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Sport Performance Weekly
March 26th , 2007 |
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National Post
AOMORI, Japan - A morning earthquake here in northern Japan—centred just a few hundred miles away and registering 7.1 on the Richter scale—might have been a prelude to Canada’s thunderous power on the curling ice.
Canada’s Kelly Scott beat back a revitalized Denmark squad to win the 2007 world women’s curling championship 8-4 yesterday, the first adult world curling title ever awarded in Asia. “We were on a mission today,” said Scott, the diminutive skip from Kelowna, B.C. “The girls were on a mission.”
It marked Canada’s 14th world women’s title, with Scott becoming the only skip in history to win both the world championship and world junior championship. Scott (nee Mackenzie) also won the 1995 junior championship in Perth, Scotland.
One year ago, Canadian curling fans were calling for Scott’s head on a platter. The team stumbled through the worlds on home ice in Grande Prairie, Alta., managing a bronze medal but undergoing withering criticism for aimless strategy and poor shot execution.
Yesterday, following a run of 24-3 in its last two tournaments—the Tournament of Hearts and the world championship—the B.C. foursome is clearly the most efficient women’s curling machine. “So many things happened to this team [in the last year],” said coach Gerry Richard.“If you count the Olympic trials, we had three major events in three months. We learned a lot, and we went to work on improvements.”
The new champions are prepared to continue improving. “We’re at about 80-85% of our potential right no w,” Richard said. “We can produce a little more.”
Canada would have earned 14 Olympic points toward qualifying status for the 2010 Olympic Winter Games, but are pre-qualified as the host nation. Denmark received 12 Olympic points, while bronze medallist Scotland, skipped by Kelly Wood, grabbed 10 points.
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The Gazette (Montreal)
China won the day, but Alexandre Despatie believes he made a point with his silver medal.
After a year away from diving with a neck injury, the 21-year-old from Laval showed his rivals at the World Aquatics Championships that he is back.
“I’m very happy about this competition because I haven’t competed at this level for over a year,” Despatie told Canadian reporters in a conference call after the three-metre springboard.
“I didn’t know how I was going to react to the level of competition after being out for so long. So I’m very, very happy that I started pretty much where I left off last year. It’s looking good for the next couple of months, for this coming season and for next year.”
Qin Kai won the gold, giving the Chinese their sixth victory at the world championships.
Despite the Chinese run, Despatie is not in awe of them. “I don’t believe that they are invincible,” he said. “They’ve been beaten before, they will be beaten again. They’re human, they make mistakes. The proof is there. One of them today didn’t have a very good final at all.” The other was flawless, Despatie allowed.
Despatie, who swept the one-metre and three-metre titles in Montreal two years ago, couldn’t make up enough points on his last dive. He edged Russia’s Dmitry Sautin by 1.58 points for the silver. Despatie said he made a couple of minor mistakes, but no big ones.
In the women’s final, He won with 316.65 points - 5.45 better than Hartley, who was the champion two years ago in Montreal and in 2001 in Fukuoka, Japan.
Yuliya Pakhalina of Russia took the bronze
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He, a 16-year-old diving in her second major international meet, overtook Hartley for first place on her fourth dive. He’s reverse 21/2 somersault received 72.00 points - her highest score of the five-dive final. “She is a girl who was absolutely fantastic,” Hartley said. “I have a lot of respect for her.”
Hartley led through three rounds and earned mostly 8.5s for her fourth dive. But He, diving last, did the more difficult dive, which propelled her into the lead for good. “I was incredibly nervous on my fourth dive. It could have gone a little better,” Hartley said. “There is always pressure to come in as a world champion and to defend your title.” |
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The Globe and Mail
TOKYO - They were agonizingly close and yet so far.
Last year Marie-France Dubreuil and Patrice Lauzon lost the gold medal at the world figure skating championships by only 0.4 points. Yesterday, they won silver again, losing gold to the same Bulgarian team. This time they fell short by 1.15 points.
“We have a saying: ‘If you aim for the moon and miss, you’ll end up with the stars,’ “ Lauzon said. “We didn’t win but we still have our silver medal and I think we’ll be very happy thinking about it tomorrow.”
The silver for ice dancing has been Canada’s only medal at the world championships. “We skated a very good free dance,” Dubreuil said. “It felt joyful and free. And we really enjoyed skating here in Japan. After the [compulsory dance this week] and all season, we kind of had the gold medal in the corner of our mind, and we trained and tried to be the best we can be to win that gold medal.”
Dubreuil and Lauzon’s silver medal feels very different from the one they secured last year. Dubreuil said she and Lauzon had more pressure last year because the world championships were in Canada. Also, they were skating for the first time since withdrawing from the Turin Olympics after an on-ice accident.
“My body was not 100 per cent and to get back on that ice after Turin, it was overwhelming and it was very hard to skate last year,” Dubreuil said. “When it all finished, it was like a big dream. I slept for one month, I was so exhausted.”
While the Bulgarians have said all season that this will be their last competition, Denkova hinted that she might like to continue. “We cannot say for 100 per cent now,” she said. “But there are so many things we’ve had to give up.”
Dubreuil and Lauzon, who have said they may continue to the 2010 Olympics, aren’t thinking long range yet.
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The Globe and Mail
Thomas Grandi knew it was time to leave when he didn’t have “that fire in the belly.”
So Canada’s most celebrated and successful technical skier retired yesterday to take on a new assignment: fatherhood.
“Getting up in the morning to change diapers is going to be my biggest challenge for the next little while,” Grandi joked at his farewell news conference in Whistler, B.C. “I won’t have any regrets. I think when you can say that, the time is right.”
Grandi, 34, stepped down from the Canadian alpine team after competing in the 2007 national championships. During his 14 years on the World Cup tour, the Italian-born Grandi scored nine podium finishes—five in slalom, four in giant slalom—including two victories in the giant slalom.
The two wins were the first by a Canadian male in a technical event. Previously, Canadians were known only as downhill specialists.
Grandi said that despite feeling physically healthy, he was ready to give up competitive skiing to concentrate on his wife, cross-country ski Olympic medalist Sara Renner, and their almost two-month-old daughter, Aria. Renner did not compete this season, but is planning to race at the 2010 Vancouver/Whistler Olympics.
“At the end of last season, I knew it was still there,” Grandi said of his desire to keep skiing. “It changed when I had Aria. I always thought that would propel me to victory. I realized there was a new priority in my life. “As an athlete you need to be selfish. All of a sudden, there’s something more important in my life.”
Alpine Canada chief executive officer Ken Read and chief athletics officer Max Gartner both credited Grandi for his perseverance in blazing a new trail for Canadian skiers.
“You were the first to win in that discipline,” Read said to Grandi. “You’re a pioneer. You’ve left a profound impact and influenced an entire generation into thinking we can be on the podium in slalom and giant slalom.”
Grandi was born in Bolzano, Italy. His parents, Ugo and Kika, moved to Canada in 1975, when Grandi was two years old. They had originally wanted to go to Australia but were sent to Calgary, where Ugo asked a stranger: “Where’s a good place to raise a family?”
The stranger said Banff. The Grandis had found their new Alberta home.
Ugo Grandi had skied as a young man in the Italian military and always told his son that the world’s best technical skier was the one who placed first in the giant slalom. Thomas Grandi took those words to heart. In 1989, after Ugo drowned in Lake Minnewanka inside Banff National Park, Thomas pushed himself harder.
Grandi, who won 11 Canadian national titles, leaves an alpine team that now boasts talent and depth in the technical events. Read insisted Grandi’s “leadership has been crucial to all of us in building this team to be the best in the world . . . at every level. This is perhaps his greatest legacy.”
Read also noted that, in honour of Grandi’s accomplishments, a run at the Norquay ski resort in Banff would be named after him. “I always wanted to reach my potential and have no regrets I pushed it right to the end,” Grandi said. “I’m confident I reached my potential.”
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CP Wire
WINNIPEG (CP) _ Olympic champions Cindy Klassen and Duff Gibson were named the female and male athletes of the year Friday at the Canadian Sport Awards.
Klassen was a five-time speedskating medallist at the 2006 Turin Olympics, while Gibson won gold in the men’s skeleton at the Games.
The Olympic champion women’s hockey squad and Brad Gushue’s gold-medal winning curling rink took team of the year honours, while cross-country skier Beckie Scott received the Athlete Leadership Award.
In accepting her award, Klassen said it was a special honour to win in her hometown and in front of her family. “What can I say? I was so happy with the results (in Turin) and how well our whole team did,” said Klassen.
She later said it’s hard to believe more than a year has passed since her fairytale Olympics.
“I think the Olympics will always be fresh in my mind, there’s so many good memories from that event,” Klassen later told reporters.
Expectations are high for Klassen to repeat her multi-medal finish at the 2010 Games in Vancouver, but she says she takes nothing for granted. “Sporting careers, they go up and down, so I’m just going to try to get stronger and stronger, but I know that’s what my competitors are going to be doing too and it can be anybody’s day when you’re out there.”
The Canadian Sport Awards are presented by the charitable True Sport Foundation and are given out to the country’s top amateur athletes.
Klassen set a Canadian record by winning five medals in Turin, Italy and became the country’s most decorated Olympian with six career medals. The Winnipeg native won gold in the 1,500 metres, silver in the 1,000 and team pursuit, and bronze in the 3,000 and 5,000.
International Olympic Committee president Jacques Rogge called her the “woman of the Games.”
Gibson, from Calgary, became Canada’s oldest Olympic gold-medallist at age 39. He survived a spirited battle with teammate Jeff Pain, who settled for the silver medal. Gibson said the award holds extra meaning for him because he retired immediately after the Olympics and now works as a skeleton development coach.
“It’s like a flashback,” said Gibson. “It sure helps to smooth the transition of going from athlete to back what I did before, which is be a fan for these people.”
Other winners included:
_ Alpine skier Stefan Guay and Kirsten Sweetland, the first Canadian to win the junior women’s world triathlon championship, were named junior male and female athletes of the year.
_ Speedskater Clara Hughes received the Spirit of Sport Story of the Year award for her contribution to humanitarian organization Right to Play.
_ Bobsled duo Pierre Lueders and Lascelles Brown were named partners of the year.
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Airborn News
CALGARY, Alberta, March 24, 2007 – Steve Omischl of Kelowna, B.C., won his fourth national championship title Saturday in slushy conditions that were warm in more ways than one.
Omischl, who’s an intense competitor, says he wouldn’t have minded losing to Ottawa aerialist Jeff Bean, who was competing for the last time in an 11-year international career.
Bean didn’t win, instead capturing the bronze medal, as victory went to Omischl in convincing fashion. “They were probably my two nicest jumps of the season. If I had done that at the World Championships, I probably would have taken it down,” said Omischl, a bronze medallist at the worlds earlier this month.
Omischl, whose hometown is North Bay, Ont., produced a winning score of 249.10 points, leaving Kyle Nissen of Calgary second in 237.40 and Bean third in 211.83. But high scores were practically secondary, said Omischl of his win at the Canada Post National Freestyle Championships in Calgary Olympic Park before about 1,000 spectators.
“This wasn’t the Nationals. It was Jeff Bean’s retirement competition,” said Omischl. “I wanted to see Jeff jump well and give him a good send-off… He’s been my best friend and team-mate for 13 years.”
Bean’s best results included a silver medal at the 2005 worlds, a fourth place at the 2002 Olympics, and fifteen World Cup medals. But he will also be remembered for leading by example, and for his character and integrity, said Omischl.
Bean tried to find the appropriate words to describe his last competition. “The feeling right now is that I can’t believe it. It’s overwhelming that it’s happening now,” said Bean. |
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The Vancouver Province
After a third-place finish in the 2006 Olympic medal standings with 24, Canada’s winter warriors showed no signs of letting up this season.
The planet warmed. Canadian athletes burned.
As of March 19 Canada had racked up 135 World Cup podiums, second only to Germany’s 213 and one ahead of the U.S., which was third with 134. Canadians had reached the podium in 38 different events—for example freestyle moguls or the 3,000 metres in speed skating. That was second only to Germany’s 48.
“We’ve clearly had a very successful season,” said Canadian Olympic Committee chief executive officer Chris Rudge. “We’ve certainly carried on the momentum from last year but I’m very careful not to read too much into it.
“I’d be a little more inclined to take a look at the numbers if we were way down or way up but we’re on track with where we were which tells me that the programs are continuing, the strength is there where we thought it was. By and large the results are coming from the younger kids, which portends well for the future.”
The year was particularly memorable for three sports. In freestyle skiing, of the four world championship events in moguls Canadians won three of them. Montreal resident Jenn Heil took the dual moguls title a day after being upset by Summerland’s Kristi Richards in the moguls final. Pierre-Alexandre Rousseau of Drummondville, Que., won the men’s moguls title. Heil was the women’s overall World Cup champion. Kelowna resident Steve Omischl was second on the men’s side.
The Canadian Alpine Ski Team beat two quarter-century old Canadian records. Led by Erik Guay’s five podiums (one first, two seconds, two thirds) the Canadian men showed depth in both the speed and technical disciplines. CAST landed 14 World Cup podiums, one more than the 1981-82 team. The men had 12, two more than that Crazy Canucks-led team of 25 years ago.
At the world short-track championships in Milan and the world single distance (long track) championships in Salt Lake City two weeks ago, Canadian speed skaters combined to win 15 medals, two ahead of runner-up South Korea. The long-trackers took nine and the short-trackers six. The 15 medals were four more than the teams combined for in the 1998 and 2005 seasons. Canada hit 32 podiums in five short-track World Cups (12 gold, 12 silver, eight bronze) and 27 in nine long-track World Cups, (4-10-13).
There were some successes in unfamiliar areas.
In biathlon, Zina Kocher of Red Deer, Alta., finished third in a women’s 15-km at Oestersund, Sweden, the first medal by a Canadian since Myriam Bedard was shooting and skiing her way to the podium. In luge, Calgary’s Jeff Christie had four top-10 finishes.
And in cross-country skiing, sprinter Chandra Crawford struggled to adapt to the classic style after winning a gold medal when the skating style was used at the 2006 Olympics. Her best finish this season was a 21st but Alex Harvey, son of former Canadian great Pierre Harvey, earned a bronze in the 10-km skating event at the world junior championships in Italy earlier this month.
Other sports, flush with money from the $110-million Own the Podium plan, pioneered new development programs. In freestyle skiing’s Jump 2010 program, athletes recruited over the past two years from gymnastics and trampoline dominated the NorAm aerials circuit.
“We’re very, very happy on a number of different fronts,” said Canadian Freestyle Skiing Association chief executive officer Peter Judge of Vancouver.
“We’re seeing a balanced, steady stream of results from our mainstay athletes but the younger guys won 22 medals on the NorAm circuit in moguls and aerials. It’s good to see that bottom pressure start to fill in. "
But there had been hardly any World Cup events prior to worlds and, as the season went on, Canada warmed up. North Vancouver’s Drew Neilson won three of the final four World Cup snowboard cross World Cups and captured the Crystal Globe as the event’s overall leader.
“We did well in freestyle and snowboarding but, quite frankly, if we had had another year to work with them going into Turin, we would have been first in Turin,” said Rudge.
“We would have had another half dozen medals in those sports. They’re younger organizations and they didn’t have the history and discipline that some of the more traditional sports have had. I’m pretty heartened by what I see in those two sports.”
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Established in 1957, the Alberta Sports Hall of Fame and Museum is celebrating its 50th Anniversary as the province’s sports hall of fame and museum.
The Alberta Sports Hall of Fame and Museum pays tribute to those men and women who have made a lasting contribution to the cause of sports in Alberta, the nation, and the world through outstanding achievement or service. This includes athletes, coaches, administrators, and other contributors to
sports.
It is the mission of the Alberta Sports Hall of Fame and Museum to extol and preserve the memory of their accomplishments.
We are proud to announce the 2007 Alberta Sport Hall of Fame Inductees.
Cassie Campbell - Hockey Athlete
Megan Delehanty - Rowing Athlete
Earl Ingarfield Sr. – Hockey Athlete
Curtis Myden – Swimming Athlete
Eldon C. Godfrey – Diving Builder
B.J. Seaman, D.K. Seaman, Harley Hotchkiss - Hockey Builders
Lorna Snow – Swimming Builder – Sports for the Blind
Edmonton Eskimo Football Teams 1954, 55, 56 – Football
Medicine Hat Tigers 1987, 1988 - Hockey
John F Mayell – Multisport Builder – Pioneer Award
Robert MacDermott – Golf – Achievement Award
Wes Montgomery – Sports Broadcaster/Writer/Radio Announcer – Bell Memorial
Award
The Inductees will be honoured at a banquet on Friday, June 1st, 2007 at the
Capri Centre, Red Deer. |
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