Pan Am Games Report: Canada wins four medals in pool to bring team to 4th place in medal standings.
Canadian Press

RIO DE JANEIRO, Brazil (CP) - Canada’s swim team captured four medals Sunday in a fitting finale to a strong showing in the pool at the Pan American Games.

The young swim team takes home 18 medals from Rio, five more than the squad won four years ago in Santo Domingo, in one of the biggest stories of the first week of the Games.

Mike Beres also lit up the badminton courts in Week 1, winning two gold and a silver, while veteran Susan Nattrass captured gold just days after carrying Canada’s flag into the opening ceremony and every member of the rowing team won at least one medal.

The equestrian team also locked up berths for the 2008 Beijing Olympics, winning a silver medal in team eventing on Sunday and a silver in dressage earlier in the Games. Shooters also earned tickets to Beijing in the 10-metre air pistol and men’s trap.

Canada earned a total of three silver and two bronze Sunday. Heading into the final week of competition, Canada was fourth in the standings with 65 medals, 13 gold, 23 silver and 29 bronze.

Canada had 66 medals at this point in 2003, en route to winning 128 in Santo Domingo. The United States remained atop the standings with 141 (58-56-27), followed by Cuba with 60 (29-12-19) and Brazil 85 (26-23-36). Medal standings are ranked on number of gold medals.

Drew Ross of Belleville, Ont., and Whitney McClintock of Cambridge, Ont., won the men's and women's slalom gold medals in water skiing and Brad Buskas of Edmonton added a silver in men's wakeboard on Monday at the Pan Am Games.

In men's slalom, Ross completed a rare achievement by earning a gold medal in the same event at three consecutive Games, by totalling 38.00 points in his run.  He also won the Pan Am slalom gold in 1999 at Winnipeg and 2003 in Santo Domingo.

“Overall the team is pleased with the way everyone is performing,” said Canada’s chef de mission Tricia Smith.

The week wasn’t without its disappointments as the women’s water polo missed out on an automatic Olympic berth, losing gold to arch-rival United States.

Now the swimmers and rowers make way for track and field, diving and canoe-kayaking, three more sports Canada is expected to do well in. Hurdler Perdita Felicien, diver Alexandre Despatie and water skier Jaret Llewellyn are favourites to win gold.

Annamay Pierse of Edmonton led the Canadian swim team on its final day at the pool, breaking the oldest Canadian record on the books en route to a silver medal in the 200-metre breaststroke. Pierse swam two minutes 26.79 seconds, lowering the previous mark of 2:27.27 set by Allison Higson at the 1988 Olympic trials, a world record at the time.

“I’ve wanted that record since I was 16 years old,” said Pierse, who also lowered the Canadian record in the 100 breaststroke earlier in the Games. “I’m so happy to get it. “These were definitely a breakthrough Games for me.”

Later Sunday, Pierse teamed up with Liz Wycliffe of Kingston, Ont., Stephanie Horner of Beaconsfield, Que., and Chanelle Charron-Watson of Gatineau, Que., to win silver in the women’s 4x100-metre medley relay.

Wycliffe added a bronze in the 200-metre backstroke, while the men’s 4x100 medley relay, Ottawa’s Matthew Hawes, Scott Dickens of Ancaster, Ont., Joe Bartock of London, Ont., and Adam Sioui of Trenton, Ont., also captured bronze.

“For a young group of kids, it was a very good meet,” said national coach and Swimming Canada CEO Pierre Lafontaine. “To me, the greatest part was these kids want to win, they want to race, the’re not happy with fourth, they’re not happy with third, and they’re sure not happy with second, which I’m not sure if we had seen that in a long time with these kids that we saw.”

Kyle Carter and Sandra Donnelly, both of Calgary, Mike Winter of Toronto and Waylon Roberts of Port Perry, Ont., finished second to the United States in team eventing, which combines dressage, show jumping and cross country. The silver guarantees the team a spot in Beijing.

“We are extremely happy with our silver medal, and most especially, qualifying for Beijing, which was our primary objective,” said Winter. “At this point, this particular group of riders is now thinking about what we have to do between now and Beijing, in order to continue to progress and challenge those who are ahead of us.”

Canada advanced to the final of the men’s field hockey tournament after beating Trinidad and Tobago 4-3 in extra time in the semifinal.

The Canadian men’s handball team beat Mexico 34-32 in the seventh-place game.

Jason Kruger of Calgary and Wes Montgomery of Ottawa finished fourth in the men’s volleyball tournament after a 21-19, 17-21, 15-11 loss in the bronze-medal match to Francisco Alvarez Cutino and Leonel Munder of Cuba.

Boxer Ibrahim Kamal of Toronto lost 10-3 to Everton Lopes of Brazil in the quarter-finals of the 60-kilogram class.

Judo athlete Frazer Will of Star City, Sask., who was coming off a gold in the 60-kilogram event at the recent Pan American championships, lost his bronze-medal bout.

Canada’s table tennis teams opened round-robin play with four wins. The men’s team beat Puerto Rico and Cuba, shutting both out 3-0 while the women’s team also scored a pair of shutout wins over Puerto Rico and Chile.

Canada hammered Colombia 12-1 in the preliminary round of men’s water polo

Gold for Canada’s big gun in Rio; ends her Pan Am career on top.
The Edmonton Journal

RIO DE JANEIRO - The first thing Canadian flagbearer Susan Nattrass did after winning the Pan Am Games gold medal in the women’s trap shooting event on Tuesday was grab a cellphone and call her coach, who also happens to be her mom, Marie.

“Mom, I won,” the 56-year-old Nattrass told Marie back in Gibson’s, B.C., as the tears that come so famously and easily to the international shooting legend began to well. “I won the Pan Ams.” “I guess that means I’ve been replaced,” came the coach-mother’s reply. “I guess I can’t take the credit anymore.”

With that Nattrass’s tears gave way to laughter, and mother and daughter, coach and athlete just revelled in the moment. It was quite the moment. Three days after sashaying into Maracana Stadium proudly waving the Canadian flag in front of nearly 100,000 party-hearty Brazilians, Nattrass ended her fourth and final Pan Am Games in golden style, even if didn’t exactly seem that way during the event.

“I thought I was having a bad day, in fact,” said the former longtime Edmontonian, who now makes her home in Vashon, Wash. “When I finished, I didn’t know where I stood,” Nattrass said. “I sort of lost track of what the other people were doing.”

Her cheering section, which included Team Canada chef de mission Tricia Smith and a cluster of mission staffers, sure kept track. They erupted into loud whoops and hollers in the bleachers at the sun-splashed National Shooting Centre when the final shot was fired.

“Thank you so much,” Nattrass told her fans. “That made a big difference.” She also said it felt grand to say “Tchau” to the Pan Am portion of her international shooting career. “It felt absolutely wonderful, especially after the disaster I had in the last Pan Am Games,” said Nattrass, whose shotgun mysteriously broke down in 2003 in Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic.

The gold was her finest Pan Am moment, but there have been others. Nattrass also won a silver medal in women’s double trap in 1995 and a bronze in that event with Meyer in 2003. It’s her last Pan Am Games, and closing in on the final international competition for Nattrass, who announced last year she wants to qualify for the Summer Olympics in Beijing, then retire in 2009, exactly 40 years after her career began.

When things are rolling so well, why? “I don’t have that focus every (competition),” Nattrass explained. “That’s what I used to have when I was younger.”

So she tries to summon that focus for the events that count, like the 2006 World Championship in Zagreb, Croatia, where she won the gold medal, her seventh among 15 world championship medals won in 36 trips there, including the last 29 in a row.

Like the upcoming world championship in Cyprus—which will be 30 in a row. Like the Beijing Olympics, which will be her sixth, if she qualifies. The Olympic shooting berths are based on points accumulated and Nattrass is ahead among Canadian competitors so far.

At Zagreb, she’ll also have to get along without Marie, who, at 86, has begun to find the international travel wearing. Marie had been there last August, when Nattrass won the world title on her mother’s birthday. “I asked her to come (to Zagreb),” Nattrass said. “I begged her.”

Nattrass said she misses the company, misses having a partner for the card games she likes to play in the down time between shooting events. Over the years, that’s a lot of card playing and an awful lot of world-class shooting.

After all, Nattrass has been competing since she was 18. She’s made five trips to the Olympics, her first in 1976 in Montreal, when she made history as the first and only woman entered in the trapshooting event. Nattrass became a trailblazer in her sport, campaigning for five years for the inclusion of women’s shooting events. She succeeded, too, when the International Olympic Committee introduced women’s shooting disciplines at the 2000 Summer Games in Sydney, Australia.

She continues to be an advocate. Women’s double trap was dropped from the Pan Am program, so Nattrass assembled a petition to have it reinstated. What’s more, when she found herself next to Anita DeFrantz on her arrival in Rio, Nattrass lobbied the U.S. International Olympic Committee delegate on this double trap matter, too.

The men still shoot doubles, the women should, as well, Nattrass believes. Anyway, Nattrass will have a couple of more days in Rio to savour her gold medal, before flying back home to Vashon to prepare for the Canadian championships in Vancouver next month. Then she’ll be off to Cyprus and the worlds in September.“I’m hoping I’ll be able to pull it all together there,” Nattrass said. If she does, Marie can expect another jubilant call from her daughter.

Whitfield sprints to another title.
Times Colonist (Victoria)

Simon Whitfield of Victoria claimed his second World Cup triathlon title of the season yesterday in the mountain town of Kitzbuhel, Austria.

Whitfield, the 2000 Sydney Summer Olympics gold medalist, won his ninth World Cup title of his career in a dramatic sprint finish with former European champion Frederic Belaubre of France and 2006 Melbourne Commonwealth Games champion Brad Kahlefeldt of Australia.

Whitfield nipped the two top contenders at the line in a finish time of one hour 42 minutes and 56 seconds. It was his ninth career World Cup win.

The only other Canadian man on the start line was recent 2007 Pan American Games silver medalist Brent McMahon of Victoria. McMahon would pull out of today’s race during the run segment, citing fatigue. He won his Pan Games silver last weekend in Rio.

Although Whitfield was the only Canadian medallist on the day, young phenom Kirsten Sweetland, also of Victoria, managed another top-10 finish for her budding career, with an eighth-place in the women’s race.

Beijing dreams fade for women's water polo team.
The Globe and Mail

RIO DE JANEIRO, BRAZIL—For the Canadian women’s water polo team, silver is the colour of an anchor.

The Canadians came up short of the Pan American Games gold medal last night, falling 6-4 to the United States at the Julio Delamare Aquatic Park. The U.S. side, reigning world champion, also earned an automatic berth in the Beijing Olympics next year.

Canada earned seven more months of hard work until the Olympic qualifying tournament in Italy next February. “It’s really hard,” Canadian captain Krystina Alogbo of Montreal said. “We’ve been working since September, focusing in team meetings on this. It was our big goal for the year. “We still have a way to get to Beijing, but we have to work twice as hard.”

Oaten said the team will have a debriefing before leaving Rio, then be back in the water in 15 days, planning what to do differently to get to Beijing. There will be three or possibly four berths available in the Italian tournament. He hinted there could be changes.

Among the injuries the team tried to hide were shoulder problems for Alogbo and Campbell, who was knocked off her bike by a truck as she was preparing to come to the Games. Campbell has been with the program for a long time, and coming off an injury isn’t easy for a veteran in a physical game. “We’ll meet with Cora,” the coach said. “Her shoulder was worse than we let on. At 33, there’s only so much of the game the body can take.”

Calgary’s Cam MacKinnon wins silver medal in track cycling at Pan Am Games.
CP Wire

RIO DE JANEIRO, Brazil (CP) _ Calgary’s Cam MacKinnon earned a silver medal in the kierin track cycling event at the Pan American Games on Thursday. He finished second to Leonardo Navaraez Romero of Colombia. Leandro Botasso of Argentina was the bronze medallist.

MacKinnon said the medal is a stepping stone to the 2008 Olympics. “This was my first international Games medal,” said MacKinnon. “It’s really exciting. It just shows that everything is falling into place for Beijing.”

The kierin is MacKinnon’s favourite event. “It suits my mentality because it’s aggressive and anything can happen,” he said. “I like the chance factor that’s involved. You do what you have to do to get ahead and ask for forgiveness later.” It was the first track cycling medal for Canada at the Games.

CALL FOR ACTION from the Sport Community        

Many amateur, community-based sport organizations that would benefit from the Community Spirit Program would not qualify under the proposed eligibility criteria for the program as they are not registered charities.  At this time, sport is not considered a charitable purpose through the Federal Government.

It is the position of the Calgary Sport Council and Sport Alberta that the MLA Committee on the Community Spirit Program include not-for-profit, amateur, community-based sport organizations, registered under the Societies Act of Alberta, as eligible recipients under the program parameters.

To ensure that this position is taken into consideration, there must be a strong response to the following questionnaires from not-for-profit amateur sport organizations as well as from the community they support. To complete the questionnaires online or to download a copy follow the links below. The submission deadline is July 31, 2007                

Community Spirit Program for Charitable Giving
www.communityspiritprogram.ca
The proposed Community Spirit Program has two components: the first is supporting increases in private charitable donations through tax credits; the second is establishing a Community Spirit Fund to provide matching grants for eligible philanthropic donations to Alberta-based registered charities.  The public consultation process will help determine the parameters (including eligibility) of the program.        

Cultural Policy for Alberta
www.culturalpolicy.alberta.ca
The cultural policy for Alberta is currently being developed by the Department of Tourism, Parks, Recreation and Culture to support the growth and development of culture in Alberta.  The policy is intended to encompass heritage, the arts, sport and recreation, the outdoors and innovation.  The public consultation process will help identify Albertans’ priorities with respect to culture.      

 Thank you for your support of sport!        

Wong in wait-and-see mode; Injured Calgarian may not answer bell at worlds.
The Calgary Herald

Plenty of mental gymnastics, and a big leap of faith. That’s the situation for Calgary’s Adam Wong as a critical year begins to unfold for the Canadian men’s gymnastics team.

Wong, 22, is being put through his paces, like the rest of his teammates, as the Canadian men’s squad enjoys an unprecedented 10-day training session with the Chinese world champions, right in the heart of Beijing. But Wong is also playing catch-up—he’s recovering from a torn Achilles tendon suffered in Greece in March—as the world championships at Stuttgart, Germany, loom in early September.

And the big question remains: Does Wong push himself towards Stuttgart in order to help Canada qualify for the 2008 Summer Olympics? Or does he take a seat, and hope his teammates can get him back to Beijing a year from now? “It’ll be tough,” said Wong via cellphone from Beijing, enjoying a day off Thursday while walking the aisles of the sporting goods empire owned by star gymnast-turned-entrepreneur Li Ning. “It gets better every day,” added Wong. “I’m taking my time and making sure everything’s safe, but at the same time, I want to see how quickly I can get healed up.

“Still . . . I have confidence in the guys. I’ve trained with these guys, and I know what they can do. We have a good solid team, and with or without me, they’ll do a great job over there.” Wong isn’t the only Canadian male who’s doubtful for Stuttgart.

Fellow Calgarian Nathan Gafuik is still recovering from invasive surgery that removed a bone chip from his palm. Together, the pair was instrumental in helping Canada—led by Calgary’s Kyle Shewfelt, the Athens Olympic champ in floor exercise—to a stunning sixth-place team finish at the 2006 world championships at Aarhus, Denmark, last October.

Canada’s roster for the worlds will be finalized at another training camp in early August in Calgary. The top 12 nations at Stuttgart are XXIX Summer Olympiad bound, with full six-man teams. “Adam and Nathan were our top all-around performers at the last worlds,” said Canadian program director Jeff Thomson from the Chinese capital. “We’re not sure if they’ll be ready. Those are hard guys to replace.

“In particular, we really don’t want Adam to try and come back too soon. For him, and for the team, it’s better that he heals completely and get himself in the best possible shape for Beijing. “But one of our big advantages is that we’ve got Casey Sandy (of Brampton, Ont.) and Grant Golding (of Calgary, who was a reserve at Aarhus), who we see as equivalents to Adam.

“We’ve had to temper our expectations (for Stuttgart) somewhat, but they’re still fairly high. I’m optimistic about qualifications. We’re confident that the team is as good as it was last year.” As for this current session at Beijing’s national gymnastics training centre, it was set up by former Chinese gymnast Leang Chang, who coaches Canadian stalwart Brandon O’Neill of Edmonton.

“Part of this is getting prepared as much as we can for the experience of coming here next summer—the time change, the heat, the food, the culture, all of that,” said Thomson, whose team returns home Monday. “We want the guys to get as used to China as possible.

“And there’s a real advantage for us to be training with the very best gymnasts in the world; that’s certainly what the Chinese team is. To be in that environment, it raises the expectations of everyone. The guys work and try that much harder.”

Badminton offers hope to children of Rio slums; Teacher’s vision takes flight in handmade building.
The Edmonton Journal

FAVALA DA CHACRINHA, Brazil - There’s a badminton “centre of excellence” in this ghetto in Rio de Janeiro’s inner city where kids of all ages in bare feet or flip-flops play on a crude, dusty cement floor in a handmade building.

It’s the unfinished dream of a 42-year-old reform-school graduate consumed with the notion he can change a community through sport. The thing is, Sebastiao Dias de Ouvaires seems to be succeeding.

The centre—called the Miratus Project—has already developed a national champion, a young woman named Renata Faustino, who grew up in the hillside community of about 15,000, one of about 900 such dirt-poor, often dangerous neighbourhoods in this city of 5.8 million people.

Faustino is good enough to have played against the likes of Charmaine Reid, Canada’s Pan Am Games double silver medallist, who is a member of the humanitarian agency Right to Play. And it was Reid, along with teammate Fiona McKee, who invited a clutch of journalists to visit Chacrinha, to tour Ouvaires’s labour of love and learn something about how sport can be a tool of social development.

It was a humbling, unforgettable lesson. “I’ve been to 45 countries around the world and I see a lot of different things,” Reid said. “And kids having fun playing badminton, that’s the best thing to see. “I had been to Sao Paolo and met Sebastiao and some of his players and got the opportunity to play some of them. You could tell they want to win and they’re fighting out there.”

Rio is notorious for its favelas, poverty-ridden enclaves, some of which are run by drug lords, plagued by murder and violent crime and generally bereft of hope for its young people.

Ouvaires lived in a reformatory from the age of seven to 18 and was troubled enough by the bleak futures of the others there to do something about it. He lives in a sparely furnished concrete hovel beside the centre he has poured his life into—a combination recreation centre, community hall and gymnasium. He even envisions a room stocked with computers where kids could come, have access to the Internet, do their homework, do something constructive.

A teacher by training, Ouvaires played badminton in school, so he chose that sport as his agent of change. Ouvaires guided the journalists around the “little court” Friday. The main hall of the concrete building is the size of a small airplane hangar, with a recently installed sheet-metal roof. There are no exterior walls yet. Like the box-like homes that are trademarks of the favelas, the badminton centre was built by hand—Ouvaires’s—one bag of cement at a time.

There are multiple unfinished rooms, one meant to be a training room with treadmills and exercise bikes, men’s and women’s change rooms. And there’s the functional, rough-hewn badminton court, where about 20 of the 80 kids Ouvaires has in his program showed off their training methods and game skills to some Friday morning visitors.

A group of 16 or so, some in bare feet, others in flip-flops, moved smoothly through a footwork drill set to Brazilian music—a badminton ballet. During the drill, they also pantomimed all the shots, the fore- and backhand flicks at the net, overhead smashes.

Reid and McKee, who live in Calgary, were a hit. They played a little singles, then doubles against a couple of talented teenage boys, then mixed doubles. Reid also played Santa Claus, reaching into a large gym bag to hand out shuttlecocks, Canadian flags, team apparel and pins. She let the kids play with her silver medals, which were a huge hit.

“You don’t need a big space to play badminton,” Reid told reporters. “You don’t need a lot of money to play badminton. “You need a racket, shuttles, a net and you can play it anywhere.”

She talked to them about goals, pursuing their dreams, overcoming obstacles. She asked if any of them had dreams. A 10-year-old named Ygor, said he did.“I want to play in the Olympics and the world championship,” the boy said. “I know that the Pan Am Games are on the way to the Olympics and I am already working so hard, my feet are hurting.”

That was the concrete floor talking. But the kids’ joy was evident. It wasn’t hard to see why Ouvaires continued to reach into his own pocket to keep funding his project. “The intention is not to develop badminton champions,” Ouvaires said, through an interpreter. “If that happens, fine, but the intention is to put them into society with skills and hope.”

Somewhere along the way, Ouvaires ran out of money. But a former student who toured the gym presented him with a cheque that Ouvaires promptly handed over to a construction company. Sponsors have come on board to help put up the building, provide equipment and to offer funds for college tuition. One company has pledged to pay for a modern gymnasium floor.

The project has received so much publicity that the municipal government is examining how to find a way to help and to try to replicate Miratus in other favelas. Ouvaires hopes to expand the project to about 2,000 kids, eventually.