Sporting Madness

Just a quick reminder that I'll be live-blogging tonight's OUA men's volleyball final between the Queen's Golden Gaels and the Guelph Gryphons. It should be an interesting one; both teams won five-set thrillers yesterday, with the Gryphons upsetting #1 seed McMaster and the Gaels eventually prevailing over a dogged Western Mustangs squad. Both teams feature outstanding defensive players, which should lead to lots of long rallies; Guelph has two-time OUA Libero Of The Year Gabe DeGroot (a former high school teammate of mine), while Queen's has second-year starter and high-school standout Alex Oneid at libero, plus one of the best defensive hitters in the OUA in Niko Rukavina . Up front, Winston Rosser and Jamie Stamler will lead the charge for Guelph, with the ever-dangerous Joren Zeeman and Michael Amoroso , one of the game's most complete middles, responding for Queen's. It should be a great one; the Always OUA guys have a good preview up here . The g...

It's almost a full week since the Olympics wrapped up, so I thought now would be a good time to look back at them. The emotions have faded, allowing for more logical analysis, but the implications of the Games—both positive and negative—will still be felt for some time to come. Ever since the Olympics were given to Vancouver, I've been juggling excitement and loathing. As I wrote in my initial piece , the Olympics are an interesting topic to write about, because they present such crass commercialism, excess and corruption alongside such genuine moments of inspiration. They bring highs and lows, and they come as a group package. I'm not a fan of those who fall head over heels in love with the Games while ignoring the very real issues and problems they present, but I'm also not a fan of those who lose track of the positives in their rush to condemn and criticize, especially when they hurt their own cause with senseless violence [ Doug Ward , The Vancouver Sun ]. The Ol...

Everyone will be focusing on hockey for most of today, but I wanted to say a few words in praise of Canadian curling skip Kevin Martin before talking about the imminent Hockeypocalypse. For me, it was fantastic seeing Martin pick up his first Olympic gold medal in a hard-fought game against the Norwegians yesterday, the same country that beat him in the final in 2002. To me, Martin is the quintessential embodiment of Canada. He doesn't look like an elite athlete; in fact he looks rather like a middle-aged insurance executive. He plays a sport not many people worldwide have heard of, and far fewer understand. Plenty of Winter Olympics sports have exposure issues, but most of them are simple enough to understand and appreciate on first glance when people do tune in, whether it's the high-speed thrills of bobsled or luge, the ridiculous hang time found in snowboard cross or the halfpipe, or the artistry of figure skating. To the uneducated, men's curling in particular often...

(Because you can never see this song too much, here it is again. From Monty Python's great The Life Of Brian .) There's been a lot of criticism of these Winter Olympics over the past few weeks, much of it deserved and some of it even by me . However, what many of the critics are overlooking is that there are real positives to the event that also deserve coverage. One of the most significant bright spots so far has been the atmosphere the Olympics have brought to Vancouver. The Vancouver area is a great place to live, but for all its charms, it often feels awfully restrained. In one of the Hardy Boys' novels, it was described as "a sleepy fishing village", and ABC sportscaster Jim McKay commented during the Vancouver Whitecaps' 1979 NASL series against the New York Cosmos that "Vancouver must be like the deserted village right now" thanks to all the people watching on television. The village characterization isn't particularly fair given ...

One of the biggest problems with the Olympics in my mind is the way they divide people into camps. At the one end of the spectrum, there are those who get so wrapped up in nationalism that they cast a blind eye to the issues around the Games. They denounce anyone who dares to question elements of the Olympics as unpatriotic and label them as traitors and un-Canadian. At the other end are many people involved in the protest movements, who overlook all the positive aspects of the Games in favour of promoting their own narrow agendas. Both sides try to outshout the other and wind up becoming even more extreme in the process, leaving little room for rational thought and debate. Where do I fall? Well, it should come as no surprise to anyone familiar with this site's mission statement that, in the words of Pogo creator Walt Kelly , "I'm for the extreme middle." There are massive problems associated with the Games, the IOC, VANOC and the Canadian media's coverage of ...