Sport Performance Weekly

July 10th, 2006

Norway ski coach thrilled by parade.
The Calgary Herald

In the next life, I’m coming back as a Norwegian. I’ll give a ski pole to a Canadian Olympian, be made the Calgary Stampede Parade marshal, receive 8,000 bottles of maple syrup from total strangers and be treated like royalty for 10 days during Stampede, after which I’ll spend three glorious weeks in the Canadian Rockies and, if my luck holds, have all my beer bought for me by grateful Canadians, and quite a few meals, too.

So it is for Bjornar Hakensmoen, the Norwegian cross-country ski coach who on Friday became the toast of an adoring Calgary for his unselfish act of sportsmanship that enabled Canmore’s Sara Renner to win a silver medal at the February Winter Olympics in Turin, Italy.

After breaking a pole during a relay race with teammate Beckie Scott, Renner was handed a pole by Hakensmoen, allowing the Canadians to finish second and pushing the Norwegians to fourth.

Riding in the parade on a horse named Harold—by coincidence close to the name of Norway’s King Harald—Hakensmoen waved to an estimated crowd of 300,000 that showered him with cheers of “Yay, Norway” and “Thanks for the pole.”“It was a great moment for me, bigger than the Olympics,” said Hakensmoen. “In Italy, I received congratulations from a few hundred people. Today there were thousands. It was very exciting. This is a moment that will stay with me all my life.”

Renner, too, was overwhelmed with the outpouring of support from the crowd. “We felt the love of half a million Calgarians today. It felt like Calgarians were honouring the Olympians,” said Renner, who rode alongside Hakensmoen as co-parade marshal on a horse named Dan.

If one believes in the power of predetermined events, consider this: Renner’s parents own a backcountry ski lodge, Mount Assiniboine Lodge, that was built in the 1920s by a Norwegian, Erling Strome, who kept horses and had as his brand a broken ski pole. Renner hopes to have Hakensmoen, his wife and three children out to the lodge after Stampede.

The Norwegian cowboy surprised the crowd, including many of his fellow countrymen, by riding a horse. He said it was the first time he had been in a saddle in “10 or 15 years.”

Most Norwegians can’t understand why Canadians are making such a fuss over Hakensmoen, the Norwegian consul said. In their country, where skiing is the national sport, it is expected protocol to assist a competing skier with an equipment problem. “We believe in competing on equal ground. It’s a sense of fair play,” said Hakensmoen.

Hakensmoen says he has been showered with gifts from Canadians, including Canadian-made bars of soap and 8,000 bottles of maple syrup. “They don’t know quite what to do with it all,” Bjornsem said. “Norwegians don’t use maple syrup in the morning.”

Hakensmoen’s wife, Ingum Embretsen, thought her husband looked handsome sitting tall in the saddle. “He was a very nice cowboy,” she said. “I think we should do much more cowboy things in Norway.” Added Hakensmoen, who is retiring as the Norwegian coach: “The advice I’m passing on to my successor is to give a Canadian a ski pole and they will bring you to Calgary and treat you like a king.

Canada Downs Australia at the Wheelchair Basketball World Championships.
CWBA

Team Canada women defeated Australia 52-37 today in the last game of round robin play at the 2006 Gold Cup World Championships in Amsterdam.  Canada finishes on top of Pool B with a 3-0 record and will play the loser of the Netherlands vs Japan game later today.  In other action, USA handled Germany surprisingly easily to win Pool A.

Canada cruised to the 52-37 win.  Australia played a very good game but were no match for Canada.  Peers had a double double with 26 points and 14 rebounds, while Radke continued her solid all round play with 7 points, 12 rebounds, 5 assists and 2 steals. Benoit also had 7 points to go with 4 assists, and Harnock and Pettinicchi had 4 points each.  Other scorers for Canada were Krempien and Ohama with 2 each.

After the game Richmond’s Trish Nicholson, assistant coach, said “We played really great defense and then had lots of opportunities to score quality shots.  We ran out of space on the shot chart for the close in shots!.”  Head coach Tim Frick of Douglas College in New Westminster stated “We’re right where we want to be going in to the semi finals.  It was a bit rough out there today but we kept our focus and were never in danger of losing control of the tempo.  When we shoot a paltry 32% and hold the opponent to 27%, you know it’s defense that will win.”
Next up for Canada is the quarter finals on Tuesday evening at 8pm Amsterdam time, followed by a practice day on Wednesday.  Semis and final placing games go on Thursday and Friday.  Canada’s men defeated Japan earlier to sit atop their pool undefeated as well.

Kevin Bogetti Smith’s photography web pages at http://homepage.mac.com/bogetti/goldcup06/PhotoAlbum149.html

Canada defeats the USA on the final day of the FINA Women’s World Water Polo League.

Ottawa – Canada A defeated the US National Team 11-9 this evening at the FINA Women’s World League in Ste-Foy, Quebec.  Canada played a strong offensive game against the US.  In the last game of the tournament, Canada B struggled through their game and lost to Brazil 8-1. All three National Teams will advance to the semi-finals of the Water Polo League in Los Alamitos (CA) July 12-16.  The top 3 will then advance to the finals in Cosenza, Italy from July 26-30. 

Head Coach Pat Oaten says: “The team used the tournament to build on the experience of the players.  The team can be happy with their performance this past weekend.  This event basically gave the coaches a good opportunity to see how they need to move into the next phase of the Water Polo League which is the semi-finals in Los Alamitos where only the top 3 advance to the finals.”

Lightweights in name only.
By CP

LUCERNE, Switzerland—The lightweight women’s double of Mara Jones of Aurora and Tracy Cameron of Shubenacadie, N.S., took gold yesterday at the prestigious Lucerne rowing world cup.

It was a dominant performance for the Canadians, who won each of their races.
“I trust Tracy 100%,” said Jones, a 2004 Olympian. “We had the opportunity to work together under pressure and it all seemed to come together.”

“This regatta was really about building our confidence and we really connected, not just during the races but in practice,” Cameron said. “We le

arned a lot and now we have to come back to Canada and work on the details.”
Also yesterday, the lightweight men’s double of Matt Jensen of Innerkip, Ont., and Liam Parsons of Thunder Bay, Ont., won the B final in 6:27.16 -- finishing seventh overall.

Canada’s lightweight men’s four was third in its B final in 6:09.29, to finish ninth overall. The crew members are Vancouver’s John Sasi, Victoria’s Mike Lewis, Edmonton’s Terry McKall and Iain Brambell of Victoria. “Overall it was a good regatta for us,” said men’s lightweight coach Bent Jensen. “Doug got the silver (yesterday) in the single, and all the crews learned something from racing in Lucerne.”

Canadian crews will participate in a time trial Aug. 2 in London, Ont., before heading overseas to prepare for the world championships in England later in the month

Canadians run out of gas in final: Australia 6 Canada 4. Women battle through back door, but just come up short.
The Vancouver Province

For quite a while Sunday night, Softball City looked a lot like Upset City. Team Canada, behind the seemingly bionic right arm of Burnaby’s Danielle Lawrie looked like they might just pull off the upset of the Canada Cup tournament and beat mighty Australia in Sunday’s final.

It wasn’t to be. The Australians, silver medallists at the 2004 Athens Olympics and the world’s No. 2-ranked team behind the U.S., rallied from a 2-0 deficit with a run in the fourth and then a five-run fifth before finally holding off a two-run Canadian rally in the seventh. Final score: Australia 6 Canada 4.

Final thoughts: Canada, making its first Canada Cup final since 1996, has a lot to build on heading into next month’s 2006 world championships in Beijing, where four berths for the 2008 Olympics are up for grabs. “We’ve come together a lot in this tournament,” said Lawrie, who was voted best pitcher in the tournament. “It might have been hard to see from the outside but there’s a lot more trust going on. There are a lot of good things going into Beijing.”

‘A NATIONAL TREASURE’; ANDY HIGGINS HAS BEEN HELPING PEOPLE BE THEIR BEST FOR OVER 40 YEARS
The Toronto Sun

Coach Andy Higgins inspires superlatives in the people whose lives he’s touched. They say he’s “a national treasure” and the “greatest human being in the universe.” But for the boyish 69-year-old who wears Bermuda shorts and a T-shirt around his National Coaching Institute Ontario office, what really matters is caring more passionately about the person than the game—in coaching and in life.“When you care enough, you demand that people live up to their potential,” Higgins said.
This philosophy has made him a legend in amateur sports and one of the greatest track and field coaches in Canada.

He was instrumental in developing coaching education in Canada and was a founding member and past-president of the Canadian Professional Coaches Association. Raised in northern Ontario near Dryden, Higgins was a natural athlete, blessed with parents who encouraged him to go to university where he was drawn to teaching.

In the early 1960s, with more teaching jobs than teachers, he was quickly hired to teach physical education and to do counselling at Northern Secondary School in Toronto because of his innate ability to draw kids out. “Guidance was the most influential factor in my approach to working with people because it defined some inner feelings I couldn’t define on my own,” he said. “I learned about the significance and need of self-esteem and respect, and that adults must enhance them.”

After teaching high school for 10 years, he took over the fledgling University of Toronto track and field program, and, for the next 24 years, built it into an incubator of winning athletes and even more winning human beings.

Higgins has had his share of wins—with the Varsity Blues track and field and cross-country teams, with athletes in every Olympic Games from 1972 to 1996, and at countless World Championships and Commonwealth Games. He trained two Olympic decathletes—Michael Smith and David Steen—and other medalists, including Jill Ross, Donna Smelley and Louise Hannah.

Calgarian rolls to world mark.
The Calgary Herald

Meaghan Buisson is moving over to blades, but she’s still hell on wheels. Among other accomplishments this weekend at the Canadian in-line speed skating championships in Montreal, Buisson set a world record.

The Saskatoon native and Calgary resident skated the women’s solo marathon in one hour, 18 minutes, 15.68 seconds. “My favourite skating route back home was Saskatoon to Aberdeen, straight into a headwind, jumping road kill,” joked Buisson from Montreal on Saturday. “My strength as an in-liner always was just going hard, all-out, in time trials. So we looked at the record, looked at the time, and I said: ‘I can beat that.’ “

Buisson has also rewritten national records in winning the 300-, 500- and 1,000-metre time trials and 10K points races at Montreal. Of particular pride? Beating Cindy Klassen’s seven-year-old national mark of 29.1 seconds in the 300 with a 28.4, and becoming the first Canadian woman to clock a sub-29-second finish.

Buisson, 26, spent two summers privateering on the in-line speed skating World Cup circuit in Europe, winning the Lille French Inline Cup in 2004, but was recruited last year for the Canadian long-track speed skating team as part of the Own the Podium program leading up to the 2010 Winter Olympics at Vancouver/Whistler. “In-line is all pack racing -- 200 girls all going 40-plus kilometres an hour. A lot of sprints, a lot of attacks. Very dynamic,” she said. “But in-line isn’t a funded, carded sport in Canada. There’s very little recognition. I’ve had four concussions and a cranial fracture. Here’s an opportunity—let’s see what happens.”

ALPINE CANADA ALPIN ENDORSES SURVIVAL PLAN FOR NORQUAY. Urges Ottawa to Keep Historic Banff Ski Resort Alive by Allowing Summer Use.

CALGARY,  Alberta (July 6th, 2006) – Alpine Canada Alpin announced today its full support for environmentally progressive plans to keep alive the historic Mount Norquay ski area in Banff National Park.

In an open letter to the organization’s more than 200,000 members, President Ken Read said Alpine Canada Alpin endorses all current efforts to restore the financial viability and ensure long term survival of Banff Mount Norquay, which celebrates its 80th anniversary this season.

Mr. Read said ACA encourages the federal government and Parks Canada to endorse the world-calibre ParksForever proposal submitted by the owners of Mount Norquay including Canadian Alpine Ski Team member Thomas Grandi and his family.

“Parks Forever is environmentally strong, and would be available to visitors year round. Norquay is asking Parks Canada to advance the Parks Forever proposal in a new long range plan, one which will undergo the most stringent independent environmental assessment in the country,” wrote Mr. Read.

Mount Norquay, the smallest of the Banff area resorts, is the only one currently denied summer use. In order to ensure survival, owners have advanced a world-calibre interpretive and sight-seeing program designed to showcase the core values of Parks Canada while reducing the actual size of the resort and its building footprint.

“Norquay is losing money because it is allowed to operate in the winter only. Norquay, located in close proximity to the Town of Banff, is in danger of closing unless new revenues can be generated during the summer months. The owners have proposed to Parks Canada a world-calibre education and interpretive program entitled Parks Forever.  The proposal highlights the values of Canada’s first national park and will provide the resources required to sustain and enhance winter activities,” Read added.

Banff Mount Norquay, a key partner of Alpine ski racing in Alberta, has welcomed skiers to its slopes in 1926 and has hosted many national, provincial and regional championships.
 
For complete open letter from ACA President Ken Read please visit www.canski.org

For more details about Banff Mount Norquay’s Parks Forever proposal, and to show your support, please visit  www.friendsofnorquay.com

To read ACA President Ken Read’s Open letter, click here...

Sport Alberta - A Voice for the Importance of Sport in our Province.

Sport Alberta (SA) was formed to represent the voice for sport in Alberta with Government and the corporate community to enable them to gain a better understanding of the need for sport investment and policy. It is of great importance that we continue to advocate at both the Provincial and National levels to gain attention to the value and need for sports funding. Therefore, Sport Alberta has a deliberate strategy to inform people about the values and benefits of sport.

Over the past year, the volunteer directors of SA have undertaken many projects based on our mission and designed to elevate the importance of sport in Alberta. We would like to thank our members and member organizations who have contributed to SA’s mission in a variety of ways: time, resources, expertise, and connection to sport or personal networks.

For your consideration, we are pleased to provide a brief overview of our activities and what you as a member, can look forward to seeing in the future:

1.        Sport Alberta, in partnership with the Sport Matters Group, collected and positioned a series of key messages to politicians and stakeholders to provide a common message of the value for sport in Alberta and Canada.

In the months leading up to the Federal election on January 23, 2006, Sport Alberta circulated materials developed by the Sport Matters Group related to the importance of sport and specifically focused on a Federal election strategy, the Speech from the Throne and the April 2006 federal budget.

Along with those messages, Sport Alberta is reaching out to sport partners and Provincial Sport Associations through communication, discussions and stakeholder meetings, to ensure that in the future, sport in Alberta is working collectively on common goals and ground.

2.        Over the last year, a website has been launched (www.sportalberta.ca). Through this, various sources of information are being provided as part of the communications plan, enabling SA to reach out to its members, and to all levels of government, emphasizing the importance of sport and physical activity. The website contains sample advocacy materials and key links to other sport advocacy related agencies/organizations.

Correspondence was sent to various Members of the Legislative Assembly in Alberta to press the issue, and to ensure our message was heard.

3.        Some effort was devoted to media relations and this resulted in coverage of SA and our mission and a profiling of sport in a variety of media outlets. Examples include Impact Magazine, the Calgary Herald, and Fan 960 Radio, etc.

4.        The goal to establish Alberta as the number one province for sport athlete participation, development and excellence by 2010, continues to be our main objective. For that to occur however, various organizations within Alberta must assist in our efforts. Commitment to this vision is critical to the success of our advocacy efforts. A person’s most valuable resource is their time, and people have a choice of where and how they invest it. We are seeking more members who are willing to assist in our efforts.

5.        While Sport Alberta leads the way in enhancing the sport culture within the province, other organizations are assisting in this effort. The Alberta Sport, Recreation, Parks and Wildlife Foundation is a key contributor to this vision. This organization has supported the execution and funding of the Alberta Sport Plan by focusing on key recommendations such as the need for regional sport centres and increased coaching development funds and programs. It is proposed that a regional sport centre concept be advocated through Alberta’s Colleges and Universities and the Ministry of Advanced Education. SA has developed a position paper on the regional sport centre concept and is seeking feedback (via our website) on this document.

In the future, The Board of Directors will continue to oversee the advancement of Sport Alberta’s three core strategies:
•        Alignment - Build Alliances … Create Focus.
•        Advancement - Take Responsibility… Be Accountable.
•        Activation - Be Leaders… Be Champions.

2006-2007 Board of Directors

Dale Henwood, Chair                Canadian Sport Centre Calgary
Scott Hayes, Vice Chair                Gymnastics Alberta
Susan Bulmer, Sec/Treas.                Skate Canada: Alberta – NWT/Nunavut
Gary Shelton                        Edmonton Sport Council
Margaret Phelan                        Business
John Jacobsen                        Alberta Long Term Care Safety Association
David Legg                        Mount Royal College
Wayne Meadows                        Calgary Separate School District
Don Wilson                        University of Calgary
Peter Wong                        Business
Scott Robinson                        Hockey Alberta Foundation

OLYMPIC MEDALLISTS KLASSEN AND HOLLINGSWORTH-RICHARDS HELP OPEN NEW CALGARY SPORT CLINIC.

Calgary—Mellisa Hollingsworth-Richards and Cindy Klassen will be on hand to officially open a new Calgary sports therapy clinic owned by many of the personal trainers that helped propel them to the Olympic podium.

The staff at Calgary Sports Therapy has offered Mellisa world-class treatment over the years and she is appearing at the Grand Opening to show her support.  Hollingsworth-Richards will also be showing her appreciation for coach and strength consultant to the Canadian Sport Centre Calgary, Stuart McMillan, at the Grand Opening as he is opening up a new business in association with Calgary Sports Therapy, Corporate Fitness Coaching. 

Corporate Fitness Coaching at Calgary Sports Therapy is a premium, personal training/coaching service dedicated to bringing World-class fitness workouts to Calgary’s local business men and women who are looking for the attention and quality currently only enjoyed by Canada’s top Olympians.

what: Calgary Sports Therapy’s Grand Opening celebrating it’s two new locations, downtown and Riverside.
who: Mellisa Hollingsworth-Richards, 2006 Olympic Bronze Medallist and Cindy Klassen, 6-time Olympic Medallist.
where: Calgary Sports Therapy’s new downtown location, on the corner of 11 Ave. and 7th. SW, 5th floor.
when: Monday, July 10th, 2006, 11:30am