Archive for the ‘sports tales’ Category
The World Cup has had wonderously good TV coverage from a technical point of view. Often one shot on goal is shown from 3 or 4 points of camera angles. And the broad overhead shots of the field provide a great overview of the field of play. And who cannot be amazed at the net camera shots which show intimately how a goal is scored including the shaking of the camera attached to the netting. Spectacular!
But also the problem as the NHL-National Hockey league learned to its demise – good TV shows off poor officiating.
This is one of three problems in which FIFA, the World Cup sponsors and organizers, could learn a lesson from Ice Hockey. First and foremost, good TV coverage shows off how bad the officiating can be. Think of the disallowed England goal against Germany and US versus Slovenia. Think of the many Thespian performances as players dive and writhe in pain in order to get a freekick. This nonsense is being caught on camera in HD technicolor; let alone the thousands of still cameras trained on the field.
Brazil’s Kaka caught mid-dive
The fundamental problem is that the referee is running about 12 miles per game across a pitch that is 120m(130 yards) by 45m(50 yards). And with swift long ball initiated counter attacks, the referee is whipped one way and another. The result to no one surprise is that the referee can be 20-40 yards from the point of infraction with his his line of sight obscured by one or more players. Not conducive to making the best of calls and the World Cup broadcasts have certainly shown that.
Now FIFA will counter that the referee has 2 sideline assistants able to make calls. But let me tell you talks with those sideline assistants reveals they are fully absorbed in the tricky task of calling offsides and out-of-bounds plays. Also some referees do not like interference by the sideline assistants in the games. So referees can count on scant assistance from the sidelines.
The obvious solution is what the NHL did ten years ago – added a second referee to the game and for goal scoring disputes added video replay shortly there after. Now bad officiating, especially disputed goal scoring calls is much less a factor in the NHL and especially Stanley Cup Playoff games. Contrast that with some of the World Cup “action”.
But FIFA is resisting strenuously.
FIFA’s arguments are threefold. First, an added referee will just cause confusion and conflict between the two referees. Not so from NHL experience. The two referees cover the two halfs of the rink but do flow back and forth with the the play. Nearest referee gets primary call responsibility;but they quickly confer to confirm calls on occasion. Getting the call right is their first priority and how they are assessed and compensated. The referees work together to call a good game.
The source of the second objection from FIFA is that two referees and video replay will stifle the free flow of the game. But look what all the player protests, painful on-field writhings, and free kick/corner kick shenanigans are doing to the free flow of the game. Ice hockey was told the same story. But the elimination of a deception advantage with better officiating did the opposite, added more speed and flow to ice hockey.
Last, citing Werner Heissenberg’s Uncertainty Principle, Sepp Blatter, head of FIFA says people enjoy this uncertainty on whether the game is called right. It adds an Ich kenn nicht wass [je ne sais quoi] to the game. Hmmm …. and I don’t know what could be a more ridiculous idea.
So watch what FIFA does . FIFA will do its part for fighting unemployment by adding two more officials standing at the goal mouth and making sure that that the goal scored by Ghana versus Uruguay was not stopped by a hand ball but had broken through the goal mouth plane and so no penalty kick was required. Meanwhile on field, the game of deception will continue at full pace – and the Toronto World Junior Football Championships has shown how much that can ruin the game. Argentina vs Chile promised speed and flow aplenty. Instead Toronto was treated to a brawl- shoving, shirt pulling, trips, and non-trips, arguments and near fisticuffs between the teams. The worst “game” this reviewer had ever seen in sport. There was no uncertainty that a game like that had done football a great disservice.
About 20 years ago my brother Greg introduced me to a sport, Ultimate, that was one of the neatest I had seen or played in a long time. I know the Summer and Winter X-Games feature all sorts of great new sports but Ultimate [or Frisbee football] has a simple infrastructure [all you need is a frisbee and open field plus 8-12 players] plus an elegance and flow that is most appealing. Well this year, on Janes Walk in Toronto I got introduced to another elegant sport with the same dynamics: simple rules, easy to play, and based on what every kid knows how to do – ride a bike. So it should be no surprise that Bike Polo is catching on in cities across Canada.
Actually I had seen Bike Polo in Vancouver about 5-6 years ago when I was at a meeting on the UBC campus but by the time I got out of the meeting and had a chance to investigate the players had long vanished from a hockey rink/tennis court. So it was at a Janes Walk in early May within Trinity Bellwoods Park which inadvertently re- introduced me to Bike Polo.
This game was being played on the otherwise near empty tennis courts in the park. There are 3 players to a side, their mounts are bikes, and they play with a mallet which has a hollow plastic head. The teams here were playing games of “first to 5″ and that is just about the extent of the rules that I could puzzle out and pick up in a quick 15 minute watching of the game.
Mallets used in Bike Polo.
The real skill in Bike Polo is maintaining balance on the bike  in the constant stop and go that is part of the game. For example, at first the game looked like PeeWee Soccer where the kids gather like bumble bees all around the soccer ball. There seemed to be little positional play. But after awhile I got used to the rugby-like scrum and the ability of crafty players to break away from the scrum and rush “down field” for a break away pass.
However, the trick is not just the making but also the receiving or braking of the pass that is a key skill. Because if a
Breakaway Play
player even slightly bobbles a pass the opposition is on it and can either create their own return break away, or at the least, get in position to defend their goal. Very quickly one could see that a wide range of skills including mallet dribbling and passing, wheel blocking, and vision of play are each important in the game. If I had not agreed to meet a friend for another Janes Walk this same day, becoming steeped in the subtleties of bike polo could have become a whole afternoon’s delight. Like one bike polo player noted, “what is bike polo to me? No doubt -Â like a second woman”.
Find out more about Bike Polo in Canada:
Calgary has great coverage of Bike Polo action
The Halifax story with video
Montreal Bike Polo action
Toronto Courts
WUPass = Winnipeg Bike Polo
Vancouver’s Vibrant Bike Polo scene
Cruising by assorted boatcraft down the Ganaraska River is what Float Your Fanny Down The Ganny is all about. As always traveling down the Ganny in Spring is very much dependent on the often sporadic weather. This season was no exception with cool and wet finally changing to a sunny, warmer but still windy crisp day for paddling down the Ganaraska river that Rainbow trout would be going up in a week or two.
The river crosswalk marks the finish line
As you can see from above , the weather was fine and the Ganny was gurgling but not absolutely rambunctious as was the case last year. And the turnout of spectators was distinctly higher in keeping with the weather and the availability of welcome sunny Spring day.
As usual the canoers and kayakers have first “sailing” rights on the Ganny. And so up at Dale Road about 2-3 miles
North of Port Hope, the canoes and kayaks are first to appear at the bridge overcrossing. These are the more civil Ganny crafters leaving the racing to about a half dozen paddlers literally plunging down the river. Here the pace is more decorous, one could be reading about it as a scene from a Jane Austen novel. But don’t be fooled, getting a canoe or kayak down the Ganny without going in requires skill – the rapids and changing water depths put a premium on good paddling technique. And of course there is the matter of having to traverse around the fish ladder less than a klick down stream.
Custom Float Craft:The Heart of the Show
But lets be honest, people come to Fanny down the Ganny to see the custom made float craft. It is sort of like going to an antique car show – with the emphasis on instantaneous boat/float “antiques”. If they make it down the Ganny in one piece, count that a major triumph as can be seen in this sampling of 2010’s Custom Boat/Float Craft:
A Classic Inner Tube Float with lashed and modified deck accouterments – a little wet and prone position oriented.
The CountrynWestern Khaki Canoe Craft – with signs, pretty lasses and front bumper horns.
The Red-painted Barrel 4 Wheeler – barely suitable for transport on land let alone water.
The Inverted Satellite Dish - you know they had to patch this one up with all the plastic bailing pails on board.
The Great Ganny Nile Barge - filled with paddlers, beautiful princesses, and note the water gunner.
This is only a sample sampling of what neato Custom Crafts that were to be found on the Ganny this Spring – go to the galleries here and here for lots more Fanny on the Ganny pictures.
Ganny Fanny Watchers
It was implied that the chief reason that people came out for the Ganny Run was to catch a bit of Spring and to see how the various custom craft made it down the river. But there are other attractions. Of course it is a chance to visit and socialize and the many conversation and chats all along the riverbank attest to that. Also it is an opportunity to get the kids out for some fun and they certainly take advantage:
Warm enough to run through wading pool
But there is another attraction – water balloons. Any custom float craft that comes armed with water guns like so:
Plastic Bottle cruiser with well armed water cannon
these floats are fair game for attack from the shore by water balloon barrages. Let me tell you there has been an arms race going on over the years and now the water guns carried on board some craft with their quick suction refills and long piston shooting are getting pretty potent as water weapons. Their shots can go 20-30 feet from the craft. And onshore, “innocent” spectators can easily be hit in the crossfire. So a very close riverside seat has some getting wet drawbacks.
But getting wet is par for the course, especially for Fanny Ganny Goers. If there is one consistent attribute among the Ganny Floaters is that they are pretty wet [and last year, largely soaked]. But that is a feature of Fanny on the Ganny, it marks the end of Winter because it is warm enough to get soaked and still have fun.
Its Spring and not only bird song will greet you in the morning but also the lusty calls of true venturing women and men floating their various watercraft down the Ganaraska river to Port Hope in the 2010 Float Your Fanny Down the Ganny Rites of Spring event. Fanny Floating goes Saturday April 3, 2010 9:00AM
Getting your Fanny Legally on the Ganny of course requires a signup – but its a fairly modest entry fee of $25/craft plus $5/fanny – all the particulars can be found here. You can see pictures of past Fanny Ganny Floats here and here. Given Global Warming trends the Fanny Float should be a sauna bath this year; however, be forewarned – a)it might be cold and b) during warm floats water balloons and  pistols tend to flourish on board and from the spectators directed only at the Irregular Fannycraft [i.e. only  fannycraft  armed with balloons and water pistols are fair game]. Join the fun and quaff a brew after at the many Port Hope Pubs and Eateries.
The Winter Olympic Closing Ceremonies were such an example of new “I believe” bravado rippling across the Canadian landscape and yet a wonderful opportunity missed. Sorry, USA and the rest of the World – humble, self-effacing, meek and reliable Canadians will for the time being become more like uhhh … ugly Wall Street Banksters. Sure there were spots of the old self-effacement as VANOC’s Jim Furlong was made to read the closing statement in more broken French than a full year of ex-Prime Minister Jean Chretien’s English speeches. Now the two solitudes can get on with real communication.
And there was a brilliant touch of the witty, self-deprecating Canadian humor as the Olympic Torch with the missing 4th link was comically restored with Olympian Katrina LeMay-Done finally able to light the fire and torch for an hour more. But after that, the closing ceremonies went downhill faster than the Austrian ski team ["sorry about that" Ostreich, aber diese ist der neu Kanada].
First, there was the come back home gang – Canadians who have been successful in New York or Hollywood saying why in full projected Punch humor they retained some nostalgia for Canada. It was like a mini Travel Commercial which incidentally the Supernatural BC government is doing on TV in Microsoft fashion – i.e. copying the form and style of the real-deal California travel commercials. Martin Short, like the failed Olympic torch link, is rumored to have come up short and failed to show – and this viewer can guess why.
Next, the Vanoc team cannot be blamed for what Sochi Russia did – “a mixed pastiche of 1912 era and contemporary Russia as if the Communist hole in Russian history has still not been filled”. But Canadians then quickly did their best to imitate bad American Super Bowl entertainment – you know the kind where more time is spent doing scene changes then in the entertainers actually entertaining. Even the Vancouver Sun noting in its review the endless stream of lip-synching , one song stand of Canadian entertainers – as if quantity and no hurt feelings took precedence over a real show.
This party would vote for bringing the Maritime and Quebec fiddlers back from the Opening Ceremonies and have them lead the athletes in a series of simple riels, line and square dances that I am willing to bet every one of the athletes could could do with their eyes closed given their physical conditioning and sense of enthusiasm. Instead we got treated to Michael Buble and the RCMP Hooter girls.
Not just bad, but gosh awful – no wonder NBC decided to terminate their coverage of the Closing Ceremonies prematurely. They certainly know when the Night Show is not clicking.
And so as the Vancouver Sun noted – there were many questions to be asked about this Closing Ceremony given a)the quality of the Opening Ceremonies, b)the template for good closing ceremonies provided by Calgary and the 1988 Games, and c)the wonderful times, goodwill of the people and visitors plus the drama of the Olympians themselves. One could have taken from the many volunteers and fans at the events their impressions of the best moments of the games. Taken some of the dramatic finishes and shots of the Olympians, projected them up on the screen and then asked the Olympian and their volunteer/fan admirers to take an encore bow and/or exchange best wishes [with translator help as required].
So let me repeat the questions raised by the Vancouver Sun -
As fireworks burst off the roof of BC Place, several questions are posed by the casual observer; Why did Cirque de Soleil never make an appearance at these Olympic Games? Why was the music so milquetoast? Why did guys like Jim Carry and Mike Myers not show up, especially when the latter is a stone hockey freak?
Amen. And I am far from alone. Chats with people find that many agree with what Calgary Herald’s Licia Corbella has to say in her review:
Beautiful Olympics, Vulgar Closing Ceremony
…After the cauldron was extinguished, however, so too was virtually any taste or decorum. The theme of the night was to poke fun at Canadian cliches, all done by Australian production director, David Atkins. It didn’t work. Instead of having the world laugh with us, it left them laughing at us and judging from comments on my blog and other sites, left most Canadians cringing….Ending the evening with K-os, a rap group with breakdancers, singing the indecipherable Eye Know Something, was so discordant I turned to my husband and said, “They can’t actually be ending with this. This is a joke, right?”Sadly, it was no joke, but the closing ceremony was. And the joke was on us.
The Games were so good, the Canadian Olympian performances were so empowering, and the goodwill of the World was to be had – why sell so short on such petty self-deprecation rather than showing off how good the games were, how well Canadians and the world performed, and how Canadians can have a good time dancing and partying? Cheesh, just when Canada Owns the Golden Podium and scoffs a good part of its national inferiority complex, one has to say – “Sorry About That” for the Closing Ceremonies. Typical Canadian, Eh?
The Vancouver Winter Olympic Games have been a delight despite the weather. And if you think Vancouver was warm at 10C on the last days of the Games, the next venue, Sochi Russia, is currently 13-15C with heavy rains forecast for 2 of the next 3 days. But one thing that has been constant has been the high level of competition as higher, stronger, faster has been on display in every event. And as performances improve, the science behind them get more sophisticated. Canada’s Own the Podium program used several studies on the physics of the games events to help give their teams and competitors an advantage.
So a perusal of the various websites covering the games found a cornucopia of great science articles available covering the Games and some of the popular events. Anybody interested in finding out how and why and maybe some of the physics and science behind an event has a wealth of articles to choose from. Here is our ranking of the top five Winter Olympic How To articles.
5th Place – Google Earth 3D Map of the Games
Use of Google Earth and its special viewing files of the Olympic venues requires a free download of the Google Earth program if users don’t already have it downloaded. But Google Earth [and Google Mars for that matter] are well worth the while because they give wonderful views of places and cities throughout the World. And Google has pulled out the stops for a great look see at Vancouver and the great BC countryside.
4th Place – HowStuffWorks How the Luge Works
HowStuffWorks is a website devoted to explaining how things work with pictures and explanations. This coverage of the Luge Event is typically thorough [although the map of the Whistler Luge Track is strangely missing given that maps of thee Torino 2006 and Salt Lake City 2002 tracks are shown]. After reading this article I have a much better feel for the equipment, speed and danger of luge racing.
3rd Place Bronze – NBC/NSF Science of the Winter Olympics
The NSF-National Science Foundation worked with NBC to put out a 16 part series of videos describing the science of some of the more popular Olympic events. What is novel is that they look not just at the physics but also the biochemistry and fluid dynamics that turn out to be crucial for the many different sports. These are wonderful learning exercises that I wish I would have had for my Science classes in grade or junior high school. Not only are they very instructive but also they are very motivational. Imagine seeing a sport up close and then getting the basic science behind the event. What a motivator for understanding and/or participation. The illustration at times is uneven, but the overall quality is high.
2nd Place Silver – NYTimes Tie – Inside the Action and Interactive Action
The New York Times has set a standard for coverage of the Games that just blows away the competition for savvy use of graphics, video and blogs. They are consistently a level above the sports media – using video window in video, graphics, direct illustration on video and competitor own dubbed commentary to add great insights into the intricacies of the sports. I looked at a number of sites including TheSTar, GlobeandMail, ESPN, CTVOlympics, NBCOlympics, BBC/Sports, LeMonde/Sports, LATimes, DerSpeigel, among others – and none offered the range of sports or the insights of the written and video coverage that could match the NYTimes.
1st Place Gold – NYTimes – Fractions of a Second: An Olympic Musical
Edward Tufte who is to communication graphics as Josef Albers is to Color Theory or J.K.Rowling is to childhood fiction – I suspect Tufte would give his seal approval to this musical graphic that shows in sing song tunes how close the finishes were in a number of the Olympic events [you must visit the site for the benefit of audio playback - its better than a blink of the eye]. The musical tones tell the story in sonorous fashion of just how close the finishes were. This is a gold medal triumph of Web media “illustration”.
