The risk of aiming high

By Ken MacQueen with Nancy Macdonald, John Geddes and Jason Kirby - Thursday, March 4, 2010 at 11:00 AM - 1 Comment

Throughout this premature Vancouver spring, The Question has preoccupied Canada’s sporting press: can this country still “own” the Olympic podium by topping the medal count? The medal performance anxiety issue is raised daily, in all its variations, to the increasingly tense executive of the Canadian Olympic Committee (COC), and to the frustration of some athletes.

On Sunday, an exasperated COC president Michael Chambers said this, in steering the question into more favourable winds: “We’re going to win more medals. Canadians aren’t all mathematicians or accountants, they’re not just counting up medals. They’ve embraced the wave of the Games.”

By Monday, after a disappointing weekend—a men’s hockey loss to the U.S., and unexpected medal shutouts in men’s ski cross, men’s speed skating, and men’s short track—reality set in: top spot was impossible. Canada entered competition Monday tied for fourth—four gold, four silver and one bronze—15 behind the leading U.S. Our ice dancers Tessa Virtue and Scott Moir added a gold that night, and Ashleigh McIvor won another on Tuesday in ski cross, but Canada was still far back of the U.S. “We are going to be short of our goal, I readily admit that,” said Chris Rudge, the former Quebecor executive who serves as CEO of the Olympic committee.

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Who’s to Blame?

By Nicholas Kohler with Aaron Wherry and Nancy Macdonald - Wednesday, February 24, 2010 at 3:55 PM - 7 Comments

Gregory Carigiet, a 22-year-old psychiatric nursing student from the Swiss canton of Grison, is an awfully good luger. Ranked 19th in the world this season, he was well ahead of 21-year-old Nodar Kumaritashvili, the Georgian ranked 44th whose gruesome death during an Olympic training run last Friday focused so much attention on a sport—luge—that remains relatively obscure in North America. Yet the fact that Kumaritashvili made it to the Olympics, where he would have raced on the fastest and therefore arguably the most dangerous track in the world, while Carigiet did not, worries many in the sport. It suggests a deadly flaw in the way athletes are selected to compete on high-performance tracks.

“Georgia was—the irony is—lucky to qualify for the Games,” Wolfgang Staudinger, Canada’s luge coach, told Maclean’s. Thanks to an esoteric wrinkle in Switzerland’s Olympic qualifying process, Carigiet did not make his country’s cut for the men’s event, meant to gather the top 40 international sliders for competition at the Whistler Sliding Centre, which hits racers hard with a vertical drop of 152 m and can catapult them to record speeds of 153 km/h. “They left him at home,” says Staudinger. “That opened a spot in the top-40 field, and whoever was next—41st, 42nd and so on—basically, they moved up.”

Kumaritashvili benefited from a number of such top-40 omissions, permitting him a place in an elite group many believe he had no business competing in. And so, two hours before he was scheduled to board the bus for the opening ceremonies in Vancouver, he was on a training run at speeds exceeding 140 km/h when he made an error exiting turn 15. Slammed by the curve’s massive G-force, he attempted to compensate but flipped over, ricocheted off the track wall, and flew headfirst into a support pillar. It was the first fatal crash in luge competition in 35 years and the first Olympic death since 1992, when Swiss skier Nicolas Bochatay died on a training run in Albertville, France.

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It’s the best of times, and the worst

By Scott Feschuk - Thursday, February 18, 2010 at 11:00 AM - 2 Comments

With the beginning of the Olympics, the attention of the world is now fixed squarely on Vancouver and Whistler, and you know what that means: this is the perfect time to steal the world’s stuff. Cover me while I swipe the Mona Lisa (thanks, I owe you one) and Coldplay’s instruments (now you owe me).

There are those who contend that the Olympics are an athletic Kumbaya to the world, a bonding experience in which we are all spiritually enriched by the pulse-pounding thrill of assorted Scandinavians proceeding downhill quadrennially. There are others who believe the Games are a folly, an abomination, a…a…a follomination!—not to mention a great way to keep in tip-top protestin’ shape between G8 meetings.

In truth, there are pros and cons to the Olympics. Let’s take a look:

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Slow starts mar luge

By Nicholas Köhler - Saturday, February 13, 2010 at 10:59 PM - 0 Comments

With the first two turns eliminated from tonight’s men’s singles luge in response to yesterday’s fatal accident, many competitors are complaining they’re getting off to slow starts.

Rather than begin at the top of the controversial track, at what was once called the men’s start, the men are tonight launching from the women’s, two turns down the course, the longest and arguably still the fastest in the world.

But the women’s start makes this track all about the men’s acceleration at take off, whereas it previously catapulted sliders into high speed with little effort.

It’s making for bumpy beginnings, compounded by the derth of practice runs from the ladies’ start. That has some of the men pining for the track as they knew it before yesterday.

Was it too fast then? Feelings are mixed. But no one will go so far as to call the old track unsafe. Nor are they unhappy the decision was made to proceed with competition.

Meanwhile, down below, a makeshift shrine has been assembled for Georgian luger Nodar Kumaritashvili, who died yesterday in a fatal training crash. No one is quite sure who is responsible.

'All Canadians were deeply saddened'

By Aaron Wherry - Friday, February 12, 2010 at 11:02 PM - 4 Comments

A statement from the Prime Minister on the passing of Nodar Kumaritashvili.

“All Canadians were deeply saddened to learn of the tragic death of Georgian Olympic team member Nodar Kumaritashvili following a luge training accident in Whistler today.  His competitive spirit and dedication to sports excellence will be remembered and honoured during the Games.

“On behalf of all Canadians, Laureen and I send our deepest sympathies to Mr. Kumaritashvili’s family and friends and the entire Georgian Winter Olympic team.”

Georgia team: 'They will compete, and dedicate their performance to their fallen comrade'

By Nancy Macdonald - Friday, February 12, 2010 at 8:45 PM - 3 Comments

Georgian athletes will remain in B.C., according to the country’s sport minister, Nikolos Rurua; earlier in the day, there had been speculation that the country might pull out of the Vancouver Games following the tragic death of 21-year-old Georgian luger, Nodar Kumaritashvili, today, in Whistler.

During the Beijing Olympics in 2008, Georgia was invaded by Russia, Rurua noted. “Our team, despite that fact, persevered.” In Vancouver, he said, “our sportsmen and athletes decided to be loyal to the spirit of Olympic Games.”

Questions about Kumaritashvili’s experience were “unfair,” and “misleading,” Rurua said; he stressed that Nodar was a “very promising” and “well-qualified,” athlete, and came from the resort town of Borjomi —“a place in Georgia with a long snowsports tradition.”

Rurua was asked questions about track safety and—from a British reporter—whether, in the lead-up to the Games, his athletes had been given sufficient time to train, like the “Canadian athletes.”

Rurua said that the team, including Kumaritashvili had arrived in B.C. a month earlier, and that Kumaritashvili had been granted access to the track but didn’t know how many runs he had taken.

Georgia’s athletes will wear black bands at tonight’s Opening Ceremonies; there is speculation that the Georgian delegation may be called to enter BC Place last—a position of honour traditionally reserved for the host country.

Whistler's fast—and deadly—track

By Jonathon Gatehouse - Friday, February 12, 2010 at 7:45 PM - 8 Comments

The obviously shaken heads of the International Olympic Committee, Jacques Rogge, and VANOC, John Furlong, today promised a quick and thorough investigation of the luge accident that took the life of Nodar Kumaritashvili, a 21-year-old Georgian. But there will be no shortage of coaches and athletes who will say that the problem is the track itself; the fastest in the world, and among its most difficult.

There was plenty of griping at last February’s bobsleigh and skeleton World Cup test events in Whistler. Even those who liked it, like Maya Pederson, the Swiss star who won skeleton gold in Turin, told us that track was unbelievably quick. “It’s a very difficult track you really have to be a good driver…it’s one of the fastest tracks. I’ve never slid that fast,” she said after her final run. “Some tracks you don’t have to work that hard. Here you have to work, work, work. And until the finish, you don’t really feel the speed.”

By the end of four days of World Cup events, the 1,450-m-long track had proven itself the fastest sled run on earth. A dozen competitors in the four-man bobsleigh smashed the previously unattainable 150 km/h barrier. And entering the 16th and final turn—the one where Kumaritashvili flew off the track—the sleds were in fighter-jet territory, pulling more than five Gs.

But the biggest concern was the plethora of wipe outs during the international training week that proceeded the World Cup races . Track managers were left scrambling to deal with the track’s “anomalies”—the almost imperceptible bumps or dips that can throw a sled off-course as it careens through the corners. The work was painstaking, with every centimetre of the track shaped by hand, built up through repeated water mistings, then scraped and smoothed by crews wielding razor-sharp blades.

Bob Storey, the former Canadian bobsledder who now heads the International Bobsleigh and Skeleton Federation (FIBT) defended the track. In an interview with Maclean’s he spoke at length about his confidence in the course—one that was designed to the specifications of the FIBT and the International Luge Federation, and built with their active participation. “It’s a good challenging track for everybody. It’s safe, but tough,” he said last February. “If you make a little mistake you can get through, but if you make a big one, you’re going to pay for it.”

Storey who survived a horrific 1966 crash at Lake Placid that took the life of his teammate Sergio Zardini, said the talk about the track’s dangers was just that—talk. “Danger, I don’t really know what that word means…This is a challenging track. That is what it is supposed to be. It is not a dangerous track. It’s fast and it’s challenging. Very few tracks these days are dangerous.” And he suggested that the concerns being expressed by coaches and athletes were over blown. “There’s a tendency to talk about how horrible it’s going to be and to consciously or sub-consciously start preparing the rational for a possible lack of success.”

And he dismissed the notion of a Canadian “home track” advantage, using a golf analogy. The local pro may have an advantage at a tournament on his home course, but by the fourth round, it’s gone, he noted. In other words, the cream rises to the top.

There are only 17 sliding tracks in the entire world. The vision for Whistler was to create one that complimented the three existing ones in North America: not as technical as Lake Placid, but more challenging—and faster—than Calgary and Salt Lake.

But those metrics, they succeeded. Now the investigation into Kumaritashvili’s death will determine if they went too far.

Other deaths on the track

By Jaime Weinman - Friday, February 12, 2010 at 6:13 PM - 6 Comments

The death of Nodar Kumaritashvili is a shocking moment, not just at this year’s Olympics, but in Olympic history. Death in competition (or, in this case, in training) has thankfully been rare, even though the athletes do a lot of things that would be dangerous for you or me.

There were only two Winter Olympics where this happened before. The first was the 1964 Olympics in Innsbruck, Austria. Both Kazimierz Kay-Skrzypecki, a luger (like Kumaritashvili) and Ross Milne, a skier, were both killed in training. Then as now, there were complaints that the runs were not safe: Kay-Skrzypecki, a Polish luger who became a British citizen, was killed when his toboggan “shot off the lipless chute,” according to the Associated Press report of January 27, 1964. A few days before that, the Australian Milne had gone flying off the downhill skiing track and crashed into a tree. The 1964 Olympics were already operating in the shadow of tragedy: the death of the entire U.S. figure skating team in a plane crash in 1961 had completely shaken up the world of winter sports. In response to the Innsbruck accidents,  the AP reported, new lips were “added to the dangerous curves of the toboggan run, two extra compulsory gates were installed along the men’s downhill, [and] the women’s downhill received three extra gates.” Most importantly, the Olympic committee responded to the Milne tragedy by covering all the nearby tree trunks with straw.

The only other death at the Winter Olympics before this one was the death of Swiss skier Nicholas Bochatay in 1992 in La Lechere, France. A day before the closing ceremonies, Bochatay was training when he crashed head-on into the machine that was smoothing out the snow.

There have only been two previous deaths that occured during actual competition, and in both cases, the athletes may have been done in by their attempts to enhance their performance. At the 1912 Summer Games in Stockholm, runner Francisco Lázaro covered himself with wax to ward off sunburns, which was supposed to improve his endurance in the grueling marathon. But the wax also blocked the pores in his skin and prevented him from perspiring, and he collapsed and died of dehydration. In 1960 in Rome, Danish cyclist Knut Jensen collapsed in the middle of a race and died soon after. The president of the Danish Road Racing Federation confirmed that Jensen had been given drugs by his trainer—which later turned out to include amphetamines—but insisted that this did not constitute “doping.”

A dark cloud over VANOC's Olympic-sized party

By Jonathon Gatehouse - Friday, February 12, 2010 at 5:17 PM - 8 Comments

Magic. That’s the word that John Furlong, the CEO of the Vancouver 2010 organizing committee likes to use to describe the feeling at the heart of the Olympics. That mixture of awe, excitement, pride and unabashed glee that takes hold in a host city when the flame is lit. And if all goes well, the host country too.

As the minutes tick down to tonight’s opening ceremony, Furlong and his VANOC colleagues have had precious little time to revel in that feeling. After years of planing, toil, and anxiety the job still isn’t done. And just when the city finally came alive with the Olympic spirit, tragedy struck.

The death of 21-year-old Georgian luger Nodar Kumaritashvili at the Whistler sliding centre today, is a nightmare beginning for the 2010 Games. There will be hard questions about safety at the track—the fastest in the world by a considerable amount—and the press for home court advantage that limited the amount of practice time for foreign athletes at the venue over the past year. (And it won’t just be VANOC in the cross-hairs. The international Luge and Bobsleigh federations approved the track’s design and signed off on its safety.)

Not that anything has been easy so far. A global economic meltdown one year out from the Olympics threatened to turn the event into a Montreal-style millstone. The carping and complaining over everything from the multi-billion dollar price tag, to traffic restrictions, to noisy celebrations (people are drinking at the Irish Pavilion downtown!) has sometimes given the impression of a populace that is braced for a siege rather than a celebration. And the spring-like weather continues to cause sleepless nights. “We’ve climbed a lot of mountains and hit a lot of obstacles,” Furlong said yesterday. “It’s an enormously challenging process. It takes the best you have to give.”

Prior to the luge tragedy, there was a sense that everything was finally coming together. It snowed up on Cypress yesterday. (Not enough to bring an end to the massive snow-shifting and preservation operation that has been going on for close to a month, but at least it wasn’t rain.) The much-ballyhooed protests have so far been small and peaceful. And as the Olympic torch winds its way through the city, tens of thousands are lining the streets to cheer, wave flags, and snap a picture. When the procession passed by the corner of Denman and Davie shortly before 8 am this morning, the sidewalks were packed. So too were the windows and balconies of the condo towers overlooking English Bay. And hundreds jogged along the street in the torch bearers’ wake. It’s a rolling, Vancouver-wide party. Even Stephen Harper is getting cheers as he makes his way around the downtown, dressed in a tie and an official Team Canada jacket.

For once, the chatter wasn’t about deficits or disruptions, but rather who—or what—will light the Olympic cauldron this evening. Wayne Gretzky, Terry Fox’s mother Betty, or perhaps a ghost-image of the late runner himself. The organizers are keeping their lips sealed tight. The usual pre-ceremony briefing for the media won’t happen until minutes before the festivities kick off. And Furlong says that only the final torch bearer and four other people know the secret. (Although it has been confirmed that Bryan Adams, Céline Dion, Sarah McLachlan, and one other horseman of the apocalypse will sing.)

Yesterday, the VANOC chief likened the final hours to the moments before a big game, sitting in the dressing room with that nervous feeling in your stomach. But that mix of anticipation and anxiety is exactly what he wanted to be feeling at this point, he said. VANOC was ready. The city was ready. So too were the athletes. “We had a vision and it’s held us together from the beginning,” Furlong said. “That we could really unite Canadians and give them a sense of something magic.”

Now, a pall has been cast over the celebrations. VANOC and the International Olympic committee will have a difficulty time dealing with issues raised by Kumaritashvili’s death. It could be the biggest challenge yet.

The 2010 Olympics are about to begin. Cue the lights. And the sad music.

Death raises questions about luge track, Canadian competitiveness

By Nancy Macdonald - Friday, February 12, 2010 at 4:21 PM - 72 Comments

A collective cry went out at the Main Media Centre this morning when video featuring the horrific crash of Georgian luger, Nodar Kumaritashvili was broadcast into the main hall. The 21-year-old racer died at the Whistler Sliding Centre — following his second crash in just two days. His death cast an immediate pall over Vancouver, where the opening ceremonies are set to begin in just two hours.

Both International Olympic Committee president Jacques Rogge and John Furlong, chief executive of the Vancouver Organizing Committee addressed reporters this afternoon. Both donned black suits and black ties and appeared visibly shaken by the day’s event.

“This is a very sad day,” said Rogge. “The IOC is in deep mourning. Here you have a young athlete who lost his life pursuing his passion.”

“We are heartbroken beyond words,” said Furlong. “The accident is tragic. It will be investigated and when we know the results you will be informed.”

Even before the accident, questions about the “exceedingly dangerous,” 1,450-m-long course — the fastest on earth — were being raised. The top speed reached at the track at Fitzsimmon’s Creek, on Blackcomb Mountain is 153.93 kph. Kumaritashvili was believed to have been travelling at 143.3 kph.

In training runs Thursday, both Guntis Rekis of Latvia and Stefan Hoehner of Germany had high-speed crashes. “My goals are to stay alive, not break bones,” Rekis told reporters. “I was scared a bit.”

“I think they are pushing it a little too much,” Australia’s Hannah Campbell-Pegg said Thursday night after she nearly lost control in training. “To what extent are we just little lemmings that they just throw down a track and we’re crash-test dummies? I mean, this is our lives.”

“I’ve never slid that fast,” Maya Pedersen, a Swiss gold-medallist told Maclean’s last February.

Although both the international luge and bobsleigh federations declared the track safe and Games-ready a year ago, the International Luge Federation (FIL) president Josef Fendt of Germany told reporters that the sporting body wanted less-experienced, and less-talented lugers to have more training time at the WSC prior to the Vancouver Games. Fendt also said the protective devices near the track’s curb were too short, and needed to be lengthened so athletes were protected from flying from the track.

Questions will likely also be raised about Canada’s aggressive pursuit of the home ice advantage in Vancouver and Whistler.

Earlier this week, Andy Schmid, the performance director of British Skeleton called the Canadian decision to limit practice time for overseas competitors (compared to the more than 300 runs set aside for Canadian athletes) as irresponsible. “Please, let there be no accidents there because that could kill the sport,” he told Britain’s Telegraph.

“People have the argument that it’s just home advantage and that’s normal for an Olympic host country, but it’s different for sports involving high speed. Can you imagine in Formula One nobody being allowed on a track because somebody has home advantage?”

No one yet knows how the crash will affect tonight’s Opening Ceremonies at BC Place, or the luge event itself, set to begin Saturday, with the men’s singles. Luge training at Whistler has been suspended.

Death on the track

By Andrew Coyne - Friday, February 12, 2010 at 3:45 PM - 97 Comments

A freak accident? Maybe. But at the moment, this does not look good on VANOC:

Kumaritashvili lost control of his sled near the finish Friday, went over the track wall and struck an unpadded steel pole near the finish line at Whistler Sliding Center.

Leave aside how it was possible for the unfortunate Georgian luger to go over the track wall. Why was there an unpadded steel pole anywhere near the finish line?

UPDATE: Here’s a picture of the awful moment just before impact. Correct me if I’m wrong, but does the track design not look like a horrible death waiting to happen?

MORE: From this story, it is clear that people in the sport thought the track was pushing it. It has been described as “an elevator shaft with ice.” That is, even the highly-trained lunatics who do this for kicks were wary of it. On top of which:

“Please, let there be no accidents there because that could kill the sport,” said Andy Schmid, the performance director of British Skeleton, who condemns as irresponsible the Canadian authorities’ decision to limit practice time for overseas competitors to just 40 training runs compared with the 300-plus runs set aside for Canadian athletes.

“People have the argument that it’s just home advantage and that’s normal for an Olympic host country, but it’s different for sports involving high speed. Can you imagine in Formula One nobody being allowed on a track because somebody has home advantage?”

International Olympians: Party crashers

By macleans.ca - Thursday, February 11, 2010 at 11:20 AM - 1 Comment

Shani Davis, Speed Skating – U.S.
Looking out for number one, always
To hear his competitors tell it, Shani Davis is a fun-loving free spirit; the veritable life of the party. That may well be true, but it’s not a part of his personality the U.S. speed skater shows much interest in sharing with the press, public, or even his teammates. A two-time Olympic medallist, holder of three world records, and a favourite to capture gold in the ­1,000-m and ­1,500-m—and perhaps hit the podium in two other races at the Richmond Oval—the 27-year-old will be a major story at the 2010 Games. The question is whether it will be for how he skates, or how he behaves.

Raised by a single mother on Chicago’s poor South Side, Davis has the kind of inspiring, made-for-TV backstory that should guarantee him a spot on Oprah’s couch, or a Barbara Walters special. But his accomplishments four years ago in Turin, a gold in the ­1,000-m, and silver in the ­1,500-m—the first individual Winter Olympic medals ever won by an African-American—were largely overshadowed by controversy. When Davis declined to race in the team pursuit, choosing to save his strength for the individual events, teammate Chad Hedrick all but accused him of costing the Americans gold.

(The U.S. ended up coming in sixth. Canada won silver.) Their ill-concealed animosity dominated the headlines, and Davis was labelled a selfish traitor—never mind the fact that he had informed U.S. Speed Skating of his decision well in advance of the Games.

It was the kind of bad news story that Davis seems to find himself at the centre of all too often. When he made the short-track speed skating team as an alternate for the Salt Lake City Games in 2002, there were charges from rivals that Davis’s friends Apolo Ohno and Rusty Smith threw a qualifying race to give him a spot on the squad. (The allegations were dismissed after an acrimonious hearing, but Davis left the team after the opening ceremonies and competed in Europe instead.) And this past December, Davis again found himself in the soup when he called faux-talk show host Stephen Colbert—the main sponsor of the U.S. speed skating team—“a jerk” after the comedian took Canada to task for not allowing American skaters easy access to the Richmond Oval. (Davis trained in Calgary for a number of years and remains very close to several members of the Canadian team.)

In the run-up to Vancouver, Davis has been trying to make nice. He and Colbert buried the hatchet with a mock ­500-m race—Davis won by 13 minutes—that went to air in late January. And he and Hedrick have been conspicuously friendly—shaking hands before races, raising each other’s arms on the podium, praising each other in the press—on the World Cup circuit this season.

But Davis’s decision to again skip the team pursuit in Vancouver, and the recent announcement that he will not race the ­10,000-m—robbing NBC of a Davis-seeks-to-equal-Eric-Heiden’s-five-medals-in-one-Games storyline—are already drawing fire. “I would love to enjoy an Olympics,” Davis wistfully told the Chicago Tribune back in October. “One out of my three would be nice.” He might want to start making plans for Sochi 2014. —Jonathon Gatehouse

Bode Miller, Alpine Skiing – U.S.
Will the bad boy behave himself?
Every sport needs a bad boy, and Bode Miller has long filled that role in the world of alpine ski racing. The hulking New Hampshire native has rightfully earned his iconoclast status. In 2003, while courting sponsors, he sped down the slopes with a “For Rent” sign stuck to his helmet. At the 2006 Winter Games in Turin, he skipped the athletes’ village dorms for his personal motorhome. After he failed to reach the podium—despite hype that he’d rack up more medals than any American—Miller was unapologetic, boasting on 60 Minutes that he had partied “at an Olympic level.”

But Miller isn’t just a circus act. He won the FIS Alpine World Cup overall title in 2005 and 2008­, and, with more than 30 wins, has more victories than any American alpine skier in history. The 32-year-old considered retirement last spring, but by the fall had decided that he wasn’t done with the sport just yet. He then qualified for the U.S. Olympic team, reassuring coaches that this time would be free of antics. Miller is currently ranked 14th in the World Cup standings. And though he suffered a sprained ankle while playing volleyball in December, he hasn’t lost any of his trademark confidence, describing Vancouver as “an opportunity to have the best runs of my life.”—Cathy Gulli

Lindsey Vonn, Alpine Skiing – U.S.
The Michael Phelps of the slopes
Western Canada has always been a lucky place for American alpine ski racer Lindsey Vonn. Every time she has competed in Lake Louise, Alta., she’s won—and that’s happened more than half a dozen times since 2004. Now, the 25-year-old is headed to the Winter Games to race in all five downhill and slalom disciplines, and many people are predicting that her lucky streak will continue in British Columbia. Vonn’s optimistic too: “I’ve been working toward this event for the last nine years,” she said last May. “And ever since then I’ve been working on improving every year.”

Vonn’s race results show why this native of Minnesota, a place known more for its prairie landscapes than snowcapped hills, is expected to be the Michael Phelps of the 2010 Olympics. Her first big win was at age 14 in Italy, when she became the only female American to take the prestigious Trofeo Topolino contest. Since then, she’s become one of the most decorated alpine racers in history—Vonn earned back-to-back overall FIS Alpine World Cup titles in 2008 and 2009. Already this season Vonn has triumphed in every downhill event on the World Cup circuit, and she’s ranked number one overall again.

A big part of Vonn’s success lies in her toughness. Last February she had thumb surgery to repair a tendon severed on a broken champagne bottle while celebrating a big win. A few days later, her injured hand was duct-taped to her ski pole, and she competed at the World Cup in France. In early December, while racing in Lake Louise, Vonn’s knee bumped her jaw, causing her to chomp on her tongue. Vonn didn’t miss a beat—she sped through to victory. The post-race shots featured Vonn, smiling, mouth agape as blood gushed down her chin. A few weeks later, she badly bruised her left wrist after a nasty crash on the giant slalom at the World Cup Austria. Vonn strapped on a chic cheetah-print brace and took to the hills again. Her take on the injury: “Hurting my arm is way better than hurting one of my legs.”

he one psychological barrier that may be haunting Vonn? Her past Olympic performances in Salt Lake City in 2002, and then Turin in 2006: both times, she failed to make the podium. She plans on changing that in Vancouver: “One [medal] of any colour will be just fine for me,” she said recently, “and I’m going to work harder than ever to put myself in a position to make that happen.” —Cathy Gulli

The ‘Wang gang’, Curling – China 
How China could rock the house
For every Olympic gold medallist, there is another athlete who finishes last. Dead last. But only a select few from that set have what it takes to be lovable losers—competitors who are so embarrassingly awful that you can’t help but cheer. Jamaican bobsledders. Kenyan cross-country skiers. Eddie “the Eagle” Edwards. Eric “the Eel” Moussambani. (For those who don’t remember “the Eel,” he was “the swimmer” from Equatorial Guinea whose first laps in an Olympic-sized pool occurred at the 2000 Summer Olympics.)

Who will be Vancouver’s version of the Eel? Well, believe it or not, it won’t be the Chinese women’s curling team. In a country with 1.3 billion people—including 1.299999999 billion who have absolutely no idea what curling is—four women with brooms have emerged as a bona fide threat to capture gold in 2010. Not bad, considering that six years ago the same team (all former gymnasts) lost a practice match to a group of senior citizens in Alberta. “We are not as skilled as others,” Bingyu Wang, the Chinese skip, said after that loss. “So we must redouble our efforts.”

They did much more than that. Funded in full by the Communist state—and led by a Canadian coach, Quebecer Dan Rafael—the so-called “Wang Gang” (Wang, Qingshuang Yue, Yin Liu and Yan Zhou) soon became famous for 10-hour practices and late-night strategy sessions. When most curlers were at the bar ordering another pint, the Chinese squad was still on the sheet, plotting a curling coup. In 2005, the team quietly qualified for its first world championship. Three years later, they captured their first medal, a silver. And last year—less than a decade after the team was assembled from scratch—China won its first world title in women’s curling.

If the Wang Gang reaches the highest podium in Vancouver, it will be the next closest thing to a victory by the host country. The Chinese team spends up to eight months of the year in Canada, training and playing in bonspiels. “Of course we miss home,” Wang, 25, said recently. “But this is our job. We have a dream of winning gold at the Olympics so more Chinese people not only learn about, but learn to love, curling.”

Which means that the world’s traditional curling powerhouses—Sweden, Switzerland, Denmark and, yes, Canada—should get used to the idea of being lovable losers. —Michael Friscolanti

Ole Einar Bjoerndalen, Biathlon – Norway 
Taking a clean shot at history
Just because you’ve never heard of him doesn’t mean he’s not a legend. Norway’s Ole Einar Bjoerndalen—“der Meister” to his fans and opponents—is the undisputed king of the biathlon. He has 91 World Cup victories and counting on his resumé. He owns 14 world titles in the skiing and sharpshooting combo sport, and nine Olympic medals, including five golds. And heading into Vancouver—his fifth Games—the 36-year-old has set his sights on matching, or perhaps even surpassing, the record 12 Winter Olympic podiums that his now-retired countryman Bjorn Daehlie attained in cross-country skiing. Would you want to bet against him?

Bjoerndalen’s greatest Olympic moments to date came in Salt Lake City, where he took gold in all four men’s biathlon events. But in 2006 in Turin, coming off a bout of the flu, he was eclipsed by a three-gold performance by Germany’s Michael Greis, managing “only” two silvers and a bronze.

Perhaps that helps explain why the Norwegian is now almost as well-known on the biathlon circuit for his germaphobia as his competitive skills. An avowed teetotaller, he gargles with cognac every morning to kill bacteria. During the season, he limits contact with his wife, and frequently forgoes crowded family Christmas celebrations in favour of solitary training high in the mountains. And he applies hand sanitizer after every shake. Purell may finally have found its Olympic poster boy.—Jonathon Gatehouse

Armin Zöggeler, Luge – Italy 
‘Il cannIbale’ remains the No. 1 threat
When he isn’t barrelling down an icy track at terrifying speeds, Armin Zöggeler works as a police officer. Which is funny, considering that his dominance in luge is borderline criminal. The 36-year-old Italian slider has racked up so many victories and ripped apart so many opponents that he’s earned the nickname “il Cannibale”—“the Cannibal.” (Which is also kinda funny, because he’s a paid pitchman for fruit.) Born in the northern town of Merano, Zöggeler won his first junior title at the age of 14, earned a spot on the Italian national team at 19, and has never looked back. At last count, “the Iceblood Champion” (that’s his other nickname) has captured a record 42 wins on the World Cup luge circuit and a medal in four consecutive Winter Games, including gold in the past two. If he wins a third-straight in Vancouver, he will become just the second luger to ever accomplish that feat. The other, Germany’s legendary Georg Hackl, had his streak snapped in 2002, when Zöggeler won his first gold in Salt Lake City. Another German, Felix Loch, is considered the reigning champ’s closest threat in 2010. But if il Cannibale proves he is still hungry, the young challenger will have to settle for silver. —Michael Friscolanti

Kim Yu-Na, Figure Skating – South Korea
Giving Orser a second chance
Two decades after a crushing defeat at Calgary ’88, Brian Orser is getting a second shot at Olympic gold—this time as coach. He’s a bit thicker, and yes, a bit greyer than the night at the Saddledome. Many consider the “Battle of the Brians” (Boitano and Orser) figure skating’s greatest competition. Just one-tenth of a mark knocked gold from Orser’s hands. Afterwards, he retreated to the dressing room, eyes glazed, and curled up by the showers in his skates, according to gold medallist Boitano. The loss, famously, took him 10 years to get over.

But after all these years, he’s getting a shot at a do-over in Vancouver. There’s just one problem. The brilliant protege he’s pushing to gold at this Olympics is not Canada’s national champion Joannie Rochette, but Kim Yu-Na, a pint-sized phenom skating for South Korea. Kim, who trains in Toronto and, like Orser, enters the Olympics as the reigning world champion, may also take the home ice advantage in Lotusland.

At last year’s Four Continents Cup in Vancouver, Kim shocked media by getting a louder ovation than even Rochette, five-time national champ. Vancouver is a “very international city,” Rochette, who took silver, told Maclean’s at the time. It was “the reality,” no more, no less—though one, Rochette added, she was glad to have the year to prepare for. Kim, who took gold, enters the Games, like her coach before her, the gold medal favourite. —Nancy Macdonald

Dale Begg-Smith, Moguls – Australia
The lost son returns and wants gold
By the standards of sports fandom, Olympic crowds tend to be a civilized lot. But if a smattering of boos rises from the spectators during the freestyle moguls competition at Cypress Bowl next week, there’s a good chance that wayward-but-wealthy homeboy Dale Begg-Smith will be on the receiving end. He’s the closest thing the hometown crowd has to a villain.

Not that he plays the part. The 25-year-old from Vancouver has scarcely uttered a discouraging word about Canada or its ski program since he took leave from both as a teenager, matter-of-factly noting that our sports bureaucrats didn’t like the amount of time he was putting into a start-up Internet company. Australia, which was just planting the seeds of a winter sports team, was more willing to accommodate Begg-Smith’s divided attention. And in 2006, he paid them back in full by winning the gold medal in Turin.

By then, however, Begg-Smith’s Internet start-up had grown into a $40-million enterprise with 100 employees and an office in New York, and it was a matter of time before someone asked how a lad just out of his teens gets rich enough to buy a Lamborghini and flit between international ski destinations. Days after he won in Italy, a Sydney newspaper reported that Begg-Smith had built his fortune by dealing in Internet “spyware,” specialized software that permits the capture of personal data without a computer user’s knowledge. Though Begg-Smith denied involvement in anything more sinister than providing technology that allows companies to monitor the effect of ad campaigns, the revelation cut into his popularity in his adopted country. He has avoided answering questions about it ever since.

No matter, because non-reaction has long been Begg-Smith’s default position, if not his defining trait. When asked once where his primary allegiance lies—Canada or Australia—he answered: “I was happy growing up in Canada, and I was happy to go to Australia.” Good runs, like his second-place finish at last week’s World Cup event in Lake Placid, N.Y., seldom elicit anything more from him than a fist-pump or two, in a sport that quite literally rewards hot-dogging and showboating. And no one should expect a catcall or two from the fans here to faze him, as Begg-Smith’s ability to shut out the distractions has been described by his former coach as “inhuman.” “He never, absolutely ever shows weakness,” his long-time coach Steve Desovich told a reporter following Begg-Smith’s big win in Turin. “He’s absolutely impenetrable.”—Charlie Gillis

Oksana Domnina & Maxim Shabalin, Ice Dancing – Russia 
Will the judges be offended?
Vancouver’s blackface moment will arrive Feb. 21. That’s when reigning ice dancing world champs Oksana Domnina and Maxim Shabalin of Russia take the ice at the Pacific National Exhibition to perform their now-infamous Aborigine-inspired dance routine. Last month in Estonia, the duo donned dark-skinned bodysuits, loincloths and “tribal” markings for a 2½ minute dance that felt more like a minstrel show. The number, which saw them stomp their skates to a musical mash-up of chanting and didgeridoos, was roundly trounced as distasteful, offensive and cringe-inducing. The skate world, however—which has come to expect awful and inappropriate costumes from the Russians—barely blinked.

Believe it or not, figure skating has actually entered a newly outlandish phase, with lilac vinyl jumpsuits, sheer tops, off-the-shoulder necklines, corsets, tassels, feathers and fur now all the rage, explains one commentator. “And then,” he adds, “there are the women.” Most blame the Russians, famously fond of fluttery, scanty, studded unitards. (Their ice dancers were also the first to try shredding their uniforms—a change that has inspired yet more tatter and fringe in a sport hardly suffering from a deficit of rips and ruffles.)

Domnina and Shabalin—who, according to media reports, appeared doe-eyed and genuinely astonished by the uproar they ignited at the European Championships—have said their wardrobes will not change ahead of the Games. If nothing else, give ’em the gold for godawful. —Nancy Macdonald

Gregor Schlierenzauer, Ski Jumping – Austria 
Austria’s high-flying eagle
How do you become a heartthrob in ski jumping? Lanky good looks, a touch of hipsterism and a $725,000 tour bus for you and your teammates is a good start. Add a sideline in abstract photography and 31 World Cup victories and you have Gregor Schlierenzauer, a 20-year-old Austrian who has supplanted the alpine skiing legend Hermann Maier as his country’s hottest Olympic commodity. Not long ago, Schlierenzauer was best known as the nephew of Markus Prock, a three-time Olympic luge medallist who now serves as Schlierenzauer’s manager. That changed in 2008-09, when the high-flier won a record 13 events to claim the World Cup title, plus two medals at the world championship in Liberec, Czech Republic.

But Schlierenzauer will be in tough at Whistler, as he currently ranks second in World Cup standings to his Swiss rival Simon Ammann, while his countryman Thomas Morgenstern runs a distant third. With all that competition, perhaps the slogan painted on the side of the Austrians’ gussied-up bus best sums up the event’s potential entertainment value: “Die adler kommen,” or in English, “The eagles are coming.”­—Charlie Gillis

Canada’s Olympians No. 6: Helen Upperton

By Nicholas KÖhler Photograph by Jean-François Bérubé - Wednesday, February 3, 2010 at 12:20 PM - 2 Comments

Bobsled pilot Helen Upperton has elevated the pre-competition ritual to the standard of high voodoo. Her brakeman, Shelley-Ann Brown, twists her hair into elaborate “speed braids” that Upperton swears make her faster. She paints her fingernails black. And, as she negotiates the vertiginous corners of the bobsled run at high speed, she chews gum—for years it was 7-Eleven blue raspberry Slurpee flavour—like some snowbound Chuck Yeager. Don’t let the hocus-pocus fool you; it all enhances wicked focus. “I could close my eyes right now and picture any track in the world, every corner,” she says. “You have to—it comes at you so fast it has to be automatic.”

She was born to British parents on a Halloween 30 years ago in Kuwait, where her father, Kerry, worked in the oil industry. For a while it looked as though she might have been born under a bad sign: as a kid in Calgary, the middle girl of three, she spent hours in hospital thanks to a penchant for daredevil antics—catapulting off banisters, sticking metal doodads into electric sockets. Her mother, Hilary, has a vivid memory of Helen hanging in her diaper from a tree she’d climbed. “The girl was an ongoing, walking emergency-room case,” says a friend. Always athletic, she played soccer (her dad was her coach) and competed in luge as a tween: “I was like, ‘Sure, it’s like super-fast tobogganing!!!’ ” says Upperton, an avid gesticulator who speaks at bobsleigh speeds—but stopped when, true to form, she crashed, nearly knocking out all her teeth. “We’d spent all these thousands on orthodontics,” says Hilary.

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Olympic secrets: Athletes bank on a lotus leaf

By Ken MacQueen - Monday, January 11, 2010 at 5:43 PM - 6 Comments

The lotus leaf has a curious property, it doesn’t get wet. Water drops bead into perfect spheres, suspended by the air trapped in billions of nano-sized hairs. What’s that have to do with Olympic athletes? Well, water equals friction and friction is the enemy of speed, and speed is the stuff of Olympic glory. And so it was that a team of University of British Columbia engineers signed on to the Top Secret Program with a mandate both simple and complicated: make Canada’s athletes go faster.

If the “hydrophobia” (water repellency) of the lotus could be applied to sled runners, skates and ski bottoms, athletes could achieve higher speeds with less energy. “The idea was to mimic Mother Nature,” says engineering professor Savvas Hatzikiriakos. Researcher Anne Kietzig, who specializes in metals, began treating alloys with a laser from the university’s physics department. “You get different structures depending on the speed and the energy used by the laser,” she says. The result, viewed under an electron microscope, was a series of micro-level bumps covered in even smaller ripples measuring 500 billionths of a metre—a metallic lotus leaf.

The plan was to send this metal out to be coated with a water repellant surface, but a strange thing happened: the metal blades coated themselves. “What I initially did was just leave my samples lying around in the lab, not really paying attention to them for three weeks and all of a sudden they were hydrophobic, which we didn’t expect” says Kietzig. The treated blades bonded with carbon from the air, creating an ultra-water repellant surface, one that can reduce drag on ice by as much as 30-60 per cent.

So far, the governing bodies for bobsled, luge and skeleton won’t allow the treated runners to be used in competition. The break-through also came too late to be incorporated by Canada’s speed skaters at the 2010 Winter Games. But insiders say treated blades are likely to be used by Canadian skaters in the future. Meantime, Kietzig is happily slipping out of the lab in February to volunteer at the Olympic speed skating oval in Richmond.

Silvio Berlusconi's tax troubles, Whistler angst, and Terry Fox's mom

By Ken MacQueen - Friday, October 16, 2009 at 8:00 AM - 0 Comments

Foster daughter
Back before Michael Bublé sold any of his 22 million CDs, he was breaking into the Los Angeles recording business under the tutelage of Canadian-born producer David Foster. He was eager, earnest and perhaps a bit lost, so Foster asked a favour of his daughter Amy S. Foster. “Can you just sort of hang out with this guy?” The two became friends, and that evolved into a musical partnership. She has written two No. 1 hits with Bublé, Home and Everything. Their latest Vancouver-written collaboration, I Just Haven’t Met You Yet, is number eight and climbing on Billboard’s adult contemporary chart. This year, Foster returned to her Canadian roots, moving north from Nashville, and added “author” to her resumé. Her first novel, When Autumn Leaves, is set in the enchanted hamlet of Avening, which resides in her imagination somewhere on the Pacific Coast between her new home in North Vancouver and her Vancouver Island birthplace. At Avening’s heart is a sisterhood of women; not witches, perhaps, but possessing extraordinary powers. “Magical, yet believable,” says her proud pop. “Every word is measured, no words wasted, no more needed. Just like her songwriting.”

These little piggies
They are called micro pigs, not teacup pigs, says their British breeder Jane Croft, and they promise to be the biggest pet craze since, well, pot-bellied pigs. But where pot-bellied pigs live up to their name, these miracles of selective breeding look less like a food source and more like lapdogs. While they indeed fit into a teacup at birth, “no animal stays the same size as it was when it was born,” writes Croft on her website, littlepigfarm.co.uk. They reach a height of 12 to 16 inches, but have several advantages over dogs. They’re easily litter-box trained and are non-allergenic, since pigs have hair, not fur. They’re so intelligent Croft only sells them in pairs so they have companionship—pigs, she says, are the fourth most intelligent species after man, monkey and dolphin. This may put them within the intellectual range of some celebrities who accessorize with small dogs—though actor Rupert Grint, who plays Ron Weasley in the Harry Potter moves, seems happy with the pair he bought. So far they aren’t available in the U.S. Sorry, Ms. Hilton. Continue…

Vancouver 2010: Lugers for sale

By Jonathon Gatehouse - Thursday, February 12, 2009 at 11:48 AM - 0 Comments

Jeff Christie knows that there will never be a “Luge Night in Canada.” And that his chances of someday gracing a trading card are slim to none. But a year before the opening ceremonies of the Vancouver Olympics—the biggest sporting event of his life, in his home town to boot—the 26-year-old might reasonably have expected that he and his buddies on Canada’s National Luge Team would have an official corporate patron. However, the feel-good money that businesses have been showering on the country’s 2010 medal hopefuls has somehow failed to fall on the guys and gals who slide feet-first down icy mountains.

So with the countdown clock ticking, Christie and his seven teammates are resorting to desperate measures. At World Cup events this weekend in Calgary, and on the Olympic track in Whistler, B.C. Feb 20-21, Canada’s lugers will be wearing “For Sale” stickers on their helmets in hopes that either pity or patriotism will finally coax a benefactor out of the woodwork. “We’re not looking for millions,” Christie says from Calgary. “Just $250,000 or $300,000.”

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Beyond 2010: Getting the kids hooked

By Jonathon Gatehouse - Tuesday, December 16, 2008 at 4:53 PM - 1 Comment

It’s normal to feel nostalgic about childhood at Christmas time. But every once in a while something really makes you wish you were still 10-years-old. Take this offer from the Canadian Luge Association: Luge recruitment camps in Whistler and Calgary, designed to introduce 10-14 year-olds to the sport. For $30 the junior sliders receive a brief introduction to the technique and the sleds, then are turned loose to “take several runs from the lowest starting point on the Olympic Bobsleigh & Luge Track.”

This story in the Whistler Question about last week’s BC event puts it all in perspective—speeds in excess of 80 km/h, starting at turn 12! All on the brand-spanking new track that host the Olympic competition next winter. There’s one more camp in Whistler this season, scheduled for Feb. 28, and two more in Calgary on 1988 legacy track, Jan 3., and Jan. 24.

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