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February 2010 Archives

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Lessons from the hilltop

At the Olympics, the taboos get tossed out the window. People never save the last sugary treat. And journalists clap. Sometimes they come precariously close to hooting and hollering for their team. National pride is at stake at the Olympics, and the international press openly picks sides. Tribalism trumps objectivity here.
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Brian McKeever's Olympic dream over

It was a story that everyone gravitated to, a story that was impossible to resist. The final chapter was supposed to be written on Sunday morning when Brian McKeever, a legally blind and impossibly brave Canadian cross country skier, would have become the first Paralympian to race among able-bodied athletes at an Olympic Games.
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The Show must go Vonn

It happens before every Olympics, and it happens with every nation. We all pick out poster boys and girls to carry the medal hopes, pump up the home crowd and generate some buzz for a quadrennial Winter carnival that blends an orgiastic mix of corporate money-making (and losing) with athletic perfection.
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Anja's advice? Pack an umbrella, wear crash helmet

When Anja Paerson thinks about the 2010 Olympics and her time in Whistler, the bronze medal she won in the super-combined and the epic crash she had in the downhill are not the first two things that spring to mind. 
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Women's hockey needs Olympic hiatus

I do not have a daughter, or a son, but if I ever do have a daughter one of the things I dream about doing is teaching her how to skate. 
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Own the Podium's forgotten little brother

It was a bad dream, only Jason Myslicki was wide awake and sobbing. Sobbing so hard he could not speak. His head was resting against his jumping skis. His heart was breaking. "My dreams were shattered right from the takeoff," Myslicki says, through tear-stained eyes.
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'Polaroid prince' a true original

Andy Warhol used to call him his Polaroid prince, because he looked good in Polaroid pictures. Plus, he really was a prince, a German prince. His official title is Prince Hubertus von Hohenlohe, though nobody refers to him that way unless another prince he knows, Prince Charles, invites him to dinner at Windsor Castle.
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Driving the red drunk tank around Whistler

There is a red shuttle bus in the athlete's village in Whistler. In the last few days, its driver says people have begun acting "strange." Not strange as in odd. Strange as in hammered. 
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Humphries, Moyes find golden redemption

They hugged like they were teammates, just like they were best friends. They hugged, because the journey was over. They hugged, as the roar of a home crowd rolled on and on into a snowy Whistler night. Kaillie Humphries and Heather Moyse hugged, because they had accomplished what they had come to the Whistler Sliding Centre to do.
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A crazy way to make a living

The man is not normal. He could be insane. The man had a stomach ache, a "big pain" he says, for two days. A pain so bad it felt like the devil himself was doing a drum roll in his lower intestine. But the man did not want to miss any training, so he went to the track and tightened his belt to hold back the pain.
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Hockey obsession spoiling Olympic party

Hockey is a drug for Canadians. We crave it. We go on all-night benders on it. We can't stop talking about it. It is the national madness, and the madness is seeping up the Sea to Sky Highway, and infecting the mountains in Whistler
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It's Miller's way or not at all

Bode Miller wanted out. He felt trapped, like he was being forced to be something he had never asked to be: an All-American poster boy, a bang on the drum, red, white and blue, God Bless America branded piece of Olympic propaganda.
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TV does recruiting for Belgian bobsled team

Olympic dreams are born in unique and different ways. For instance, the dream for Belgian bobsledders Eva Willemarck and Elfje Willemsen began on the casting couch. 

See, a Belgian production company had a vision to recruit some untested, non-sliding athletes, and try to turn them into bobsledders. The goal was to track them long term, and maybe one day film them at the Olympics. That day arrived sooner than expected. Willemarck and Willemsen competed in track and field. Neither had ever sat in a sled when they were selected for the film project two and a half years ago.

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O Canada, go fourth and conquer

Yes, yes, Canada was going to own the podium, but what Canada owns at the Olympics is fourth- and fifth-place finishes. If there were medals handed out for missing it by that much, we'd be on top of the world. 
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The death of a dream

This is a young woman mourning the death of an Olympic dream, and her grief is still raw. Mellisa Hollingsworth stayed in bed until five o'clock on Saturday afternoon. She could not sleep. She could not stop crying. 
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Shhhhh, don't tell my boss

Work guilt. It is the worst. You know, that duty-bound feeling you often have in this silly age of BlackBerries, Twittering and the rest
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Q & A: Olympic gold medalist Jon Montgomery

A brewery. Now there's some irony for you, especially since the last time Canadians who like to stay up late glimpsed Jon Montgomery was on the Olympic broadcast, chugging beer from a pitcher in Whistler Village. 
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Did Pierre Lueders wake up angry?

Pierre Lueders, the wise old Canadian sage of the bobsled track, kicks off his Olympics later on Saturday in the two-man event with brakeman Jesse Lumsden. 
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Like it or not, Canada choked

They said a lot of things, about how they definitely could have done it, even though it would have been difficult to do.
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An open letter to Lindsey Vonn

Dear Lindsey: We have never met, at least not officially. You did smile at me once, though, or at least it looked like you were smiling at me but I guess you could have been smiling at the reporter next to me or the reporter next to him or the tall guy standing at the back of the pack.
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Paerson overcomes ugly crash for sixth Olympic medal

The event was the women's downhill. But Anja Paerson looked a lot more like a ski jumper than a ski racer when she rocketed off the Hot Air jump during Wednesday's crash-filled proceedings. 
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Whistler real estate business still sliding downhill

Ike Nakayama is the perfect real estate agent. He is not pushy at all. He is pleasant, and helpful. 

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Whistler a village of visitors

Maps, and more maps. They hand them out in hotel lobbies, restaurants and at the information kiosks sprinkled throughout Whistler Village. These maps are full of helpful information about which buses to take, ticketing and security procedures at event venues.
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Crawford has sense of humour about bad luck

Chandra Crawford needed something positive to hold onto when she woke up Wednesday. She needed to feel good about herself, since her chances heading into the ladies individual sprint classic were not good. 
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Skier Majdic hopes bronze breaks the curse

Petra Majdic was talking to a journalist about luck, and about how she never seems to have any luck at major competitions. Majdic has 16 World Cup wins, but in the big events, like the Olympics, the Slovenian has been a car wreck. In Salt Lake City in 2002, she used the wrong skis. Four years ago in Turin it was the wrong wax. 
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Renner foiled by traffic jam at Olympic Park

Sara Renner's day ended early at Whistler Olympic Park. It could have been longer if Renner, an Olympic silver medalist in the cross country team sprint in 2006, had been able to pass a fellow competitor in the qualifying round of the 1.4 km individual sprint. As it was, Renner found herself trapped in a two-skier traffic jam.
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Ghana's Snow Leopard on the prowl

Prince Daniel Vanderpuye-Orgle is feeling overwhelmed. He had no idea what he was getting into. He has never had to work this hard in his life. Vanderpuye-Orgle, or Vanpee to his friends, is Ghana's Olympic chef de mission. His team consists of one skier. "It is too much work," Vanpee moans. "Here I am working all the time."
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Orange Revolution opens wide, says 'Ah'

If an athlete from the Ukraine ever gets around to winning a medal at these Olympics, look closely when they step on the podium and ask yourself this question: Do they have a nice smile? If they do, know this: a Canadian dentist might have had something to do with it.

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Don't blame Vancouver, blame global warming

Canada's fair, Western jewel is being pummeled in the international press for, among other things, the weather. To be honest, the pummeling, to these Eastern Canadian eyes, is somewhat deserved.
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Personal bests no longer good enough

It is gold or nothing. Well, OK, not exactly nothing. Silver would have been nice and a bronze medal, so-so. But gold was the plan. And there really was no plan B. A top 10 certainly was not going to cut it. Fourth place would have stung like an insult, and a fifth, why even bother showing up?
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Bumps bothering American star Vonn

Lindsey Vonn put her tender shin to the test in women's downhill training on Monday ... and survived. But there were some painful moments on the trip down for the American sensation.
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Downhill silver medallist takes swipe at VANOC

The press conference was wrapping up, but Aksel Svindal had one more thing to add. The silver medallist in the men's downhill came to Whistler -- or at least his plan had been to come to Whistler last spring to train with the Canadian team.
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Men's downhill start list: Guay in great shape

The temperature fell in Whistler last night, providing the men's downhill course with a much needed freeze. With an icy top layer, and softer snow underneath, the conditions on the Dave Murray downhill would, in theory, favour racers with an early start number today.
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Osborne-Paradis gets his chance to shine

Barring the spectral presence of Whistler's haunting, pea-soup fog, a pelting rain or some other yet to be seen weather calamity of the type that has been plaguing and postponing the Olympic alpine events, the glamour event of the ski-racing world will crown its king today. 
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German lugers triumph after tragedy

Flowers, stuffed animals, a photograph and two white candles, gently flickering in the chilled mountain air. All around the small, trackside memorial to Nodar Kumaritashvili, there was noise.
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The hunt for a Whistler native continues

And so the hunt for a Whistler native continues. You know, someone who was actually born in this fog-shrouded slice of heaven. At last check, you may recall a conversation I had with a waitress named Leah. Leah knew some Whistler locals ... but ... she "didn't know where to find them right now."
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Search for answers continues in tragic luge death

Ian Cockerline had never experienced anything like it. Nobody had. This was new territory. A man died.  
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Lugers say modified Whistler track is too slow

The Whistler Sliding Centre reopened for business early Saturday, as the lugers took their final practice runs before the real racing began later in the day.   
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Luge death casts pall over Opening Ceremonies

A horrific high-speed crash at the Whistler Sliding Centre cast a grim pall over the Olympic Opening Ceremonies in Vancouver on Friday night
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VanderBeek weighs in on men's downhill

Kelly VanderBeek will not be skiing at the Olympics
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Pierre Lueders is not a hyphenated-Canadian

In the wondrous cultural mosaic we know and love as Canada we -- the people -- tend to be pretty big on hyphens. English-Canadian, French-Canadian, Chinese-Canadian, Indo-Canadian, Italian-Canadian ... and on it goes.
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Bode Miller finds his love of the hill

Marco Sullivan is from California, and he sounds like it
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Is Bode Miller a comic genius?

Is Bode Miller a comic genius? The biggest, brightest, most blazing pre-competition Olympic spotlight has been shining on American downhill queen, Lindsey Vonn, for several months.
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B.C. hospitality rarely homegrown, it seems

The kid at the airport directing us to buses had a British accent. The bus driver, he was from North Carolina. And as if to prove it, he managed to use "Y'all" and "grits" -- in the same sentence.
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Hollingsworth returns to Whistler clear-headed

Training camp. Whistler, March 2009. It is a period that lives in infamy on the otherwise flawless resume of the top skeleton racer in the world. Melissa Hollingsworth is already the World Cup champion, having medaled in seven of eight races this season. She is a speed queen. But when it comes to the Whistler skeleton track, she is a hazard, or at least she was a hazard, at training camp last March.
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Skeleton in closet caused great Pain

In the beginning, it was a true romance. A boy met a girl at her family reunion. They were little more than kids at the time, but they fell in love, and almost 25 years later they will swear to you it was love at first sight. Jeff and Aly Pain just knew.
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Canadian skeleton contender lobs cheating accusation at Germans

So much for playing the welcoming hosts at the Olympics. Canadian Jeff Pain, a silver medalist in the skeleton at the 2006 Olympics and one of the most decorated athletes in his sport, tossed a hand grenade at the German skeleton team and the sport's ruling body Wednesday.
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History forged in medal

Olympics medals are much more than just keepsakes for athletic achievement.
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Cherry stumps for lucky loonie

It is considered among the holiest of Canadian hockey relics, and instead of bowing down before it, Don Cherry was giving it the finger
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