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Vancouver Winter Olympics - News and Views
Sheriff Roland:
medal standing, mid day 4: (updated at 2:00 pm, Pacific Time)
gold silver bronze total
1 United States 1 2 4 7
2 Germany 1 3 0 4
3 France 2 0 1 3
3 Canada 1 1 1 3
3 Norway 0 2 1 3
6 Switzerland 2 0 0 2
6 South Korea 1 1 0 2
6 Italy 0 0 2 2
9 Netherlands 1 0 0 1
9 Slovakia 1 0 0 1
9 Sweden 1 0 0 1
9 Czech Republic 1 0 0 1
9 Australia 0 1 0 1
9 Estonia 0 1 0 1
9 Poland 0 1 0 1
9 Russia 0 0 1 1
9 Austria 0 0 1 1
9 Croatia 0 0 1 1
Aloysius J. Gleek:
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/blogs/bureau-blog/romney-threatened-by-air-canada-passenger/article1469196/
Monday, February 15, 2010 9:42 PM
Romney threatened on flight out of Vancouver
By Jane Taber
Republican politician Mitt Romney was physically threatened by a violent passenger on an Air Canada flight leaving Vancouver this morning.
Mr. Romney, who has been in Vancouver since Friday for the Olympic Winter Games, did not respond to the attack. Instead, he allowed the airline crew to deal with the incident, according to his spokesman Eric Fehrnstrom.
Mr. Romney, 62, and his wife, Ann, were sitting in Row 15 of the economy section of the Embrarer 190 airplane, waiting for the plane to take off when the incident happened.
The man sitting in front of Mr. Romney’s wife dropped his seat back and when Mr. Romney asked him to move it upright for takeoff, the man became “physically violent.” Another report said that the man tried to strike Mr. Romney.
“Gov. Romney did not retaliate,” said Mr. Fehrnstrom.
Mr. Romney was not injured. The pilot returned to the gate and the passenger and his bags were removed by the RCMP.
Mr. Romney ran unsuccessfully for the Republican presidential nomination in 2008. He also served as governor of Massachusetts. There is much speculation that he is preparing for another bid for the Republican nomination in 2012.
He and his wife were in Vancouver for the opening of the Olympic Winter Games. As the former president and CEO of the 2002 Salt Lake Games, the Romneys were guests of honour at these games.
They attended Friday’s opening ceremony and had always been scheduled to leave today.
About his Olympic experience in Vancouver, Mr. Romney wrote on his website: “An Olympic update from Mitt and Ann Romney shows they’re having fun in Vancouver as they take in the action at the speed skating venue. As you can see, it’s a great place to wear some great USA Olympic gear of one’s own.”
Aloysius J. Gleek:
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/02/16/sports/olympics/16lefty.html?hp
It’s Not Political, but More Canadians Are Lefties
Sidney Crosby, left, who will play for Canada in the Olympics, shoots left-handed, while Alex Ovechkin
(Russia) shoots right.
By JEFF Z. KLEIN
Published: February 15, 2010
VANCOUVER, British Columbia — What is the difference between a Canadian and an American? The old question is coming up again here at the Olympics, with answers involving eagerness for war, ketchup, the pronunciation of toque or the ability to identify poutine and the Tragically Hip.
But none may be so simple as how one holds a hockey stick. According to sales figures from stick manufacturers, a majority of Canadian hockey players shoot left-handed, and a majority of American players shoot right-handed. No reason is known for this disparity, which cuts across all age groups and has persisted for decades.
Most Canadians, like most Americans, are naturally right-handed, so the discrepancy has nothing to do with national brain-wiring. And how you hold a pencil, say, has little or no bearing on how you hold a stick. A left-handed shooter puts his right hand on top; a right-hander puts the left hand there.
For years, how a hockey player picked up his stick was of little importance. The blades were straight and a player could swing the sticks from either side. Two Hockey Hall of Famers from the mid-20th century — wing Gordie Howe and goalie Bill Dunham — actually played ambidextrously.
But the advent of curved blades in the ’60s not only spelled the end of the classic backhand shot, it also meant that manufacturers had to label sticks L and R, and inventory personnel had to ship more left-handed sticks (with the blade curving to the right) to Canada and more right-handed ones to the United States.
“I have no idea why this is so,” said Mike Mountain, who is in charge of hockey sticks for Easton, a sporting goods manufacturer based in Van Nuys, Calif. “But it has been true for years, and it doesn’t change; it stays consistent over time.”
Roughly 60 percent of the Easton hockey sticks sold in Canada are for left-handed shots, Mountain said. In the United States, he said, about 60 percent of sticks sold are for right-handed shots. Figures over the years from other manufacturers have put the ratio discrepancy between the two countries as high as 70 to 30.
The difference even trickles over into golf, where the swing is not unlike that of a slap shot. According to the Professional Golfers Association, 7 percent of Canadian golfers play left-handed, which is proportionally more than any other nationality. The reason is probably that Canadians pick up a hockey stick first and are therefore imprinted by the time they take up golf. Especially if they are from Quebec, where hockey players are even more left-handed than players in the rest of Canada.
Oddly, British Columbia — sometimes said to be the most American-like of the Canadian provinces — skews the other way. “The rest of the country goes 2 to 1 in favor of left sticks, but it’s reversed in B.C.,” said Marc Poirier, a customer service representative who handles Canadian orders for Warrior Sticks.
Europeans also tend to be left-handed shooters. The International Ice Hockey Federation does not keep figures by European nationality, the communications director Szymon Szemberg said. But, he said, lefty shooters have predominated. “For long spells, the great Soviet teams of the ’80s never had a player who shot right,” Szemberg said.
The Canadian journalist and author Bruce Dowbiggin noted the Canadian-American handedness split in his 2001 book, “The Stick: A History, a Celebration, an Elegy.” On Dowbiggin’s Web site, a reader named Kent Mayhew suggested the difference may have to do with how old a player is when he first picks up a hockey stick.
“The top hand on a hockey stick has to be able to handle the torques of a stick while the bottom hand just has to handle the weight with no torques,” he wrote. He theorized that American children, who tend to take up hockey when they are older and bigger, can afford to put the stronger hand, generally the right, on the lower part of the shaft for more precision.
A lot of experts would argue, however, that having the dominant hand on top makes for better control and stick-handling.
The United States Olympic women’s hockey coach, Mark Johnson, is in that camp, but he said: “Whether you’re living in a hotbed hockey community or you live in a naïve place where you don’t really know hockey, and you’re a mother or a father taking your daughter to a hockey shop, you’ll ask, ‘Which way do you write?’ If she says right-handed, well, she’s going to be right-handed.
“That’s generally not the way you want to do it. You want your dominant hand on top of your stick. But you look around and there’s a lot of right-handed female players, more so than with men.”
On the women’s 2010 Olympic teams, which feature 21-player rosters, 15 members of Team Canada shoot left-handed compared with 10 on Team U.S.A. On the men’s rosters, the difference is less pronounced, with 15 left-handers on Team Canada and 13 on Team U.S.A. out of 23 players on the roster.
A 2006 study found that 60 percent of all National Hockey League forwards were left-handed, as were 70 percent of all N.H.L. defensemen, but those statistics were not sorted by nationality.
Three players with Team U.S.A. said they had not noticed the discrepancy until it was brought to their attention Monday.
“I noticed a lot of righties when I was growing up, but now I see a lot of lefties,” said Ryan Suter, who plays for the Nashville Predators and shoots left-handed.
There are oddities, too. For example, all the regulars on the New Jersey Devils’ defense corps — three Americans, four Canadians and a Finn — shoot left-handed. For every left-handed-shooting Wayne Gretzky, there is a right-handed-shooting Mario Lemieux. The career top-scoring American, Mike Modano, shoots left. His predecessor as the Americans’ top career scorer, Joe Mullen, shot right.
“It’s probably a cultural quirk,” offered Brian Tran, a hockey-playing sales clerk at Cyclone Taylor Sports, a Vancouver hockey store. “Everybody’s doing it one way, so you follow along.”
He sought out Toby Higo, the only righty working at the store Monday morning, to find out how he had gone so terribly wrong.
“It’s something that comes the first time you pick up a stick when you’re a kid,” Higo said.
Parents regularly arrive at the shop uncertain about what kind of stick to buy their children. Higo said Cyclone Taylor employees apply a simple test: “We give the kid a stick and see what they do.”
Ian Austen contributed reporting.
Sheriff Roland:
medal standing, after 16 events; early day 5
gold silver bronze total
1 United States 2 2 4 8
2 Germany 1 3 1 5
3 France 2 0 2 4
3 Canada 1 2 1 4
5 Switzerland 3 0 0 3
5 South Korea 2 1 0 3
5 Norway 0 2 1 3
5 Italy 0 1 2 3
9 China 1 1 0 2
9 Czech Republic 1 0 1 2
9 Japan 0 1 1 2
12 Netherlands 1 0 0 1
12 Slovakia 1 0 0 1
12 Sweden 1 0 0 1
12 Australia 0 1 0 1
12 Estonia 0 1 0 1
12 Poland 0 1 0 1
12 Russia 0 0 1 1
12 Austria 0 0 1 1
12 Croatia 0 0 1 1
CellarDweller:
A 1-2 finish for China
By John Powers
VANCOUVER, British Columbia - Every time they’d come to Olympus, the Chinese found themselves the outsiders at their neighbors’ victory party. The Russians had owned pairs skating since the days of Comrade Khrushchev, winning the last 12 gold medals.
But what was by far the longest reign in the sport’s history at the Games came to a definitive halt last night, when Shen Xue and Zhao Hongbo and Pang Qing and Tong Jian won gold and silver ahead of the German world champions with the Russians left out in the cold. Finally, it was the Year of the Tiger.
“We have had this dream for many, many, many years,’’ Zhao said after he and his spouse held off Pang and Tong, 216.57 to 213.31, to become the oldest Olympic champions in the event since 35-year-old Oleg and 32-year-old Lyudmila Protopopov of the Soviet Union in 1968. “Every time before when we saw our flag and heard our anthem played we were wishing it was the Olympic Games.’’
China had won four world titles and three Olympic medals, including the silver and bronze in Turin, but never the gold. Since the Chinese don’t have competitive skaters in the men’s, women’s, or dance events, last night was their only chance here.
http://www.boston.com/sports/other_sports/olympics/articles/2010/02/16/a_1_2_finish_for_china/
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