Women's hockey

Good Morning,

Good Morning GOOD MORNING its....

Last night I saw a playoff game of Women's hockey. Canada was playing Finland. Women's hockey is very entertainning to watch, eventhough the competition is poor. Our team is much stronger than the competition. But, competition aside, the style of play is very interesting, very little contact, lots of passes, and some very weak shots. Ok aside for the very weak shots and the no hitting the game is very well played.

Although I do not agree with massive hits, I think that body contact is an intergral part of the game. The purpose of body contact in hockey is not to injure but gain puck possesion. For the purpose and only for that purpose I must say that women's hockey does not get a good grade. A plyaer good potentially do some coast to coast without having any contact. Obvisouly this does not happen in women's hockey because they are very good at moving the puck around.

All and all a fun day at the rink, lots of people, lots of red and white, lots of goals, ans the obvious a big win!

See you tomorrow!

Ski-Cross

Good Morning,

Sorry for not writing to you last night, I was very tired after the 8 hour volunteer and the Ski-cross event.

The Ski cross event is a first t the Olympic Games. It is the ultimate event in my mind. The combination of speed, agility, strength, strategy, and tactic make for a promising futur.

For those of you who do not know how the event works.

1- Same course as snowboard cross

2- 33 competitiors race one at a time down the hill for best times

3- From the qualifiy time 32 competitors are divided in 8 pools of 4

4- Top two from each pool move on to the next round

5- From the 16 competitors remaining they are divided in 4 pools of 4

6- Top two from each pool move on to the next round

7- From the 8 Competitors remaining they are divided in 2 pools of 4

8-Top two from each pool move onto the finals

9- Finals - 4 competitors race down the course to crown a champion!

At yesterday's event 2 Canadians qualified for the semi (8 competitors total). From that group only 1 moved on to the next round. Debosco the final Canadian competitor finished fourth in the final race after a major fall less tan 50 meters from the finish line. The fall happened after jump was misjudge by the competitor... No medals:( but lots of fun!

Have a good day!

Are Canadians truly Canucks?

Hello,

Tonight after the short track event at the Pacific Coliseum I questioned myself over the fact that we are chockers. We had 2 Canadians in the final (of 5 competitors) and we came out with 0 medals. At times I feel like we are out of luck, but I question myself. Why can asian countries maintain their strength year after year.

I do not want to blame coaching or the Hamelin brothers for this but I do think that we are missing killer instinct.

I really enjoyed watching short track, to me this event was much better than the halfpipe.

Andree and I are looking or tickets at the Richmond Oval. If ever you know anyone who is selling, let us know...

Cheers

Friday night fever!

Vancouver loves to party on the weekends. Leaving COH tonight the streets were jam packed with families. It is awesome to see the enthusiasm this city has for hosting the Games.

This morning I had the opportunity to see two of my heroes. Believe or not this individuals are not athletes. I had the opportunity to see Holger Preuss a prof that writes about the economic impact of the Olympic Games and also Richard Pound the IOC member who is also on the board of VANOC. These two individuals met my expectations.

Cheers

PEI PARTY

Ok EAST COAST we love you...

Today the crowd gathered at the COH for a private event from individuals from PEI. It was great to hear the music, taste the food and enjoy their presence.

Another day with a medal! We are so happy around here to see that our Canadian athletes are continuously winning. For some events we were disapointed in our performance but with the few surprises that we have seen our objectives remain on PAR.

Since Lai's arrival we haven't seen any rain...

Tonight, Team Canada in hcokey struggled against Switzerland. In my view it will be a long and hard to tournament for us. We have to become way more offensive than what we are up to now...

the futur will tell how far we go!

An athlete looks like...

Hello,

Today I want to spend this blog on what it takes to be an athlete...

Your size, your age and your weight should never have an impact on how or what you can do. Peope who have the will can achieve what they want. Some of the athletes that walked into the Canadian Olympic House could be confused for your average Joe. And that's what athletes really are. It is a challenge for most to imagine that an athlete can do very well and my short or even be a small person. Well yes and chances are small athletes have qualities that the sport demands. Sure taller athletes dominate in some sports but come on most olympic sport do not require you to be 6 feet in order to challenge with the best.

People put to much emphasis on the size of an individual... It is much more interesting to have good hand-eye coordination, accuracy, agility, speed etc. This will assure that the athlete can aim high and meet their goals.

An athlete looks like me and you, obviously with a lot more training and a lot more will.

Cheers,
________________
Les gens ici sont heureux de parler a des benevoles qui sont bilingue. Il semblerait que certaines familles d'athlete auraient beaucoup de difficulte de communiquer dans leur langue. Tout cela dit, les jeux sont super bien organizer. Les benevoles du Covan sont impressionnant. Il est remarquable d'observer l'effort des organisateur pour la pluspart des details...

Vancouver est reellement une ville a visiter!

Bonne nuit

Men's Snowboard Half Pipe

OMG,

What a cool event. We woke up really early that day, did not have tickets, and made our best purchase thus far in Vancouver. The ride to Cypress Mountain was about 1 hour. The ride was pretty green, no snow up there. It was awesome to see the set up of the pipe. Right beside the halfpipe was the previous day event course (snowboard cross). WOW, the snowboard cross was quite the course, the drops were a lot more impressive in person.

Concerning the halfpipe event, it was a long day. Afternoon was qualifications and semi and at night was the final competitors. It was very warm in the stands during the afternoon but at night it became a little cool. The competition itself was awesome, but became really repetitive. Its very cool to see what these athletes do on a halfpipe, but the spins, flips and grabs become quite repetitive. We saw over 120 runs yesterday and must have seen at least 80 falls. I now understand why these guys can only compete for for a few years.

It was awesome though.
_________________________

C'etait super de voir un athlete canadien se qualifie pour la finale aujourd'hui. Mais je dois vous dire que parmi nous, nous sommes tres decu. Nous avions 3 competiteurs parmi les 20 autres, mais nous ne sommes pas arrive a remporter de medaille. En fin de compte a mon avis ce n'est pas necessairement remporter une medaille mais c'est plutot de ce donner une chance de remporter une medaille. Nous ne sommes pas arrive a competitionner une medaille, les autres etait dans une ligue appart, voila ce qui m'a decu.

a tous une superbe journee!