Olympic Flops
Speedskating was not without incidents.
We look back at the Olympics and realise it will be remembered for all the wrong reasons.
For every golden moment, there was a glitch. Opening day of an electrifying hockey tournament in Vancouver was also the day 20,000 tickets had to be canceled for Cypress Mountain.
Even the games’ emotional high point – a figure-skating bronze for Canada’s Joannie Rochette, whose mother had died four days earlier – was tinged with sorrow.
And it all began, of course, with the worst news imaginable.
Son of a Soviet-era slider, pride of a spruce-nestled ski town half a world away, member of an almost laughably small Olympic delegation, Nodar Kumaritashvili shot down the luge track at nearly 90 mph.
Athletes had suggested the course at Whistler was so fast it tempted fate, and Kumaritashvili himself was terrified of it. He raced anyway. “I will either win or die,” he told his father.
He lasted 49 seconds before the track claimed his life. The start of a star-crossed Olympics.
The Vancouver Games opened with grief, and they end under a shadow as everlasting as those cast by the hooded assassins of Munich and the midnight thunder of Atlanta.
Kumaritashvili came to rest on a metal walkway that runs along the track, one foot awkwardly propped on the wall of the course. His sled skidded to the finish line. It was a death in the Olympic family.
“May you carry his Olympic dream on your shoulders, and compete with his spirit in your hearts,” Vancouver organizing committee chief John Furlong said at the opening ceremony.
First Glitch
It wasn’t much later that the games suffered their first glitch – nothing compared with the luge tragedy, but also a lasting symbol of these Olympics. The indoor cauldron at BC Place malfunctioned, spoiling perhaps the most climactic moment of any games.
An outdoor cauldron, meanwhile, was blocked by an unsightly chain-link fence. Complaints that it made for lousy photographs led organizers to open a rooftop viewing plaza and replace part of the fence with clear plastic.
Weather played havoc with the schedule. It was alternately too mild, too wet, too foggy or too snowy, forcing one postponement after another. “Wouldn’t mind racing already,” tweeted ticked-off American skier Ted Ligety.
Human error marred the games, too. On a single day at the biathlon, a Swedish woman was held up at her start gate for 14 seconds, and two of the men went off too early. Officials later corrected for the errors.
“It is embarrassing,” said Norbert Baier, the technical delegate of the International Biathlon Union. “Why do we have this incompetence?”
Speedskating
And in men’s speedskating, a gaffe of historic proportion: Sven Kramer of the Netherlands cruised to what would have been easy gold and an Olympic record time in the 10,000 meters – but was disqualifed because his coach sent him into the wrong lane at the end of the back straightaway.
If Kramer needs consolation, all he has to do is look at the gold he won in the 5,000. He managed an Olympic record there, too – one that actually stuck.
Elsewhere, competition provided a welcome distraction.
Lindsey Vonn, she of the most famous shin at the Olympics, skied to gold in her signature event, the downhill, and picked up a bronze in the super-G. She failed to finish three of her five races, but the haul was fine by her.
“I have the gold medal that I came here for, and I couldn’t be happier,” she said.
At the speedskating oval, Shani Davis and Chad Hedrick shared the podium – Davis with a gold and a silver, Hedrick with a silver and a bronze. This time, unlike in Turin, they actually looked like they could stand each other.
If you wanted drama, you had to look to the figure skating rink. American Evan Lysacek won gold, but without even attempting the celebrated quadruple jump – drawing open contempt from Russia’s defending champion Evgeni Plushenko, who took the silver.
In fact, Russia went home without a figure-skating gold of any kind, the first time that’s happened since 1960. Russia’s overall Olympic performance was so dismal that members of parliament back home were calling for sports officials to resign.
Not exactly a happy family for a nation that hosts the next Winter Games, in the Black Sea resort of Sochi in 2014.
Doping Allegations
There were two doping violations – hockey players, a Russian woman and a Slovakian man, both for stimulants contained in cold medication, neither deemed worthy of more than a reprimand. That was one more than in Turin.
Organizers praised the people of Vancouver for embracing the games, and suggested the glory of Olympic competition should be considered separately from the tragedy on the games’ first day.
But even IOC chief Jacques Rogge conceded the young luger’s death would forever be linked to the Vancouver Games – just as the massacre in 1972 was to Munich and the park bombing in 1996 was to Atlanta.
The days that followed were not pretty. The international luge federation blamed Kumaritashvili’s tactical handling of the course, not the track itself, for the death. Georgia’s president, Mikhail Saakashvili, saw it differently: “No sports mistake,” he said, “is supposed to lead to a death.”
The luge track was shortened for competition, and the course altered, but officials said the changes were to soothe athletes’ emotions, not make them safer. Later in the games, on the same track, overturned bobsleds became a common sight.
And across the world, in the heartbroken Georgian town of Bakuriani, was another mother of another Olympian. Dodo Kumaritashvili joined the lone other luger on the Georgian team as her son’s body arrived back home.
She threw herself on the flag-draped casket and cried: “Why have I survived you?”
Olympic officials, their hearts heavy and their Vancouver Games now history, could be forgiven for asking the same. But the memories survive, the haunting and the proud.
Courtesy of stuff.co.nz
HAVE YOUR SAY: Was the Olympics a big flop? What were your lowlights and highlights?
Highs Of Winter Olympics
Marie Laure Brunet of France during the Women's Biathlon 10km Pursuit.
Check out the highlights of the Vancouver 2010 Winter Olympics.
Nkeiruka Ezekh (R) of Russia releases the stone with Ekaterina Galkina (L) and Anna Sidorova during the women's curling round robin game between Germany and Russia.
Aliona Savchenko and Robin Szolkowy of Germany compete in the Figure Skating Pairs Free Program.
Noelle Pikus-Pace of the United States practices during skeleton training.
Canada score a goal past goalkeeper Andre Lysenstoen of Norway.
Maelle Ricker of Canada competes during the Ladies' Snowboard cross.
Canada scores past goalkeeper Andre Lysenstoen of Norway.
Lindsey Jacobellis of The United States (L) and Deborah Anthonioz of France compete during the Ladies' Snowboard cross.
30 Athletes Banned From Winter Olympics
World anti-doping chief John Fahey has revealed that over 30 athletes have already been prevented from taking part in the Winter Olympics because of failing drug tests.
Fahey, who is the president of the World Anti-Doping Agency, did not reveal the name the athletes, sports or countries involved, but did confirm that not all the athletes have been named yet.
“More than 30 athletes have been prevented from competing for violating antidoping rules,” said Fahey. “Some cases are still in the results management process.”
Fahey promised the planned 2000 urine tests and 500 blood tests would make Vancouver the cleanest Games since WADA’s inception in 1999.
He added: “Does this mean the Vancouver Games will be clean? I don’t think anyone can make that claim.
“But it is more likely that they will be caught than at any other Games in our history.”
Fahey also offered a spirited defence of the whereabouts rule which requires athletes to make themselves available for random testing.
It has been criticised by some athletes who complain it violates their human rights but Fahey described the rule as “proportionate”.
He added: “It’s a small price to pay. Unless you have the capacity to test someone without notice you cannot pick up the cheats.
“The overwhelming majority of athletes in the world are behind what is being done.”
Thanks to Sky Sports News
72-Year-Old Scot Has Won Judo’s Highest Accolade
George Kerr has been involved in judo since he was eight; now he’s one of only seven people in the world to have attained 10th Dan.
‘It is a huge achievement, I must admit,” says George Kerr when pushed, with a slight note of reticence in his Scottish accent. On Saturday, Kerr was given the status of 10th Dan in judo at a ceremony in Paris – one of only seven living judokas in the world, and only the second Brit, to have achieved the highest level in the sport. (All but five of the 19 people who have won the honour since 1935 have been Japanese.)
“I used to read the [judo] books when I was a kid, and see these old people in them who were 9th and 10th Dan,” he says, “but I never dreamt I would one day be one of them.” At 72, Kerr is also the youngest of this elite group – “a very young 72,” he points out – chosen by the International Judo Federation, the sport’s governing body.
What do you have to do to reach 10th Dan (to put its dizzying height in perspective, someone who is a “black belt” in judo is only a 1st Dan)? You don’t need to be able to beat a 22-year-old – most are elevated to 10th Dan in their 80s, and even posthumously. “I think I just ticked all the boxes,” says Kerr, who was European judo champion in 1957, twice won the British Open championship, trained an Olympic two-times-gold medallist, has refereed the sport at the Olympics and is president of the British Judo Association. He first tried the sport when he was eight – his father, an amateur boxer, had tried to get him to do boxing, but he lost his heart to judo. At 18, he won a scholarship to train in Japan, and lived there for four years.
“Judo has been my life,” he says, adding that it’s more than just a sport. “There is the whole moral code you need to live by as well – honour, integrity, discipline, politeness, not picking on people who are weaker than you. You have to live up to things such as looking after people. It’s the way of the samurai, really.”
Kerr teaches all this – as well as some sharp moves – at the Edinburgh club he now runs for children (he says the kids he trains are “over the moon”). When I ask if he has any plans to retire, he laughs and says, “Don’t be silly. If you retire, you die. I can’t imagine it; this is just in my blood.”
Thanks to the guardian.co.uk
Marion Jones Seeks Fresh Start In WNBAS
The disgraced athlete Marion Jones is aiming to make a fresh start in the WNBA (Women’s National Basketball Association). The San Antonio Silver Stars coach Dan Hughes has confirmed that Jones has been training with his assistants, more than a year after the 34-year-old was released from federal prison for lying about her use of steroids.
The New York Times first reported that Jones has been working on her skills and conditioning in San Antonio since October.
Jones, who played college basketball at The University of North Carolina, told the newspaper she received a call in May from someone in the NBA asking if she might play in the WNBA.
Hughes revealed his assistants haven’t given him a progress report on the former track star but that he “applauds her” for trying to make the grade.
Jones won gold in the 100m, 200m and 4×400m relay at the Sydney Olympics in 2000 and took bronze in the long jump and 4×100m relay, to become the first woman to win five track and field medals at a single Olympics.
However she was stripped of the medals by the International Olympic Committee in December 2007 after she admitted to using performance-enhancing drugs.
Thanks to guardian.co.uk
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