Sporting Madness

Breaking down the Olympic soccer opener... The Score: Canada 2, Argentina 1 How I Saw It: On the tube. The Good: - Kara Lang scoring Canada's second goal off of a free kick awarded to Canada only moments earlier when she was viciously tackled by Argentina's Maria Quinones, who earned a yellow card for her trouble. Brilliant way to get vengeance without getting booked in the process. - Jodi-Ann Robinson , turning an impressive performance as a 19-year-old sub despite only being called up to the team earlier this week to fill in for the injured Amber Allen. The highlight of Robinson's play was the brilliant Hackey Sack move she performed to fool a defender, holding the ball between her legs while on the ground, flipping over and getting to her feet on the opposite side of her marker. Who ever said fooling around gets you nowhere? - Melissa Tancredi 's hockey-style screening of Argentine goalie Vanina Correa on Canada's first goal. I've always wanted to see tha...

Well, here we go with the first event of the Olympics: women's soccer. I'll be following the Canada-Argentina match on TV and posting frequent updates here, with some notes from the Brazil-Germany game as well if I can get streaming video to work. Pre-kickoff : Canadian forward Amber Allen is out of the tournament with a leg injury [ CBCsports.ca ]. Tough luck for Allen, a Chilliwack, B.C. native who plays for the Vancouver Whitecaps: she missed the 2003 Women's World Cup after tearing her ACL [Vicki Hall, Canwest News Service via the National Post ], and a broken tibia in the same leg kept her out of the 2007 Women's World Cup. After intensive rehab earlier this year, it looked like she might finally get a shot, but it was not to be. She'll be replaced by 19-year-old phenom Jodi-Ann Robinson, a fellow Whitecap from Richmond, B.C. Robinson is very talented and has already earned 30 caps with the senior national team: she should do very well here. Great quote from ...