at the skydiving school accompanies each parachutist, riding on their back and pulling the chute.

“He takes care of everything,” Guay said. “You don’t have to do a thing.”

Still, it was a thrill for the Mont Tremblant, Que., native.

“You kind of get in this rickety old plane and they do laps around while they gain altitude. You see the ground get farther and farther away. And then they open the door and all of a sudden it’s Go time. It’s pretty unreal. That first 10 seconds of freefall, especially, is unreal. You get that feeling in your stomach. You get the terminal velocity and then it’s fun, you’re just going down slowly and you can look around.”

That’s one thing you can’t do in Kitzbuehel, the fiercest test in downhill ski racing. 

For a refresher of how hairy and scary things can get at Kitzbuehel, click here.

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The Canadian snowboard team is presently in New Zealand. They've just finished competing in the inaugural 100% Pure New Zealand Winter Games and here is Justin Lamoureux just hanging around yesterday on his first bungee jump.

In Praise of Anne Merklinger

These eyes have seen a lot of administrators in 25-plus years of covering Olympic sport in this country and there’s no doubt that Anne Merklinger ranks among the best because of her passion, dedication and ability to help deliver results.

So it was really nice to see last week when she was plucked from CanoeKayak Canada to assume the position of director of summer sport for Own the Podium. There’s been too many times in Canadian sport when we see the same people – often without much of a track record – recycled from administrative post to administrative post.

One of the more impressive things during Merklinger’s tenure was the way the former top level curler (see pic at right) dealt with world champions like Caroline Brunet and Adam Van Koeverden. These are two highly intelligent, incredibly driven athletes who don’t suffer fools. Merklinger always found a way to work with them and get them what they needed without causing waves.

She was also always very pro-active in dealing with the media and managed to handle things well on her own with anyone doing p.r. for the organization.

Alex Baumann, executive director of Own The Podium’s summer program, He knows exactly what he’s doing in tabbing Merklinger for the position.

“All the athletes, coaches and staff are sad to see her go, but are happy to see her moving on to a career choice that will allow her to have even a bigger impact on sport,” said Van Koeverden. “She’s a winner, a champion. Having her in that position is a great move.

“She’s very intelligent, very driven, very determined. You can tell she accomplished what she did in sport because of her determination. She sticks to a goal and maintains her priorities very, very well.”

Van Koeverden makes it pretty clear he’s going to miss Merklinger.

“I’m anxious to see who Canoe Kayak Canada comes up with to fill her very big shoes. It’s going to be a difficult one.”

His anxiety is understandable. There’s not a tremendous amount of great candidates out there (Hence, the recycling). The jobs don’t pay all that well, the perqs can be few and far between, you’re often dealing with boards that have volunteers and parents who reckon they know your job much better than you do.

People like Anne Merklinger are a rarity. The good thing is she’s staying in Olympic sport.

Win Might Be Just The Tonic For Britt Janyk

PHIL WALTER/GETTY IMAGES FOR THE STAR

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A skier who hopes to win big at home come the Winter Games in February got a small victory about as far away from home as she can get today.

The wins can never come too early when you’re battling to get your confidence back. So Canadian alpine skier Britt Janyk’s victory in a women’s super giant slalom in New Zealand is a good step forward in this Olympic campaign.

Sure, the only other competitive ski nation at Winter Games NZ were the Swedes – their ace Anja Paerson didn’t finish the race.

PHIL WALTER/GETTY IMAGES

Britt Janyk tastes victory again.

But after a World Cup season when Janyk didn’t manage a top-10 finish, the Whistler skier will take what she can get.

The progress of Canada’s Speed Queens – made up of Janyk, Emily Brydon and Kelly VanderBeek -- will be important leading to the 2010 Vancouver Olympics. They need to establish they’re back in the game.

After finishing on the podium every weekend of speed racing but one in the 2007-08 World Cup season, they were shut out last year, the best result being a fifth by Brydon in a downhill in Austria.

No one plummeted more than Janyk, who after placing third in the downhill standings the year before and saying she was aiming to win the Crystal Globe in the event, couldn’t manage a top-10 finish and was 26th overall.

The 2007-08 season wasn’t a fluke with one or two good results. She was in the top-10 in all eight downhills, winning one and finishing third in another. The talent is definitely there.

Janyk admitted at the end of the season that a big factor was that “my head just wasn’t there.”

Hopefully, this is an early sign that her head is back into it. This will certainly make things more pleasant because as she said in an interview when we visited the team earlier this summer: “If you’re winning and doing well, it’s easy to have fun and it’s easy to be enjoying it.”

TOUGH TO BEAT: Not like he needed any more confidence, but American snowboard kingpin Shaun White dusted off the competition to win a World Cup snowboard event in Cardrona, New Zealand.

Oliver Kraus, who follows the tour for the International Ski Federation, writes that the defending Olympic champion started with a “Lien Air”, followed by “Backside 900” and “Frontside 720” before cappinghis performance with a “Cab Double Cork 1080” and a final “Frontside 1080.” We'll take his word for it.

Pronounced White: “I think that Double Corks are the future of the sport.”

Hard to argue with the guy.  You can check out a Double Cork here on YouTube.

Brad Martin of Ancaster, Ont., was sixth in the men’s final, while Mercedes Nicoll of Whistler was eighth in the women’s, won by defending world champion Jiayu Liu of China.

All-Canadian podium

CAMERON SPENCER/GETTY IMAGES FOR THE TORONTO STAR

From left, Silver medallist Perianne Jones, gold medallist Sara Renner and bronze medallist Brittany Webster of Canada stand on the podium at the medal ceremony after the women's 5km cross-country event at the Winter Games NZ on August 25, 2009 in Wanaka, New Zealand.

Snow man

CAMERON SPENCER/GETTY IMAGES FOR THE TORONTO STAR

Canada's Ivan Babikov during the men's 10km cross-country at the Winter Games NZ on August 25, 2009 in Wanaka, New Zealand.

Kershaw and Harvey, Twittering Odd Couple

THE CANADIAN PRESS

Devon Kershaw knows teamwork ... and squishy boots.

I’m a rookie at Twitter – about a month or so into it – but one of the things I’ve been enjoying is the banter between cross-country skiers Devon Kershaw and Alex Harvey.

These guys are a Twittering Odd Couple, the kings of kibbitz.

It’s one of those things you have to follow for a while to get the real flavour, but one has to be impressed at the dynamic between these two guys and what it says in general about the camaraderie on a men’s cross-country ski team, which was an impressive fifth in the men’s 4 x 10 km relay at last year’s worlds.

Kershaw, 26, is considered the leader of the team, a guy who’s been slogging away at it for years to make a steady climb up the ladder and in the last few years has had some big breakthroughs.

Harvey, who turns 21 on Sept. 7, is a phenom, the son of former Canadian great Pierre Harvey, and a kid who hit the podium last year in his first season on the World Cup campaign.

Kershaw and Harvey continually trade little jibes in their Twitter posts, sometimes letting us in on the little pranks they pull on each other. There was Kershaw bemoaning the fact that Harvey had soaked his ski boots just before a race the other day in New Zealand. He vowed revenge and followed through, only to have Harvey chime in later that it was nice to race in dry feet since he’d been able to use his “pursuit” boots instead that day.

In a recent email exchange, Kershaw wrote about the importance of the cameraderie on the team:

"Our team (the Canadian men's team) has an amazing team dynamic. We all want the same thing - international success, yet we truly understand that the best way for anyone to achieve that is to work together in a positive, fun environment. We all have amazing training days when each one of us can feel invincible, and others when each of us are dragging our sorry behinds' through workouts, struggling just to get it done - and through it all we have a great group suffering and succeeding together as we prepare for a season.

"Of course there are times when things get strained - that's life. But for the most part we all get along really well. I think it's pretty unique for an individual sport - because when we are done training we'll call and hang out, go for coffee, play tennis or even go on spring vacations together to warmer locales. That's after spending months and months on the road together. To me that speaks volumes.

"Like in hockey - a happy team is a fast team. We all strive to know ourselves and when we are comfortable with who we are then things just click along in relative harmony. Camaraderie is key, because the reality is that in one's career there are going to be a lot more defeats that successes. Believing, supporting and celebrating every success that a team has (no matter if it's you or not) only helps solidify the fact that all the hard work you are putting in as a group is paying off - and your day will come in the sun."

Okay, Devon, enough of the lofty ideals, what we really want to know is what it was like racing along in those squishy boots.

Canada's Olympians Sing It Loud, Sing It Proud

You may have missed this when it was posted on Canada Day, a group of this country’s finest Winter Olympians belting out the anthem. It was edited by Chris So of our ace multimedia team at the Star.

It’s quite cute and really worth a gander:

There’s no subtitles identifying the athletes yet, unfortunately – this is a work in progress that will eventually be posted on our Olympic site.

So, let me help you out with this for now. The video opens with 2006 Olympic skeleton champion Duff Gibson, now a coach, with his sons Taye (in green shirt) and Gedion.

Then we have an incomparable quartet from the women’s ski team (from L to R) Shona Rubens, Emily Brydon, Britt Janyk, and Kelly VanderBeek.

Then there’s members of the Canadian long track speed skating team (You can play “Where’s Cindy” and try to spot Cindy Klassen, five-time medalist from the Turin Olympics). World champion Christine Nesbitt is in green to the left and just behind her left shoulder is Olympic medal contender Denny Morrison. The group is carried by medical team leader Gordon Bosworth, (red jacket, folically challenged), an opera caliber singer imported from Great Britain.

They’re followed by alpine skier Jan Hudec wrapped in the flag. The reason he looks like he’s moving funny is he’s actually on a stationary bike, part of his rehab from his latest knee injury. They were all reluctant to sing, but no one more than Hudec. The only thing that probably swayed him was the presence and encouragement of his mom Vladi that day.

The Bob-a-runs are next, bobsledders Jenny Ciochetti, Lyndon Rush and Helen Upperton (she of the bom-de-bom).

The guy holding the mic is snowboarder Matt Morison, who’s in the barn at the family’s hobby farm in Burketon, Ont. I don’t feel so bad after hearing young Mr. Morison sing the anthem. I mean my wife and daughter won’t let me sing in our house because the experience is too painful for them.

But I will say that Matt was a tremendous sport, as were all the athletes who sang for us.

Potpourri Post: Clara Hughes Video, Right To Play ... Fire!

There’s no question Canada’s Olympians are working their butts off to get ready for the 2010 Winter Olympics in Vancouver next February, but sometimes the scenery ain’t too bad.

Check out some of the views in this video taken by Olympic champion Clara Hughes on a ride with some speed skating teammates in Northern California.  Hughes took the footage while riding her bike. Don't try this at home.  Let's not forget she's a double Olympic bronze medalist in cycling.  (And, of course, she was wearing her helmet.)

Speaking of Hughes, her charity of choice, Right To Play, has a new calendar out featuring 18 athlete ambassadors, including kayaker Adam Van Koeverden, Robyn Regehr of the Calgary Flames, wheelchair racing dynamo Chantal Petitclerc, speed skater Kristina Groves, who was on the ride featured above with Hughes, and women’s hockey star Hayley Wickenheiser.

Conceived by Olympic cross country skiing champion Beckie Scott and good friend Simon Ibell of Right To Play, the calendar looks superb and is well worth the $20 (it can be purchased online), proceeds of which go directly to the charity.

Van Koeverden, fresh off a bronze medal at the worlds in Halifax, will be signing the calendars at a meet and greet on Sunday at Lileo in the Distillery District here in Toronto from 3:30-5:30 pm. The calendar features the Olympic champion on the cover (a nice shot of his visit to Africa for Right To Play, plus a beefcake shot from the Beijing Olympics).

SCARY STUFF: The Canadian moguls ski team -- including stars Jenn Heil and Alex Bilodeau -- are training at the Cerro Castor Ski Resort in Argentina and had to evacuate the main lodge yesterday because it caught fire and went down in flames. Here's the fire on video. Thankfully, everyone's okay.

WINTER STARTS EARLY: Members of the Canadian cross country, alpine teams and snowboard teams are currently in New Zealand, training and getting ready for some early competitions. The snowboarders, including world silver medalist Jeff Batchelor of Oakville, will compete in a World Cup halfpipe event in Cardona that counts towards Olympic qualification and features Olympic champion Shaun White of the U.S., while the cross country and alpine skiers will take part in the New Zealand Winter Games.

Olympic cross country champion Chandra Crawford, who missed all of last season because of surgery and a series of setbacks, recently had problems again with her foot and just left yesterday to join her teammates in New Zealand, where hopefully she can start getting things back on track.

A Message To The Knuckleheads Out There

It didn’t take long for the knuckleheads -- the kindest term I could come up with – to surface gleefully after Perdita Felicien’s disastrous run in the world championships final in Berlin yesterday.

Not that Priscilla Lopes-Schliep isn’t attracting her share of loons. But the anti-Felicien comments on message boards have such virulence that it makes one wonder why it’s so personal.

Okay, her calves cramped up yesterday. Was it due to nerves? You never know. If it was, that only makes her more human, not a better target for ridicule. But the cramps a recurring problem and she knows she has to get to the bottom of it.

As for those true morons out there suggesting she retire, you’d know if you followed her this season that she’s made an impressive comeback after missing all of last year and the Beijing Olympics with a foot injury. She was ranked in the top five entering the worlds.

She’s turning 29 a week Saturday. That hardly makes her over the hill in her event. Brigitte Foster-Hylton, the winner yesterday, is 34 and nearly retired after missing a medal in Beijing. Remember Gail Devers? She competed well until she was 40. She had more than her share of heartbreaks, too, just as Felicien did at the 2004 Athens Olympics.

This is sport, eh. How many athletes have failed and failed again before their big moment of triumph? (You might recall speed skater Dan Jansen.) That’s what makes the whole thing so compelling.

Those who call her a “choker” ignore that she won a world title in 2003, beat Devers for the world indoor title in 2004 – an event where Devers has a huge edge because of her better start – and came back and won a silver at the worlds in 2007.

The Perdita haters are probably the same people waiting to pounce if speed skater Jeremy Wotherspoon doesn’t deliver at the 2010 Vancouver Olympics.

You gotta wonder what it says about Canadians that they possess so much venom for athletes they ignore most of the time. You have to love that kind of support.

Lopes-Schliep doesn’t escape being maligned, either. In her case, it’s all the snide comments about her stocky build and people wondering “what’s she on.”

They ignore the fact that Lopes-Schliep’s musculature was there from grade school, that the other kids made fun of her because of her big legs and the pronounced veins. It’s a hereditary condition she shares with several aunts, who are built the same way.

Her progression as an athlete has been steady, no huge leaps forwards that would make you suspicious. She’s not coached by someone with a checkered past, as some top hurdlers have been. Her longtime coach, Anthony McCleary from Whitby, makes his living installing air conditioners.

It’s too bad the dart throwers don’t do a little homework, but then I guess it wouldn’t be as much fun then. Much easier to just log on and cast aspersions behind a cloak of anonymity.

Enough of this rant. We’re bringing out the prestigious Sunnyside Hardware Tool of the Week. Only it’s Tools of the Week this time.

We only award it sparingly. In consultation with the advisory board (chiefly my brother Laurie, brother-in-law Scott Turner, who runs the family-owned Sunnyside Hardware, and buddy Morry Helfan), we reckoned the award would only have meaning if it was handed out to true tools, not just willy nilly.

Knuckleheads out there, wear the honour proudly.