Sports Blog

Emma-Jayne Wilson, the top apprentice jockey in North America in 2005 and two-time defending leading rider at Woodbine Racetrack, has long contended she is a jockey who just happens to be female. When asked about it on Sunday after winning the Queen’s Plate with a brilliant, perfectly-timed ride aboard 15-1 Mike Fox, her answer pretty much summed up her attitude:

“Been there, got the t-shirt, done-and-done!” she told Woodbine racing analyst (and former jockey) Renee Kierans.

Wilson is a breath of fresh air, and more power to her. But the fact remains, very few of the old boys who control horse racing have looked at a calendar recently and realized this is 2007. Women riders make up only a tiny fraction of the jockey fraternity in North America (only four have ever even ridden in the Kentucky Derby in 133 years, and none in the past decade) and the ones that do rarely get the chance to show what they can do on the better horses. What’s worse, they get labelled as whiners if they complain, or blackballed from riding altogether.

The old stand-by for owners and trainers who refuse to employ women riders is that they just don’t have the strength men do to control 1500 lbs. of finely muscled and extremely high-strung horse. Which on the surface seems a fair argument. But consider this – most of those 100 lb. male jockeys operate at 20, 30 or 40 lbs. below their normal body weight. In order to maintain that weight, they do nothing but eat tomato sandwiches and consommé soup, which they immediately force themselves to puke up, three or four times a day. If they show up for work on race afternoon a couple pounds heavy, they wrap themselves in a rubber suit and sit in a sweatbox to forcefully shed pounds. Now compare that with a woman, who may only be 5-10 lbs. (or less) below normal body weight, and who can maintain that weight with a controlled diet and exercise. And then ask yourself, which one is more likely to be at peak physical and mental sharpness when they sit in the starting gate?

The reason women command so little respect at the track – their place of work, no less – is sexism, pure and simple. In any other line of work it would be illegal, and it puts a stain on the sport as much as hockey brawls, football players who double as gang-bangers, and baseball players who use drugs to boost their stats put a stain on their sport.

Hopefully, riders like Emma-Jayne Wilson will start to turn the tide. She may not want to hear it, but I’m going to say it anyway:

You go, girl.

First off, it's a bit of a sad day in the Canadian sports world, as today marks the 25th anniversary of the death of Formula One racer Gilles Villeneuve. Villeneuve was my first sports hero outside of hockey players. For some unknown reason, when I was a kid my mum got me a subscription to a Formula One racing magazine. This coincided with Villeneuve's arrival in Formula One, where he quickly gained a reputation as one of the top young talents on the circuit, with a risky driving style that often either put him into the wall or onto the podium. I was amazed to realize that this guy, one of the best drivers in the world, had started out in small-town Quebec racing snowmobiles. I grew up in the country and in the winter delivered newspapers on my snowmobile. So, every day when I headed out on my route, I was Gilles Villeneuve.

Villeneuve was killed during qualifying for the 1982 Belgian Grand Prix. In typical hell-bent-for-leather style, he was on the track in the last minutes of the session, pushing hard for a better qualifying spot at 225 kph, when he came up on a slower car. The front wheels of his Ferrari clipped the rear wheels of the slower car, flinging his car into the air and catapulting it end-over-end down the track. Medical staff managed to resuscitate him trackside, but he died later in hospital, leaving behind a wife and two children, including his son Jacques, who would go on to become Formula One World Champion in 1997. For me, the death of Gilles Villeneuve was a shocking early lesson in how tragic life can sometimes be.

In much lighter news, halfway through the NHL playoffs, I'm hanging in in fourth place (of 13) in my hockey pool, but actually winning is quite a long-shot. My Nashville gamble didn't pay off, as the Preds went out in round one. And although goalie Roberto Luongo stood on his head, he alone couldn't get my other Western team, Vancouver, past round two. So now I'm down to five guys (from 10) all on Ottawa and Buffalo, who play each other starting Thursday. And one of those guys is actually out with a concussion. Like I said, it's a long-shot. But I'm keeping the faith.

And finally, I was corresponding with a Suite writer in another section who was doing a series of articles on coaching kids' sports. I said I would provide a link, so here it is. Check it out, it's good stuff for any parents to know.

As noted elsewhere on this site, while I always enjoyed sports, in journalism school I rejected the notion of being a sports writer. The idea of writing endless variations of clichéd quotes just didn’t appeal to me, when it seemed that there were so many more interesting things to write about in the world. I’ve since come to realize that I judged both the athletes and the sports-writing profession too harshly and there are both smart athletes and good writers who can give and present interesting information in the context of sport.

Still, sometimes you have to wonder.

The dumbest thing I’ve ever heard come out of a reporter’s mouth was a couple years ago, when a hockey reporter on a national network prefaced a piece on the suicide of NHL player Jordin Tootoo’s brother Terence with the immortal line: “They were like brothers.” Come again? Like brothers? “They were brothers, you moron!” I yelled, throwing the remote at the TV.

Now, in today’s paper, Brendan Morrow of the Dallas Stars, in the lead-up to the sixth game of the Stars playoff series with Vancouver, apparently provided this bit of scintillating information to the Canadian Press after the Stars had won Game 5 in overtime:

“We’re going to try and not get too high. We tried not to get too low after being down 3-1. I think we have to play with a lot of emotion. We have to stay disciplined and keep our emotion in check and turn our energy into positive energy.”

Uh-huh. So, Brendan, which will it be? High-low, low-high? Play with a lot of emotion, or keep the emotion in check? Do you know? Do you care? Do you think it would just be easier to hand out statements to the press provided by the Dallas PR department that could be checked beforehand against some sort of dumbness scale?

It’s hard to know really who is more at fault here, Morrow for having trouble putting a sensible statement together, or the CP reporter for taking the time to even write down what he said.

Either way, I’d say if the players and journalists are just going to mail it in, they might as well not even bother. Save the space in the paper for something like, I don’t know, an in-depth feature on the guy who invented the electronic score clock, or when the first referees started dressing in zebra stripes. That, at least, might actually be interesting.

Typically I avoid playoff hockey pools, for the simple reason that unless I load up on guys from my favourite team - not a good strategy, I don't think, unless they go in as a number one or two seed - I feel like a traitor. Inevitably, you end up torn between hoping your team wins the Cup, and hoping guys on other teams rack up lots of points for you. It's the classic dilemma.

This year, however, my team (okay, the Boston Bruins) didn't make the playoffs (again), so I decided to plunge into a pool. Last night we held our draft.

My strategy going in was to decide which four teams will make the conference finals, and load up on those guys. In the East, Buffalo has been the cream of the crop all season, so picking a couple Sabres was a no-brainer. After a shaky start to the season, Ottawa has been as good as everyone thought they might be, and after so many recent playoff disappointments in he past few years, I'm thinking this year they might break through. So add a couple Ottawa guys.

In the West, I like Vancouver. Before Christmas they didn't even look like a playoff-bound team, but they've been on fire in the second half, leaping over several other teams to claim the division title. Mostly I like goalie Roberto Luongo, who is having a MVP-like season. The Canucks don't really score a whole lot, but in the NHL playoffs, having great goaltending is the key to success. Witness the fact two of the last three playoff MVPs have been goalies - and one of those lost in the Finals. So add a couple Canucks.

But I was stumped on my second choice from the West. Detroit's an elite team, but they have a recent history of playoff chokers. I was devastated when the Bruins traded Joe Thornton to San Jose, but as dominant as big Joe can be in the regular season, he has yet to prove to me he can lead a team to victory in the playoffs. Anaheim might have been a good choice, but everyone else thought so too, and Anaheim guys disappeared pretty quick.

And then there was Nashville. By about round five of 10, it dawned on me that everyone was ignoring the Preds. They have an excellent goalie in Thomas Vokoun, and a solid leader in Paul Kariya. If former two-time Cup champ and league MVP Peter Forsberg can stay healthy, he might just have it in him to lead one last charge to the promised land. So I started picking Preds. Eventually, I ended up with three of them, on my 10-player roster.

So, now I'm a big Nashville fan - and I never thought I'd say that before. Stay tuned.

Although it's hard to tell when you live in in North America, the International Cricket Council one-day World Cup is being held through March and April at various locations throughout the Caribbean.

On Sunday, March 18, Bob Woolmer, a 58-year-old former England international player and head coach of the perennial power-house Pakistan team, was found strangled in his Kingston room.

Woolmer's murder came the day after the Pakistanis were eliminated from advancing in the tournament after suffering a huge upset loss to the Irish team. Although Pakistan went into the tournament with two of their biggest stars out with injury, Pakistan's prominence in the sport always makes them a favourite in international play. The Irish, on the other hand, were playing in their first World Cup.

The murder is being investigated by both Jamaican police and the ICC, amid speculation Woolmer was killed by everyone from disgruntled fans to irate gamblers. Some reports have indicated Woolmer was writing a book that raised the issue of match-fixing in the sport, and apparently the governing board of international cricket will explore that angle.

What police have said is that Woolmer's hotel room showed no sign of forced entry, so Woolmer likely knew his killer. They are also working on the theory that whoever killed Woolmer, described as a big and athletic man, probably had help.

While the investigation goes on, so will the tournament, with eight teams moving into the playoff round, and with Australia, Sri Lanka, New Zealand and the West Indies each having gone undefeated in their respective pools. Canada, a collection of amateurs who basically pay their own way to qualify and compete, finished round-robin play at 0-3. The US does not have a team in the World Cup.

A friend of mine was recently relating the experience of his kid playing in the Atom-level provincial hockey championships. Being one of the eight teams that makes it to the provincials is a big deal, and a kid may only get the opportunity once in a 10-year minor hockey career. Some kids will never make it. So when they do, it should be a great experience for the kids.

Too bad someone didn't point this out to the referees.

As mentioned above, my friend told me in one game (not involving his son's team), the referee called 18 penalties, or roughly one every two minutes. Yes, a trip is a trip, an elbow is an elbow, and at that level, body-checking isn't allowed. But 18 penalties? For eight-year-olds? At that age and level, kids fall down for no reason. Sticks and skates get tangled purely by accident. You can't tell me that every one of those 18 penalties was deserved, and that once-in-awhile the ref couldn't have just looked the other way and let the kids play on.

My friends son's team made it to the playoff round, but had to play their first playoff game - which they lost after giving up four power play goals - without one of their best players. It seems in the previous game, the player had taken the puck off an opponent, but in the jostling, the other kid went down. The ref blew the whistle and assessed a two-minute minor penalty for body-checking. Fair enough. Except the other kid didn't get up right away (whether he was hurt or embarrassed, it's hard to tell with eight-year-olds) and so the ref changed his mind and assessed a five-minute major penalty. Automatically the kid was kicked out of the game, and according to the rules, had to miss the next game as well.

The kid who was "hurt"? After a couple minutes he got up, dusted himself off and never missed a shift.

Keep in mind, this was the provincial championship tournament, the once-in-a-lifetime chance. The kid who was kicked out probably cried himself to sleep that night, all the while thinking adults are the biggest jerks in the world.

So where does this all come from? None other than Hockey Canada itself. The NHL has adopted a zero-tolerance policy for any infractions that impede another player's progress and slows down the game. In their wisdom, Hockey Canada has decided the exact same rules should be applied to children who are just learning the game. The referees have been instructed to enforce the rules, and enforce them they do.

And if it takes all the fun out of the game for the kids, then so be it.

You can ask anyone, from tournament organizers in Laval, Quebec to the provincial soccer organization administrators, to Quebec Premier Jean Charest, to the bigwigs at international soccer. All, in fact, have been asked, and all stand behind the decision of a referee in an indoor youth tournament to ask the girl to remove her hajib or leave the field. Apparently the ref was only following an international rule that forbids any non-approved equipment in the name of safety on the field, as all of the above pointed out at various times this past week.

The fact the ref in question is Muslim himself seems to preclude any notion of religious intolerance. Presumably, he has no personal objection to the hajib. Of course, one can’t say religious ideals played no part in the issue, as the girl (and her parents) obviously felt wearing the hajib was important on those very grounds.

The explanation we’ve heard is that the scarf, normally tucked under the player’s jersey, could come loose and be grabbed by an opposing player, causing injury. Okay, sure. It follows, then, that length of hair should be regulated, as certainly a two-foot long ponytail presents the same target.

The player in question had already played two games in the tournament before running into Mr. By-The-Book referee, with no questions asked. Will the powers-that-be now be taking some sort of action against those referees who didn’t see the harm in an 11-year old playing soccer with a silk scarf over her head? Will there be some sort of crackdown in Ontario, where the girl has played for a couple of seasons without a problem?

In fact, what we have here is the one-millionth example of adults with no common sense conspiring to take all the fun out of a kids’ game. This is – or should be – grassroots, come as you are, pizza-and-pop youth sports. At that level, one would think there could be more flexibility in the rules, than, say, at a World Cup qualifier. Think of how many hundreds of kick-around games this kid has probably played without injury. And without adults present.

If only it could always be so.

An article in my local paper this week covering the Halifax Mooseheads junior hockey team made note of one player being absent from the lineup, but indicated he would only be missing the one game, after suffering a concussion.

That kind of news makes me cringe. I have no doubt as to the competence of the Mooseheads' medical staff, but somehow just taking a few days off to recover from a bruised brain doesn't seem like enough. It's not the type of injury an athlete can "play through".

Today, an article in the New York Times reports that the University of Pittsburgh's Dr. Bennet Omalu has concluded from tests done on Andre Waters's brain tissue that the 44-year-old Waters showed brain degeneration equal to that of an 85-year-old man, as well as early signs of the onset of Alzheimer's disease.

Since his death this past November, Waters's family has been unable to understand why Waters in the recent past had slipped into such a depressive state that he would kill himself. To be functioning as an 85 year old in a body 40 years younger and not understanding why makes a very plausible explanation. Waters's life must have been slowly turning into a nightmare.

Known as a ferocious tackler during his 11-year pro career, Waters once remarked shortly after retirement that he had lost count after suffering 15 concussions. He admitted that he often felt the symptoms, but continued, with the aid of smelling salts, to play anyway.

It's difficult to tell any elite athlete that the risk they run from concussion now may have a serious cost 20 or 30 years down the road. When that athlete is a young player, one step away from fulfilling their dream, it's even tougher. The competitive nature of elite sports has no reward for those sitting in the medical room.

But every elite athlete has to also know that the ultimate responsibility for their health lies with them, and the decisions they make throughout their career could have serious implications when they try to live the rest - the longer part - of their lives. Trying to hide injury from medical staff and team management because they are determined to stay in the lineup is a dangerous gamble.

The news about Andre Waters should be a cautionary tale.

Most of the grumbling this past week after Boise State's 43-42 overtime victory over Oklahoma - which many who saw it are calling the best college football game ever - seems to be coming from those few prejudiced souls who can't wrap their noggins around the idea a team from the lightly-regarded Western Athletic Conference deserves to be mentioned in the same breath as the giants from from the Big Ten or SEC.

Trick plays, such as the hook and ladder, Statue of Liberty or direct snap to someone other than the QB are called 'gadgets' in the pros, and have been a part of football since the game began. In fact, they were once a bigger, more common part of football. And rest assured, if Steve Spurrier, Joe Paterno, Lou Holtz or one of the other legends of college coaching had used them the way the Broncos did - to tie the game in regulation and win it in OT - it would be simply pointed out as one more example of their genius. Coach Chris Peterson and Boise State do it, and they're all but called cheaters.

At all levels of football, coaches design the plays, players execute. Those players who execute the best win the game. End of story, and end of a 13-0 season for the Broncos.

Based on the college football championship format, it has already been decided that the winner of the Bowl Championship Series game between number one-ranked Ohio State and number two Florida will be declared 2006-07 college football champion.

Still, the AP will invite sports writers to vote on a season-ending poll, just like in the old days. And the most sensible thing I've heard all week comes from one Greg Archuletta, a football writer for the Albuquerque Journal and an AP voter, who says if Florida were to win, he would have no question about where to cast his vote.

"Obviously, Ohio State has the toughest schedule," Archuletta says. "But if they lose (the BCS), I have no qualms about voting Boise State number one. They'll be the only undefeated team."

My Boise-dwelling father-in-law and I wholeheartedly agree.

If you don't believe me, check with Google, where this week it was announced that 'World Cup' was the third most-serched term this year. FIFA, soccer's international governing body and offical host of the tournament, has said that its own website was receiving 5 million unique visitors per day during the course of the World Cup. Average TV audience per match was somewhere around 300 million viewers, located in 200 countries, and it was expected that the Italy- France final would attract 1 billion.

Again, such numbers have to be taken with a grain of salt, but the people who spend the most money during these kinds of events - the advertisers - seem to think they're accurate.

But the real impact of the World Cup could best be felt in the streets, pubs, restaurants and workplaces around the world. If you happened to be in a large, multicultural city at any time during the tournament, the proof was in the people gathered at all hours of the day and night to watch the matches, cheer the triumphs and agonize over the losses. Some companies - particularly in Europe - realizing that in terms of worker productivity being at the office rated a poor second to watching the national side in action, allowed TVs to be brought into the office, and invited clients to come in and discuss business between penalty kicks and corners.

During the first two weeks of the World Cup I was in one of those big cities where the matches were broadcast fairly early in the day, and by mid-morning the results were evident in what flags of which nations were beng most prominently displayed from sidewalk cafes and car windows. Even if you weren't supporting any particular team, it was hard not to get caught up in the festive atmosphere and good-natured rivalry, knowing that somewhere on the other side of the world, where the day was coming to an end, other people were doing the exact same thing.