Desicritics Category: Sports: Hockey

Indian Hockey Federation Suspended by Indian Olympic Association - Games We Play

Shantanu Dutta — Mon, 28 Apr 2008 12:51:51 EDT

The suspension of the Indian Hockey Federation by the Indian Olympic Association will raise many questions about reviving hockey – supposedly India’s national game and once the one discipline where India could be assured of a medal. This happened after the International Hockey Federation advised the India's Olympic body to take over management of the country's hockey after a bribery scandal plunged the game into crisis.

A larger question will go unanswered in the midst of all this murky ruckus; the question of how many games we as a country ought to play. That focus will help in allocating scarce resources on a select few instead of investing in every game under the sun and ending up mediocre in practically all of them. At the moment the Indian Olympic Association is the classic show case of India’s famous “Unity in Diversity” slogan and the Association recognizes every thing from Atya Patya, Ten Pin Bowling and Thang Ta. Check out the IOA’s web site for a whole lot more games that the Association supposedly supports. Of course, none of these games are Olympic sports and will ever be in the foreseeable future but no one care’s.

Apart from all these obscure games, of course India plays all the better known ones – Basketball, Baseball, Volleyball, Ice Hockey, Throwball - you name it and we play it and play it mostly terribly. Even in those games, where we have some modest success, like tennis or chess or perhaps badminton, there would be perhaps one or two players or one or two athletes who hold the flag in a country of India’ size and population. And they usually have discovered long ago that they will gain little from the somnolent and ineffective sports federations that preside over them like deities in a pantheon. Remember the cynical, sneering, pan chewing official running Women’s’ hockey portrayed in Chak de India? The film maker had to have picked up his cues some where!

No nation in the world plays as many sports disciplines as we do with official blessings and perhaps as poorly as we do. Whereas at one level sports is a pastime and recreation and any one can play any thing, professional sports is a different game altogether. Since sports is never ever going to be a strategic concern in a country like India, it will always be at the bottom of the pile in the budget allocated to the larger social sector. One would assume therefore that the little piece of cake that is available would be used judiciously. But that does not appear to be the case.

India’s sports policy is fairly recent having been drafted in 2001. However the policy does not address this issue and if any thing , in an attempt to be all things to all people, talks of broad basing sports. Of course some aspects of broad basing are pretty good – like making opportunities available to a wider section of the population ; encouraging traditional sports and so on. But the policy ought to have drawn a line some where but it hasn’t and the day may nor be far off when playing kancha (marbles) and lattu(spinning top). The pits to which sports administration has fallen as revealed in the hockey scandal should make us think a bit. Of course it is no one’s case that hockey should be axed but it may be a time to introspect as to which games enjoy official patronage and budgetary support. It is better to be involved with fewer sports, allot them more money out of the little that will be available and then manage their administration better. It is time for a newer and more achievable sports policy perhaps !

Twenty20 Winners And The Money Rainfall

Sakshi Juneja — Thu, 27 Sep 2007 07:45:33 EDT

Okay, so the Indian Team won the T20 World Cup. Wow! Fantastic! Brilliant! Super-duper cool! Awesome, yup! I hope you get the drift. I too, like you and many others the world over am ecstatic that our team has returned home victorious. More so, over the fact that they deserved it, the last three matches had been seriously competitive but the Boys in Blue gave it their 100% to the very last minute.

Besides the grand arrival, the T20 Team has also been showered with an intense "monetary" rainfall. Right after the India-Pak finals, BCCI announced a $2 million (Rs. 12 crore) reward to the team members, cash awards have also been announced for individual members for their glorious feat at the Twenty20 World Cup in South Africa. Yuvraj Singh will also be getting an additional Rs 1 crore (and not to forget the promised sports car) for becoming the first batsman to hit six sixes in an over in a Twenty20 match.

All good, I say. After all, the Indian Team deserves it and BBCI being the cricket board of the country can reward them as per their desires.

But what I can't get to comprehend is the method of appreciation chosen by our (useless) State Governments. I mean seriously look at this absurdity.

- Maharashtra Chief Minister Vilasrao Deshmukh has announced a cash incentive of Rs 10 lakh each for Ajit Agarkar and Rohit Sharma.

- Delhi Chief Minister Sheila Dikshit has announced that her Government would give cash award of Rs 5 lakh each to Gautam Gambhir and Virender Sehwag.

- R. P. Singh will receive Rs 10 lakh in cash and a citation from the UP government as mark of recognition for his brilliant performance.

- Karnataka Chief Minister HD Kumaraswamy has announced an award of Rs 5 lakh each for Venkatesh Prasad, the bowling coach of the team, and Robin Uthappa.

- The President of Andhra Pradesh’s Telangana Rashtriya Samiti has announced a rewards of Rs 1,16,000 each to Dhoni, Irfan Pathan and Gautam Gambhir.

- Haryana Chief Minister Bhupinder Singh Hooda has announced a cash reward of Rs 21 lakh for Joginder Sharma.

- Chief Minister Virbhadra Singh offered a week's free stay to all the members of the team in any of the HP Tourism Development Corporation hotels in the state.

- Tamil Nadu Government announced Rs 5 lakh cash reward for Dinesh Karthik.

- Team India skipper Mahendra Singh Dhoni will receive the first ever 'Jharkhand Ratna' Award which carries a cash award of Rs 5 lakh and a memento.

- Tax exemption for all players.

Why? As it is, Cricket is a popular sport in this country, plus after this triumph most of the T20 players are likely to pocket huge sums of money via brand endorsements. Then, why are the State Governments allowed to fool around with our money in an attempt to match their neighboring State's generosity.

Instead this money could have been used for tons of more needful causes - like encouraging other sports at schools and colleges, funding our eternally deprived hockey teams, investing in the much needed sporting equipments, etc and etc.

It's no wonder why the Chief Coach of the national hockey team, Joaquim Carvalho, is annoyed at being ignored by these very State Governments and their financial kindness.

"Why are our hockey players being treated like orphans and are why our politicians biased against hockey, the national game?" Carvalho asked. [Mid-Day]

It's sickening to see how low our political leaders are ready to stoop to, just to get a few mentions in the media while completely ignoring their basic duties towards the common man.

P.S. On second thoughts, Mr. King Khan, why weren't you there to greet our Hockey champions with the same enthusiasm as you showed couple of days ago in Johannesburg? I guess practicing what one preaches, isn't exactly your style.

Twenty20 - Not So Plenty

sufferingsocrates — Thu, 27 Sep 2007 03:06:20 EDT

And so, India brings back the World Cup. Albeit the 20-20 version of it. A celebration definitely deserving of such a wonderful achievement. The craze of the fans to watch their demi-gods come from the land of the springboks, was almost unimaginable. The crowds were pouring on the streets of Mumbai, even as the politicians tried to make a point themselves. Forget rooting for the victorious team, they were not even bothered to display the Indian flag, and were all too happy waving their party flags. The icing so to speak (pun intended) was indeed the seating arrangement at Wankhede once the team arrived after a 6 hour victory parade. Except Dhoni, all front row seats were taken by the able BCCI officials and politicians. Some things never change in India.

After India defeated Australia in the semi finals, The Australian newspaper reported that India was celebrating as if it had won the Soccer World Cup. Well, India sure did win the Cup finally, and Australia will have to wait for 2 or more years to get a crack at it. What The Australian probably doesn't realise is that cricket is a religion in India, and is the only sport where India can still claim as being a dominant force. India did win the Asia Cup Hockey tournament recently, but it almost went unnoticed. In all the hype and hoopla of the first Indian Test series win in England in 2 decades, it was lost. And now, the Hockey players want their share of the booty. Is it a fair demand ? I would say yes, simply because, India still failed to perform in the more grilling 50 over version format at the World Cup. And if one has to go by sheer weightage, 20-20 deserved only 40% of what a 50-50 should have received.

As a cricket fan myself, I was thrilled to watch the Indo-Pak final and the now famous 666666 by Yuvraj. Without doubt, moments which will forever be etched in everyone's mind. But just because T20 had a World Cup suffixed, one should not get carried away with the Indian team's success. There has been no doubt in anyone's mind of Indian cricketers' potential. So, the victory in T20 itself is probably cathartic after the World Cup debacle in March. But what was never thought to be a major World Event in International Cricket, has now been given the tag of THE Cup to win. Well, at least that's how India perceives it.

Nobody was giving any importance to T20 until it actually started. Nobody took interest in India, until the bowl out India won against Pakistan. And until then, T20 was never thought to upstage 50-50 as the major tournament event. Now, there is a fear, this may well happen. Indian public has gone berserk after the victory, but don't quite realise that it is only 40% of what it takes to win the more arduous 50 version game. There are various reasons why this Indian victory at the T20 World Cup could be harmful to the game of cricket itself.

As many critics have pointed out, it is but a fast food version of the game of cricket. Though pleasing and exciting to the eyes, there can be ridiculous results on some days of cricket in this format. If one were to think that Zimbabwe winning against Australia once in 2 decades is a shock in the 50-50, it will be much more likely in this format. Ironically, the first time Zimbabwe played in it's 50-50 World Cup format in 1983, it shocked Australia, and the same happened here too. As one of the commentators pointed out, this is probably the world stage where talent is on display, and not necessarily temperament. Cricket has seen many go by the wayside due to sheer lack of temperament. Teams will now be in a dilemma whether to include their best players in this version, since just about anything can happen.

With all due credit to the Indian team, one needs to think whether 3 million $ was something that they really deserved. The Hockey team is rightly peeved, since their win went unnoticed. However, the only argument that goes against the Hockey Team is that they haven't won any World Event for quite a few years now. More ironic was the fact that SRK (Shah Rukh Khan) who through his movie Chak De, India wanted to promote the game of Hockey, was all too happy wishing the Indian Cricket team, eventhough he does claim in Chak De, that "Hockey mein chakke nahi hote hain". Chak De has brought back good spirits into cricket, while Hockey is still in oblivion.

Most importantly I feel, India winning the tournament can be detrimental to the game itself. Simply because, Indian cricket is the major contributor to the ICC coffers, and the game's best ambassador with jampacked crowds wherever the Indian team travels. So if T20 is the way to go, to rope in the moolah from Indian cricket, ICC may not hesitate to have more of T20. That fear is now very real. If India had not fared well, T20 may have remained as a one off event. But now with the T20 World cup victory, the pressure and demand for more of this version will be unavoidable.

That could spell doomsday for the 50-50 version very soon. The fact that the 50 over version of the World Cup this year was a debacle, and T20 such a huge success does not augur well for the hitherto popular ODI format. As long as the 5 day Test Cricket format is intact, cricket will retain its charm and skills. Series like the 2005 Ashes need to happen more often for this though. The success of 20-20 is also a reminder for ICC that making changes to the 50-50 format should now be seriously considered.

Movie Review: Chak De! India - About Patriotism, Not Sports

Nandhu — Thu, 23 Aug 2007 11:53:48 EDT

Chak De! India banks more on the emotional high of patriotism than on the sport it is based on - hockey, our national game. Shahrukh Khan plays Kabir Khan, a disgraced captain of the national hockey team, who returns to the field, this time as coach of the women's hockey team on the eve of the World Cup.

This is the classic tale of the underdog overcoming all odds and doing well when it matters the most. And yet, the movie is nearly free of clichés. The matches are a marvel in the way they have been shot, with the camera never capturing a shot not possible while shooting a real life hockey match.

If you have seen A League Of Their Own, you know the routine. Take a team filled with characters, warts and all, make them the underdogs with not a chance to win anything, you get a killer movie in the sports genre. Many a time, Shahrukh Khan reminded one of Tom Hanks in that movie. I am not a big fan of the star, but this a good performance from the actor. He finally gives what by his own standards is an understated performance. But what is really surprising is the ease with which he shares space with the lesser-known actors who comprise the hockey team.

In 1999 or 2000, I attended a lecture by a German director, who made documentaries, at the Max Mueller Bhavan in Chennai. He spoke of how he chose the faces of characters that portray ordinary scenes in his films. He said the characters should have "strong faces". In a sequence from a documentary he showed us, a group of women cycle down a hill with the camera in a jeep tracking them. As the wind blows on their faces, the women – none of them good looking – smile at the camera. It's a rare, honest moment on film.

Many of the actors who comprise the hockey team in Chak De are not conventionally great looking. Some are pretty, but there are a few who don't have actor good looks, only strong faces. All of them are quite unlike the other - in body, face, diction and character. Each one of them comes with her problems intact. Their faces create an immediate impact when caught on camera.

When the team parades before the press wearing sarees with tricolour borders post interval, you finally realise that quite a few players – often shown as being dirty and bruised on the field – are actually good looking. Until and after that moment, it's all back to the strong faces again. Much could be said of the casting of these actors, who are nothing short of wonderful.

When I reviewed Rang De Basanti, I thought the movie was manipulating our natural patriotic instincts for commercial purposes. I am still uneasy when the patriotic highs of the movie bring tears to my eyes and a lump to my throat. I always have to ask: Am I being manipulated?

Patriotism is often a prop in Aditya Chopra's movies. In Kabul Express, the take on patriotism is irreverent. Everyone seems keen on saving their own skins first. In Veer-Zaara, however, the lovers are divided by land; one is in Pakistan, the other is in India and the patriotism is contrived.

However, in Chak De!, director Shimit Amin (Ab Tak Chappan) keeps the reins tight. The patriotism dose is just about right or at least it's enough to ensure commercial success.

I can't help but think that writer Jaideep Sahni (Company, Bunty aur Babli) borrows from the Hollywood sports classics. He at least lifted a couple of ideas from A League Of Their Own. But still this is a brilliant effort.

The cinematographer Sudeep Chatterjee also shot Iqbal. So the sports genre must have been familiar to him. The music by Salim-Sulaiman is quite good, though the title song seemed a bit familiar and, therefore, hummable.

Chak De India - Bringing Hockey To The Forefront

Huzaifa — Mon, 20 Aug 2007 00:02:23 EDT

I want Chak De India to do very well at the box office. And it has nothing to do with the acting or clichéd storyline. I want it to be a success because it's a small but significant correction to the media lopsidedness when it comes to sports.

With the rising popularity of Twenty20 cricket and the advent of the Indian Cricket League, there's going to be a lot more focus on cricket than ever before. In the coming months, the promoters of ICL will spare no effort to make their venture a public success. Non cricket sports, which have always been on the periphery, will slip further away from the spotlight.

The Indian hockey scene has been in despair for a long time. Corruption, lethargy and unwillingness for modern technology have lead to this. Ever since the world switched to Astroturf in the 1970s and India dilly dallied, the once filled hockey stadiums witnessed diminishing crowds and now lie in despair.

The Premier Hockey League was an attempt to change that and lift hockey from its doldrums with flashy marketing, taglines, brand endorsements and TV coverage. But it hasn't yet achieved its target. Cricket is simply too powerful to overcome with catchy slogans and corny team names.

But that's where Shahrukh Khan comes in. King Khan wields power that money simply cannot buy. Coupled with an inspiring storyline he can elicit emotions in the audience that marketing campaigns cannot. This is the guy who single handedly made it "cool" to get your parents permission before eloping with your lover ( refer: DDLJ ). And he's adored by an audience that is perfect for sports viewership.

Thanks to Chak De India, hockey has crept into the spotlight piggybacking on Shahrukh Khan. The game is being splashed across glossy supplements and is suddenly visible to a large demographic of youngsters. This is just the kind of impetus the sport required. Bollywood has the ability to sway the masses. It has provided the impulse to get the ball rolling. Now the sports authorities must keep the momentum going.

The hardest part of convincing someone is getting them to listen to you. Thanks to Shahrukh, people are gladly queuing up to watch the game on the big screen. We can only hope that a few of the viewers will watch the movie, go home and pick up a hockey stick. Then this movie would be a true success.

Is The Cricket Boom Over?

Ashish — Wed, 9 May 2007 01:21:52 EDT

Is the cricket boom over? There is still wide-spread coverage of cricket in the media, with full length articles in the newspaper sports sections and somewhat there in the television channels, but I can see a massive lowering of interest in the field of cricket. There are colleagues of mine who used to swear by cricket, used to know everything, and when you ask them about the Indian tour of Bangladesh, they dismiss it and want to talk about something else.

Can it really be possible that the World Cup debacle has left such a lasting impact? One can certainly hope so. The Indian obsession with cricket has left a number of other games behind in its lurch. Games in which singular Indians do well to some extent such as chess, badminton, tennis, shooting, etc do well because of the effort put in by these individual sportsmen towards their training, and equally strongly, for arranging for funding by some corporate. Contrast that with cricket where corporates fight over each other for providing funding to a higher level each time a contract gets clear for negotiation.

And we are all responsible for all of this. If you read reports of how the other sports (and their people) are being treated by this country's sports administrators (poor food, bad hotels, horrible transport), and just for a second think that if such things were to happen to our cricketers, you cannot over-estimate the loud outcry that would be heard. The media would be covering such news for days on end, picking up random people on the street to get their opinion on how such bad administration of cricketing affairs can affect the team.

To get a perspective of how badly this lack of focus on other sports can rankle, do just one thing. Listen to the commentary when the Indian contingent walks in for the inauguration of either the Asian Games or the Olympics. The Olympics makes it even more clear - when the commentators try to speak about the Indian team, you just wish for the moment to pass. Typically the only thing that they can mention is that the Indian team used to win Gold medals in Hockey in the past. As to this hockey team, it has been under the capture of the super-cop K P S Gill for so long that it is a wonder that the team even qualifies for some of the major tournaments. When a match happens, I really try to stay away from hearing the news because it will about some hockey defeat or the other.

One can only hope for a time when this nation of 1 billion people can come in the top league of Olympic medal-winners, or figure in the World finals of soccer; but as long as this country remains a one-sport country, there's slim chance of that happening.

Yeterday's Idol - Today's Fantasy

Richard Marcus — Wed, 22 Nov 2006 06:08:23 EST

I was recently asked who my idol was when I was a kid. What I thought interesting about the question was that it was assumed, correctly as it happens, that I had an idol when I was a kid. It's just one of those things that goes with the territory of growing up, having a person we look up to for some reason or another.

Like a lot of young boys my idol when I was a kid was sports figure. But unlike so many other kids who picked the real popular players of the day, my favourite's best days were long behind him. Henri (don't pronounce the H and make en sound like on and you'll have a good idea how to say his name) Richard's glory days had been in the fifties with his brother Maurice "The Rocket" Richard and the sixties with Jean Beliveau.

By the time I found out that a player on my favourite team had a last name the same as my first name his career was beginning to draw to a close. He did score the game tying and game winning goals in the 1971 Stanley Cup championship against Tony Esposito and the Chicago Blackhawks. But the real story that year was Montreal's rookie goalie Ken Dryden. He'd only played six games in the regular season, before coming in and starting every playoff game and stoning the opposition cold.

Four years later, Henri retired after winning his eleventh Stanley Cup, and his first as Captain of the Montreal Canadians. He had been a small elusive player who could skate circles around the bigger players looking to make him part of the boards. He never had the most powerful shot in the world, but it seemed to be able to find the back of the net anyway. Maybe not with the regularity of his more illustrious brother, but his goals always seemed to be important.

They were the goals that would put the team back into the game when it seemed the game was lost, or the goal that broke the spirit of the other team in a tight playoff series. His goals always seemed to carry a little of the team's past glory with them, and you could almost see the other team wilt when he scored, as if all of a sudden a Canadians' win was now inevitable.

As a child it was easy to have a sports figure as an idol, especially back in the more innocent days of the late sixties and early seventies prior to endorsement deals, steroids, and all the other disillusionments that have come with the passing of the years. Of course we also didn't know the intimate details of our heroes' lives then as we do now.

I can still look back on Henri Richard's career with the rose tinted glasses of the young kid who thought he was great because I never found out whether or not he drank heavily, beat his wife, or slept around while on the road. There was usually one or two reporters who followed the same team each year from their home town newspaper and they knew if they ever said anything about stuff they weren't supposed to they'd never report on another game again.

Anyway they were just as much a member of the team as the coaching staff and the management. Sharing the train rides and sitting up with the players, drinking and playing cards as they travelled between games. They had as much to lose as the players did by talking; it was a pretty exclusive club in those days and nobody wanted to lose their membership.

As a kid a sports hero made sense, they did something you would like to do, and they did it really well. Your world wasn't cluttered with the things that adults filled theirs with. All that mattered was whether your hero scored on Saturday nights and his team won. It could mean the world in terms of bragging rights at school on Monday, but by Wednesday focus would have shifted onto next Saturday's game.

Henri Richard retired when I was twelve, on the cusp of adulthood, and I don't think that I've had a person who I'd call an idol since. At least not in the same uncomplicated way that he was to my young self. The Montreal Canadians of the later 1970's are considered one of the benchmark teams of the NHL that others are compared to.

Like the New York Islander and Edmonton Oiler teams that followed, they were the class of the league. Each of those three great teams had players on them worthy of idolization, but not one of them seemed able to strike that chord with me. Wayne Gretzkey, Guy Lafleur, Mike Bossy, and Mark Messier were all gifted individuals whose talent could and did elevate hockey to artistry on occasion but it didn't seem to matter.

It wasn't that hockey had lost its attraction, that would come later; in fact it was watching people like Gretzkey that kept my interest alive for as long as it lasted. Instead it was the fact that my own horizons had expanded. I could see the potential for other people, professions, and skills to be worthy of emulation and respect.

The thing is though it's a lot harder to idolize your doctor or plumber for their skills than it was the athletes who you followed as a kid. There is nothing truly spectacular about what either of them do, no moments when they will show off some particularly incredible move that will leave you with your heart in your mouth and awestruck.

But you also know that you have more practical use in your life for a plumber or a doctor than a professional athlete, pop musician, or movie star and you know which one you can live without. An idol is someone you fantasize about being, not somebody you actually become.

Whether scoring the game-winning goal in the championship game, or wining an acting award, or singing on stage in front of a hundred thousand people, you can look at them and say what if. As a child you can even believe in it for a while, and even as an adult you can hold on to a dream for a time. If you're lucky and talented, or sometimes just lucky, you might even become something akin to those you idolize.

As you grow older though, you realize the chances of that happening are remote, and the fantasy of becoming your idol fades. Some people continue to live vicariously through the lives of celebrities using their experiences to augment their own, but they have mostly stopped trying to be them.

As a child we pick out an idol for any number of reasons, but mainly for the purpose of allowing us to create a fantasy involving dreams of fame and glory. As we age we realize that those dreams are usually beyond our reach, and that is the beginning of the end for our need of idols. There are plenty of people who I respect and admire, but I don't dream of becoming them anymore.

The Obligatory Commonwealth Games Post

Nanda Kishore — Tue, 14 Mar 2006 05:54:08 EST

The ticket prices for the opening ceremony at the Commonwealth Games here in Melbourne are steep, to put it mildly - in the AUD $420-590 range. The games kick off on Wednesday in the hallowed precincts of MCG, and if the hype in the city is anything to go by, the price may well be worth paying for.

To give credit where it's due, Melbourne has prepared (or so it seemed to my beery eyes) pretty well for the games. What's more, Melbournians, so famous (in their own city) for their love of sport, seem to have bought into the concept of the games quite generously. Which doesn't seem all that surprising considering Australia is a bit like the First Lady of the Commonwealth, but when you consider the general lack of enthusiasm about the games elsewhere, that is an achievement. Melbourne hasn't really hosted a sporting event of great magnitude in a while, and one suspects that may have something to do with it.

All in all, it is hard to escape the seeming indifference towards the games in the rest of the world, and particuarly in the Commonwealth countries themselves, if the buzz on the web is anything to go by. In India, Rediff.com is as usual putting in its bit, but it is hardly the same kind of coverage an India-Pak series or even the Asian Games get. A pertinent question may be, are these games still relevant, now that the Commonwealth itself is a largely ineffectual organisation, a relic of the Raj?

Even if the Melbourne games are a success, the question still remains relevant in my view. For one, the games do not produce enough world class performances to elevate themselves beyond the small world. Further, there is not much evidence to suggest that the games are a money spinner the way the Olympics or the soccer world cup are - these are admittedly unfair comparisons, but then commercial considerations are inescapable. Lastly, there is the issue of hosting the games - once again, unlike those two other events, countries are not exactly falling over each other to host the commonwealth games.

The one reason I do like the games is that India usually performs quite creditably, being quite strong in shooting and weightlifting events at the level. Some of the performances at Manchester were outstanding and came as a pleasant surprise. The most notable was the gold in women's hockey, where India fended off a strong Aussie side.

The other factor, of course, is that the next edition will be held in our own New Delhi. I hope the games organising committee (whatever name it goes by) is putting its best foot forward and that infrastructure is getting a serious upgrade. The last time New Delhi had a similar upgrade was in 1982 when the Asian Games were a huge success. Unfortunately, all that work came to nothing in the years later courtesy official apathy of epic proportions. Have our boards/bodies learnt anything?

Even before the games officially have kicked off, India has had an inauspicious start, although the latest problem was an off-field affair that athletes had nothing to do. Hopefully there will be a much happier outcome by the end of the games.

The Winter Olympics: Send The Pros Home

Richard Marcus — Fri, 24 Feb 2006 09:30:18 EST

Maybe it's a Canadian thing, all that snow and ice, but I've always liked the Winter Olympics better than the Summer variety. Until recently, Canada hasn't done any better in the Winter than in the Summer games, so it can't even be put down to chauvinism.

I suppose part of it is that so many of the sports are ones that are much easier to identify with from a North American mind set. Skiing, and combinations there of, skating, tobogganing, (if you can call strapping yourself to a piece of plastic, lying on your back and going down a sheet of ice feet first tobogganing) and snowboarding are all things that anybody at home can do.

Unlike the sprinters, high jumpers, hurdlers, gymnasts, and pole-vaulters, who compete during the Summer Olympics, I have a much easier time identifying with the people who compete in the Winter games. Of course I'm not going to try ski jumping in my back yard or a triple toe loop on skates, but at least I've strapped on a pair of skis in my life and been skating.

How many of you have ever decided to go for a casual pole vault on the weekend? Or maybe chuck around the discus with some friends? It's far more likely that you've gotten together for a ski weekend at some time in your life than sticking what looks like a cannon ball under your chin, and trying to chuck it sixty or seventy yards.

It's not like the Winter Olympics are any less corrupt or commercial than the Summer games; just look at the whole fiasco that surrounded the Salt Lake City games from the organizing committee to the figure skating judging. Or any time a skier is interviewed in the winner's circle and they automatically flip their skis so the brand is facing the cameras; Nike or Fisher, equipment suppliers are the real winners in all these games no matter what the season.

Drugs and means of cheating are just a prevalent, and perhaps even more so. Blood packing before cross-country skiing races (transfusions of fresh blood that supposedly gives you an advantage somehow) seems to have been a favourite for a long time and virtually undetectable until recently. I wouldn't be surprised by anything anymore when it came to devising new and ingenious ways of cheating by athletes and their coaches to give themselves any extra edge possible.

But, even knowing all that, it still seems that there is something far less tainted about the Winter games. Perhaps it is the sheer insanity of some of the sports. Downhill ski racing may look glamorous to watch, but skiing down the side of a mountain at speeds up to 100mph and over is a really good way to get yourself killed I've always thought.

There has been many a time I've tobogganed down a steep hill, that's covered in ice, but I've never done it lying on my back, steering by pointing my toes, and not being able to really see where I'm going. That's just insanely dangerous.

In the Winter Olympics there is far more of an element of risk involved than most sports in Summer Olympics. Okay if you go out for javelin catching you might run the occasional risk, but nothing compared to what happens if you lose it completely throwing yourself into the air off a 90-metre ski jump. They not only expect you to survive, but you're judged on style points and how neat and tidy a landing you can pull off. (Wind milling your arms in a desperate attempt to maintain balance counts against you.)

Unfortunately, I haven't been able to watch much of these Olympics this year except for a couple of periods of men's hockey. In the past fifteen years the only times I'll usually watch hockey at all anymore is during international events; the stuff that's played in the National Hockey League (N.H.L), and North America in general is just to boring to endure for long.

But put the game on a decent sized ice surface, where there is room to skate and make passes and it becomes something enjoyable again. It also dispels the myth that Canadians are the best hockey country in the world. At this Olympics Canada will be lucky to finish 6th after not even making it out of the quarterfinals, losing 2-0 to Russia.

What bothers me is how much media attention Canadian Olympic Hockey team has gotten. We have a speed skater who has four medals already at these Olympics; Canadian women are making huge breakthroughs in cross country skiing, winning a silver in the relay and gold in the 15 kilometre sprint; we won gold and silver in the men's skeleton, and have already exceeded out best results for medal totals at a games.

But the majority of attention is fixated on the hockey teams failure to score goals and medal. What I find especially ironic about all of this is that in the three Olympics that professional hockey players have been allowed to compete, Canada has only won a medal once.

The one medal, Gold at Salt Lake, only came about because Sweden lost in a fluke to Belarus, Russia was in disarray, and the Slovaks didn't have adequate time to put a team together. They ended up squeaking out a win against the American's who play the same style of hockey, but not even as good as the Canadians.

Hockey isn't even Canada's official national sport that, honour lies in the hands of lacrosse, yet it seems to be such a national blind spot. Any attempt to criticize the way in which Canadians play or are taught hockey is treated as treason akin to burning the flag in the United States.

All the euphemisms that are used to describe the way Canadians play hockey; willing to get their hands dirty, playing with heart, tough, and so on make it sound like skill and talent are irrelevant. Even the term for everyone's favourite type of player, power forward, implies muscle over talent. But what type of player does this end up producing?

Well, what we saw at these Olympics were big, hulking guys who had circles skated around them by faster, more talented European players. In their last three games of the tournament, Canada scored only three goals, all of them in one period against the Czech Republic, on a goalie who was having a bad game. Once he was replaced at the start of the second period the Canadians couldn't score again. If it hadn't been for the Canadian goaltender, making some pretty spectacular saves, Canada would have lost the game.

To be fair, that type of player is what's needed in the confines of the ridiculously small N.H.L. rinks where there is very little room to manoeuvre. Brute strength and the ability to run people over are much more important than being able to skate fast and pass the puck with any type of ability.

Even then, with the game built and designed for behemoths in mind, last years leading scorer was the 5'7" Martin St. Louis of the Stanley Cup champion Tampa Bay Lightning. While people talk about how the players have gotten bigger and faster in the modern era, their speed has all the subtlety and skill of a run away car. They go straight up and down the ice, continually picking up speed, and running over all objects in its path, but can do little else.

There were eight teams in the quarterfinals for the men's Olympic hockey medal round. Canada's final standing will depend on who the losers are in this round and the next. If the teams eliminated have a better record than Canada did in the preliminary round they will finish ahead of them in the standings. I don't think it's possible for them to finish eighth, but sixth, and even seventh are very likely where they will end up.

The headlines across Canada, and front pages of newspapers, have all carried pictures of the dejected hockey players sitting on the bench as they watch the seconds count down in their loss. On the same day Canadian athletes had won four medals, two gold, a silver and a bronze, yet all it seems we're supposed to care about is one team's fortunes.

On a day we should have been celebrating wonderful victories all that was deemed worthy of reporting was a bunch of professional athletes losing a game. How do you think that makes the people who survive on spare change and usually train at their own expense feel? These guys, who make more money in a month than most Olympic athletes, who are put on pedestals by the press and subsequently the public, get more publicity by losing than others do by winning a Gold medal.

I'd be pushing for a ban on professionals in the Olympic games again. Send the dream teams home, be they basketball, hockey, or tennis. These games should be the hour when the people who strive for years to obtain the pinnacle of achievement in their sport are allowed their moment in the spotlight.

The media and the public barely recognise their existence except for these two-week periods every four years, and now even that is being taken away from them by the arrival of professionals in basketball, hockey, and a lesser degree tennis. The Olympics have fallen a long way from their original idealism, if it actually ever existed, but some essence of that still remains in the efforts of the athletes who compete and win through genuine effort, and skill.

There has been a concentrated effort to reform the Olympics. Corruption among officials is being rooted out, drug cheaters are being hunted down, (a little overzealously by Richard Pound is his desire for the spotlight) and they're even trying to make the arcane rules governing the judging of skating events understandable.

But as far as I'm concerned, if they want to keep the light on the people who matter, the athletes, they need to turn back the clock to the days before they allowed the professionals to participate. Be they the hockey players from the N.H.L. or the Basketball players from the National Basketball Association, they are a distraction from the rest of the athletes who strive and compete for their countries.

Give the games back to the people who spend their lives preparing for them, not the people for whom they are only an afterthought and something to do if they feel so inclined. I'd rather see a bunch of amateurs try their best and lose, than so - called professionals achieve the same results and steal the spotlight.

Sports

Aaman Lamba — Thu, 26 Jan 2006 12:22:36 EST

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