Hudec rewrites history book Calgarian is the first Canadian man to win a silver medal at the worldsTheGlobe and Mail

Alpine skier Jan Hudec has never been so happy to lose a bet.

The 25-year-old put himself in the unusual position of being a winner and a loser at the same time by making history on a misty slope in Are, Sweden, yesterday.

He became the first Canadian man to win a silver medal at the world alpine ski championships. And the Calgarian won it in the blue-ribbon discipline of downhill.
Hudec is also only the third Canadian male to win any medal at the world championships.

Jim Hunter won bronze in the combined discipline at the 1972 Olympics in Sapporo, Japan, when the event was also considered a world championship. Steve Podborski also won bronze in the downhill at the 1980 Olympics at Lake Placid, N.Y. Hudec is the first Canadian man to win a medal since the rules changed to separate the events 26 years ago.

On Saturday night, during a team meeting, Hudec said the Canadian contingent made a “little-boys-club” deal: If a Canadian man failed to make the podium in the downhill, one of the Canadian trainers would have to get a mohawk haircut.
The other side of the deal stipulated that the Canadian men would have to get mohawks if one of them won a medal. “As much as I wanted to see one of the trainers with a mohawk, I’d rather be on the podium,” Hudec said.

Hudec, Erik Guay of Mont-Tremblant, Que., and Manuel Osborne- Paradis of Vancouver are all sporting the new haircuts today. Guay, considered one of the bright lights of the Canadian team, finished fourth yesterday, only 0.02 of a second from the podium. But who expected Hudec to be the one to precipitate a race for the shears?

Hudec is also one of the few skiers on the circuit who is married with children. At home in Calgary he left a young wife (Crystal) and an 11-month-old son (Oakland), a mortgage and a balky car that leaves him cursing every time he goes home. With Hudec’s three major knee injuries over the past three years, he and his family have had to juggle to make ends meet.

“With the injuries, I haven’t made a lot of money the last few years,” he said. “It’s been really stressful. I just believed something would come up as long as I was patient and worked hard.” His previous best finish at an international event was a seventh in the downhill at Lake Louise, Alta., in 2004. Hudec figures that over the past two years, he’s visited a Calgary physiotherapist for a total of 270 days.

“The whole time, I didn’t really lose faith,” he said. “I think I always knew I could do it. . . . I never even thought of a reason why I should stop trying to be the best I can be.”

While Hudec’s score yesterday was colourful, so is his history. He was born in communist Czechoslovakia in 1981. While his mother, Vladi, was pregnant with him, she helped Hudec’s father Jan, an alpine ski coach and a former downhiller, test a small two- person sailboat that he was building at his mother’s house.

The Hudecs used the boat to defect when the world silver medalist was only 10 or 11 months old in 1982. They eventually wound up in Red Deer, Alta. “I guess he was crazy,” Hudec said yesterday. “But I’m glad he was.”

Wearing bib No. 2, Hudec was astonished to find that he finished his run about two seconds faster than the guy wearing bib No. 1. “That’s just crazy and I thought the guy made a big mistake,” Hudec said.

He was defeated only by his good friend Aksel Lund Svindal of Norway, who finished first in 1:44.68 with a flawless run. Patrik Jaerbyn of Sweden was third in 1:45.65. Defending champion Bode Miller of the United States was seventh.

Two out of two for Jennifer Heil
Airborn News

La Plagne, France – Jennifer Heil does it again! After her moguls win on Monday, the Alberta native took the dual moguls event at the World Cup races in La Plagne, France. On the men’s side, Pierre-Alexandre Rousseau took home the silver.

In the final, Heil bested Norwegian Ingrid Bernsten. “After my performance on Monday, I just had a good feeling,” said Heil. “I like duals. I was going really fast. Besides, it was a lot of fun,” she added with a burst of laughter. This victory gives the Olympic champion the lead in World Cup standings. She’s delighted to be taking over first place from American Shannon Bahrke, who was ninth on Tuesday.

“Shannon was putting a lot of pressure on me from the start of the season by having the leader’s yellow bib. It was important for me to attack and win again today because I wanted to prove that I could win two races in a row,” Heil said cheerfully.

Now settled in Montreal, she again dedicated her win to good friend Sandra Laoura who was injured at Mont-Gabriel early this year.

Kristi Richards found herself off the podium for the second time in two days. Richards, who hails from Summerland, British Columbia, appeared to take the result in stride, even after bowing to Sweden’s Sara Kjellin in the dual for the bronze medal. “I’m really happy,” she said.

“Race after race, I’m improving, turning in solid performances on a regular basis. It’s fantastic to get these kinds of results. I feel that with every start, I’m in the running for a medal.”

Stéphanie St-Pierre, who was last in the singles competition, came back in the duals, winning a seventh place. Audrey Robichaud finished 11th, and Sylvia Kerfoot, Jackie Brown and Marie-Josée Lessard finished 12th, 20th and 22nd respectively.

Canada's luge athletes bring home some silver hardware after finishing second overall in season-long team competition

WINTERBERG, GER – Canada’s luge team is bringing home a silver medal for finishing second in the overall standings in the World Cup team competition, the culmination of a season-long battle against the world’s best luge athletes in all disciplines.

Canada’s team consisting of Calgary brothers Chris and Mike Moffat, Meaghan Simister, of Regina, and another Calgarian, Jeff Christie, finished Friday’s final team event in fifth-place, with a combined time of two minutes 30.002 seconds, a mere three one hundredths out of the bronze medal position. The fifth-place result on the Winterberg track in Germany was enough to keep Canada in second place in the overall standings.

“I am happy with the end result of our finish today,” said Christie, who added finishing on the podium in a season-long event represents consistency which is critical in the sport and something the team strives to achieve each race. “Our goal was to maintain our medal position in the overall standings. It is awesome to be able to stand on the podium as a team.”

The team competition underwent a few changes this season, moving to a relay format during the January 7, 2007, World Cup in Königssee, Germany. Every team consists of a doubles team, one female and one male, who each complete one run for a combined final time.

“We use a modified start technique for this type of race,” said Simister. “We stay in what is called a compression position, meaning you are at the farthest point back and pull forward on the handles as soon as the green light goes on. I think all our practice in the (CODA’s) Ice House at (Canada Olympic Park) during the summer really pays off for this kind of event.”

Simister was a new edition to the team event this weekend as regular women’s competitor, Regan Lauscher returned home to Canada after sustaining a concussion following a crash in Altenberg, Germany, a few weeks ago. Lauscher, of Red Deer, Alta., was part of the team events in Calgary, Nagano, and Königssee, where Canada finished second, fourth and third respectively.

Simister’s ability to fill in on one of the fastest sleds on the national team is a testament to the depth and talent that is now in the Canadian luge program.

Olympic clock counts down to Games Today is three years until opening day
The Globe and Mail

Exactly three years from today, Vancouver and the spectacular ski paradise of Whistler take their place on the international stage, playing host to the world for the 2010 Winter Olympics.

The dramatic milestone will be marked by an elaborate noon ceremony to unveil a large countdown clock in the heart of downtown Vancouver, ticking off the seconds to Feb. 12, 2010, when the Games begin.

“Every day, people will walk by there and see a different number and realize we are now on a time plan,” says John Furlong, the tireless man at the top of the Vancouver Olympic Organizing Committee. “The Games are coming. They’re happening, and this will be the first really graphic reference to show that.”
Mr. Furlong has reason to be pumped.

Rarely has an Olympics seemed to be in such good shape so far ahead of time.
Despite a big $110-million boost in construction costs, no venues are seriously behind schedule, and many are expected to be competition-ready two years in advance of 2010.

There has been very little recent controversy, not a whiff of scandal, and what Olympic opposition there is remains weak and scattered. Still, recent omens have not been good.

“No matter what happens, it raises your awareness of the risks ahead. It’s a silver lining for an organization like this. . . . It reminds you not to underestimate what you might have to deal with.”

The only blot on the Olympic copybook at the moment is a serious shortage of non-athlete accommodation for staff and media assigned to the Whistler arm of the Games. VANOC is now trying to whip up community enthusiasm in the Squamish area to solve the problem.

Otherwise, Mr. Furlong said, VANOC is bang on target to meet its goal of delivering the most spectacular Games it can for the least possible amount of money.

Cost pressures have prompted a number of changes in Olympic plans, prompting some to wonder whether the Games might be too modestly staged to be memorable, particularly with the opening and closing ceremonies, along with public medal presentations, held indoors for the first time.

There are those who believe the spirit of the 2010 Games may well be at its most magical amid the magnificent soaring peaks of snow-packed Whistler, rather than in Vancouver, the largest city to play host to a Winter Games and one far more prone to rain than snow.

But Mr. Furlong couldn’t be more enthusiastic about the host city. Even from a distance of three years, he has a vision of intense excitement ahead and an entire population caught up in Olympic fever.

He sees an “Olympic precinct,” running from English Bay, up Robson Street, all the way to B.C. Place, an area where the spirit of the Games will thrive. Mr. Furlong wants Vancouverites to feel they “own” the Games. “We want visitors to experience a sense of awe while they are here, and for that to happen, the town has to be smitten with the spirit of contribution,” he said.

“It’s the fellow behind the counter at Starbucks, the bus driver, the taxi driver, the guy at the airport. We want them to be wholly welcoming, almost spiritual,” Mr. Furlong enthused. “We want everyone to be part of the drama, the human interaction, the spirit that there is around town. Our goal is to inspire that.”

Canada’s winter athletes learning to deal with the pressure of 2010
CP Wire

The banging on the 2010 Olympic drum was getting too loud for Pierre Lueders.

“All I read about is 2010 and we’re forgetting about the years in between,” the Olympic champion bobsled driver said at his first World Cup race this season.
“If there is this type of hype four years out, it’s going to be quite stifling for a lot of the athletes to overcome that, so I think we need to sit back a little bit,” Lueders continued. “Just stay calm and let the athletes do what they need to do without putting more pressure on them than what’s required at the time.”

Canada’s goal for the 2010 Winter Games in Vancouver and Whistler, B.C., is to win more medals than any other country. The projection is that 35 medals should do it.

That is an ambitious target for a country that has never finished first at any Winter or Summer Games and hasn’t won a single gold at the two Olympics it has hosted. So the demands on Canada’s winter athletes, currently in the thick of World Cups and world championships, are unprecedented.

Could they burn out on the 2010 Olympics before they even get there?

“It definitely feels like 2010 now,” cross-country skier Chandra Crawford said. “That’s how hyped up everyone is about it. There’s a lot of buzz around it. Everyone is really focused on it as though it is in the very near future.”

As an athlete who will try to defend the Olympic gold medal she won last year in Turin, Italy, Crawford admits sometimes the pressure feels overwhelming. “I’ve talked to (freestyle skier) Jenn Heil about that and how we’re in the unique situation of having won in 2006 and that creates pressure to perform again,” she said. “But if you look at pressure, it may come from people around you, but the most brutal pressure is what you put on yourself. “If you can defuse the bomb of pressure, you’ll be fine.”

The chief executive officer of the Canadian Olympic Committee says athletes and their coaches shouldn’t be taken aback by the sustained attention. “To use a crass phrase, you can’t suck and blow at the same time,” Chris Rudge said.

“The amateur sport community for years has decried the fact they didn’t get the coverage that professional sport got. “You can’t turn around now when it’s there and say ‘Wait a minute, we didn’t want all this attention.”

Elite luge racer Regan Lauscher said “it’s possible” that 2010 hype could wear down Canada’s athletes, but alpine skier Manuel Osborne-Paradis, who reached the World Cup podium for the first time in his career this season, doesn’t think so.

“There’s not enough pressure,” he declared. “Canadians, we are just wimps. We don’t put enough pressure on a lot of people. “There are a lot of countries that put pressure on their athletes all the time to do great things at certain places. That’s exactly what we are doing right now. That’s what we need to do. That’s what is going to make us get medals at the Olympics.”

“Canada is a nice country. We’re nice. We like personal bests, we like people feeling happy, but when it comes to it, we athletes have to be accountable and we have to go out and perform,” said Jeff Christie of the Canadian luge team. “It’s almost helping me, this 2010-thing. You have to get it done.”

Women’s hockey team captain Hayley Wickenheiser agrees the country is extremely focused on 2010, but sees it as positive momentum. “In most cases, people jump on the bandwagon the year before the Olympics,” Wickenheiser said. “It would be nice, with the Olympics in our home country, that people talk about what’s happening now every year heading into it.

“Anybody who doesn’t want that pressure or doesn’t think there will be that pressure is kidding themselves as an athlete.”

Athletes need to have a plan on how they will deal with the spotlight, said speedskater Kristina Groves. “I see the stuff that’s in the papers and I see it on television,” said the Olympic silver medallist. “You have to accept it’s going to be there because it’s a home Games and how are you going to deal with that?”

Crawford plans to address it through sessions with Winnipeg sports psychologist Cal Botterill. “As far as the danger of burning the athletes out with all the pressure to perform there, I think our best safeguard against that is to keep up the sports psychology work,” she said.

Alpine Canada chairman Ken Read, a former Olympian and Crazy Canuck on the men’s ski team, stressed the need for athletes to prepare themselves now for the demands that will be placed on them in Vancouver and Whistler.

“There are going to be lots of sponsor demands, there is going to be family and friends, there is going to be a media frenzy,” Read said. “Now is the time to start devising the strategies and learning to deal with it because at the end of the day, it makes you a better athlete and a champion.”

The COC is holding a series of workshops for athletes in which they get advice from former Olympians and is also asking the national sport orgainzations to include in their plans for 2010 strategies for helping their athletes deal with increased attention and expectations.

“Pierre is probably right if we don’t prepare the athletes to handle this the right way,” Rudge said. “We have to put pressure on ourselves to make sure we give them the support they need.”

And while athletes may feel the glare of the spotlight like never before, there are those working behind the scenes to make their lives easier in other areas, said John Furlong, head of the Vancouver organizing committee.

“We have to support them and make it easy for them to play, perform and train,” Furlong said. “Make sure they don’t have to worry about having food to eat and they don’t have to worry about coaches and therapists and sport science and medicine and all those things.”

The ambitious goal for 2010 and a plan to get there has helped athletes get money from the corporate and government sector. “That’s one of the things that has allowed us to get the kind of resources and money that we’ve gotten like the Own The Podium program,” Rudge said.

“Funding partners like to hear this kind of language. They like to see accountability and a clearly articulated vision with a path to get there and a means of evaluating what you’ve done.”

Perhaps it was the snarling beaver painted on the top of skeleton racer Jeff Pain’s helmet, but Canada’s performance in Turin seemed to indicate a change in the country’s usual expectations from a Games with a handful of medals, some personal-best performances and a mid-pack finish in the medal standings.

“For the first time that I can remember as a volunteer in the Canadian sport system, I really think the country has come to believe we could possibly win the Olympics,” Furlong said.

Hbc Run for Canada raises cash for athletes
The Regina Sun

In the world of sport, being an amateur athlete is expensive on so many levels—from the equipment, to training schedules and facilities, it’s a definite drain on the finances—so much so that some talented athletes even end up leaving sport because they can’t afford to train and support themselves at the same time.

Ongoing funding is a welcome relief for many athletes, as they are hard pressed to come up with the money required to train and compete.
In recent years, the competition for funding from Sports Canada has become increasingly intense.

For example, travel costs to national and international competitions are no longer covered for athletes in sports such as swimming and boxing.
While equipment costs vary depending on the sport ($40,000 for a bobsled, $80 for a swimsuit), and are sometimes paid for by the sport association or team, the costs for travelling across the country and around the world to compete and train falls to the athletes and their families.

In 2004, the Hbc Foundation launched the Hbc Run for Canada in Ottawa.
The 10K run, 3K family walk, and kid friendly 1K fun run, takes place each year on July 1. Today, the run has expanded across Canada with events in Victoria, Vancouver, Calgary, Red Deer, Saskatoon, Winnipeg, Windsor, Toronto, Algonquin Park, Ottawa, Montreal, Halifax and St. John’s.

The goal of the 2007 run is to raise $2 million. Of this, the Hbc Foundation will grant a $5,000 bursary to 200 of Canada’s most promising amateur athletes.

Remaining proceeds will be invested in Canada’s sport organizations and national training centres. “All Canadians have the opportunity to directly support our country’s athletes through programs such as the Hbc Run for Canada, said Simon Whitfield, triathlete, 2000 Olympic Games gold medalist and seven-time World Cup winner.

“By walking or running on July 1 we can start to ensure our athletes are geared up and ready for all the competitions leading up to Vancouver 2010 and beyond.”