Lamaze Class Of The Olympic Rings

Some stories almost seem too far-fetched to even fathom. Too far removed from reality to possibly consider.
If you're familiar with the story of Eric Lamaze, you had to think what transpired this morning in Hong Kong was one of those moments you'd never see. But there was the Canadian equestrian, wiping tears from his eyes on the top of the medal podium after winning the individual show jumping title at the Beijing Olympics.
Only Michel Vaillancourt, in 1976 in Montreal (the equestrian events were held in nearby Bromont that year), had brought Canada an individual medal (a silver) in the event in previous Olympic history. Until Lamaze, though, the colour had never been gold.
There was a time, not so long ago, when this seemed to be the most unlikely of possibilities. Lamaze was booted from both the 1996 Atlanta and 2000 Sydney Games for doping infractions. As he told CBC's Tom Harrington in a revealing pre-game feature, he contemplated suicide at one point as his life spiralled downward.
The Canadian Olympic Committee wouldn't let Lamaze compete at the Athens 2004 Games, even though a lifetime ban had been overturned. His Olympic dreams seemed as far away as ever but he arrived reborn at these Games as the fourth-rated rider in the field and with Hickstead, a jewel of a horse (some compare him to the legendary Big Ben, the famous mount of Lamaze's Canadian teammate, Ian Millar of Perth, Ont.).
It came down to a jumpoff between Lamaze and Sweden's Rolf-Goran Bengtsson. When Lamaze and Hickstead completed a clean round, the gold was theirs. And, it could be suggested, one of the great comeback stories in Olympic history. Vindication doesn't even begin to describe the hell that Lamaze endured and survived.
"When you give people chances and allow them to come back from their mistakes, great things happen," Lamaze told CBC's Erin Paul before accepting his gold medal. "I'm a great example that you shouldn't give up on people."
We can only imagine what was running through Lamaze's mind as the strains of O Canada played in his honour.
"There were so many days when you wouldn't dream this was possible," he said.
Olympic Morning host Diana Swain wondered if Lamaze "had his life flash before his eyes. There is a lot of history in that face." She also predicted — and probably not wrongly — that the story will be worthy of a movie someday.
It is an inspiring tale of redemption, indeed. Too many of us have asked for (and needed) second chances in our lives. Eric Lamaze reminded us today just how much a man can achieve when all he asks for is an opportunity to show he has changed for the better.
Sometimes, you see, faith really is the most special virtue of them all.
"He vowed to earn Canada's trust again," CBC anchor Scott Russell later said during a replay on Olympic Prime.
Consider it a promise kept, in just about every way possible.

Another Great Leap Forward

And how's that for a way to a put a bounce into your morning?
Yes, that's Toronto's Karen Cockburn smiling at a third straight Summer Olympics after soaring to a silver medal in the women's trampoline final in Beijing today. That follows up on a bronze eight years ago in Sydney and silver in 2004 in Athens, making Cockburn on the fourth Canadian athlete to win a medal at three straight Games (track athlete Phil Edwards, rowing coxwain Lesley Thompson-Willie and kayaker Caroline Brunet are the others, in case you're wondering).
Trampoline is one of those TV-friendly Olympic sports. The tricks look spectacular, especially from the overhead view, and with just eight competitors turning in one short routine, it only requires about half an hour of your time to see who wins gold, silver and bronze (that sort of timing allowed CBC to get off to Hong Kong for the drama of the team showjumping final, but more on that later in another post).
Cockburn is one of those rare athletes who manages to turn medal potential into a trip to the podium each time she shows up at an Olympics (and this may well have been her swan song). This one, though, took some doing after she tore cartilage in her right knee just before last year's world championships — the qualifier for these Games.
Somehow, Cockburn got through it, had surgery afterward then got herself into the right shape to soar in Beijing.
"I learned how tough I am. The week before worlds, I couldn't even walk," Cockburn told Scott Russell on CBC's Olympic Morning. "I'm just so happy. That's why this medal means so much to me, after what I had to go through to get to this point."
Only thing missing from her day: Cockburn hadn't managed to get through to her husband, Mathieu Turgeon (also an Olympic trampoline medallist in Sydney) to share the good news. We're guessing he was watching back home in T.O., though.
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No doubt, Michael Phelps has inspired many money-making schemes already.
Here's one we hope doesn't see the light of day. Turned on ESPN Radio on my drive to work and heard them suggesting (I kid you not) "Swimming With Celebrities," featuring the eight-time gold medallist and assorted buff bodies.
There are no words to accurately describe the flat-out silliness of that. Scary (sad?) part is, they might not be far off.

We're Not So Bad After All

Anyone else notice where Canada now stands in the Beijing Games medal standings?
If you base it on number of golds won — which seems to be the way they're doing things on the official Olympic website — then Canada rates a tie for 15th with nine other countries. Using the total medals earned puts Canada 17th, but its seven medals rank only one back of Cuba, Kazakhstan and Romania, who share 14th position.
In other words, we're on the cusp of being exactly where the Canadian Olympic Committee predicted we'd wind up (top 16) before these Games in Beijing started. A standing, we should add, that a lot of folks thought ludicrous when our gang was still sitting on a goose egg Friday night.
Funny what one huge weekend can do to change that perception. Double digits in the medal count doesn't seem that far off anymore, does it?
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One more staggering number about a guy who's authored many in the past week.
An average of 31.1 million viewers tuned into NBC's Saturday prime-time coverage of the Beijing Games, making it the most-watched Saturday evening program on the network since 1990.
By the way, Michael Phelps, the guy most responsible for making that happen, was four years old at the time.
Phelps' record-breaking performance (eight gold medals in the Water Cube, more than any other Olympian at a single games) has put NBC Universal (seven networks) on pace to record the highest total audience for an Olympic Games in U.S. television history. With 191 viewers through Saturday, NBC's numbers are already higher than the 17-day totals for Salt Lake City 2002 (187 million) and Sydney 2000 (185 million).
Saturday night's audience peaked at nearly 40 million between 11-11:30 p.m., when the U.S. won the men's 4x100-metre medley relay, earning Phelps his eighth gold.
Oh, that program on NBC 18 years ago that rated higher than the Phelps show last night? Empty Nest, starring Richard Mulligan, which drew 31.4 million viewers on Feb. 24, 1990.

We're Still At The Four-Front

It's been called the "tin medal" and Canadians, it seems, have become masters at collecting them over the years.
Add Perth's Mike Brown to the list of athletes sentenced to the dreaded fourth-place finish at an Olympic Games, after he finished an agonizing fourth in the men's 200-metre breaststroke final at the Beijing Games tonight. And there with it went Canada's last best shot at a swimming medal at these Olympics.
No need to tell Brown, who finished .09 seconds off the podium, how tough it was to take.
"That's about as frustrating as it gets," he told reporters after the race. "Fourth place is probably the worst spot you can get at the Olympic Games."
Canada's swimmers have been blanked in the Olympic pool since Sydney 2000.
"I would have loved the medal," said Brown. "The first medal for Canada (at the Beijing Games) would have been awesome to have. I couldn't pull it through but that doesn't mean we won't be having one soon."
Brown predicted "there will be lots of medals for Canadian athletes" before these Games are done. And this is a team, admittedly, that has most of its medal potential packed into the second week in Beijing.
No doubt Perth, Ont., is still proud of one of its favourite sons tonight. The pretty town in the Ottawa Valley couldn't have paid for better exposure than the CBC gave it this evening. We saw the Perth Aquatic Stingrays Club's website on air before the race (CBC also had a camera positioned in the town to capture some of the local celebrations, had their been a medal to cheer). Brown smiled afterward when reminded that, by improving his finish by two spots over Athens 2004, one of his sponsors back home has a $60,000 SUV waiting for him when he returns to Perth.
The one place, to be sure, that he'll always be a champion.
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What's the deal with the medal standings?
Look on CBC's Olympics website and you'll see China listed on top of the medals table because it's won the most golds so far at the Games. Many other media sites, though, put the U.S. first because its overall medal total is higher.
It's a regular debate at every Olympics. Personally, I think total medals wins. But whatever way you want to do it, let's just get everyone on the same page, can we?
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CBC Newsworld's Beijing Today offers a nice highlights roundup for those who couldn't stay up through the night to catch all the live Olympics action.
But the show is missing those feature reports that used to add that extra touch to similar Newsworld efforts at previous Games. Then again, I was always a fan of the late, lamented Sports Journal that shone for so many years on Newsworld (till the budget axe sentenced it to oblivion).
It's that spirit that, sadly, is noticeably absent on Beijing Today. Too bad.
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The dreaded glitch hit CBC during tonight's swimming coverage. The public broadcaster lost its feed during one of the women's 200-metre breaststroke semi-finals. CBC planned a repeat of that race as part of its swim package in Pacific Prime.

Me And My Kooky Fencing Friend

First, an admission: If the headline on this post isn't a total ripoff, it's close.
(if you want to know from where, the answer's right here).
And I wouldn't exactly call Sherraine Schalm kooky, though she cracks me up often enough (if the comely lass from Alberta can't make you laugh, it's your problem, not hers).
As I write this, Sherraine is hours away from her third Olympic appearance at the Summer Olympics. And, as this revealing piece penned a few days ago by the Toronto Star's Randy Starkman illustrates, her long road from Athens 2004 to Beijing 2008 has been anything but a smooth and straight line (a painful divorce and depression among the demons she had to conquer along the way). But once again, she enters an Olympics as Canada's best hope to win its first fencing medal of any colour in Games history (women's epee is her event).
Sherraine and I first crossed paths eight years ago before the Sydney Olympics. She was one of the first in a series of profiles of local Olympians I tackled for the Ottawa Sun that year and, it must be said now, the most enjoyable of the lot. Rudimentary didn't begin to describe my knowledge of fencing (that assessment still isn't far from the truth) but what was expected to be the typical 15-20 minute interview evolved into a two-hour conversation with one of the most wonderfully engaging people you will ever meet.
I've always appreciated a sense of humour (even like to think I own one myself ... well, most of the time) and whether she's talking or writing, Sherraine's sharp sense of wit is never far from the surface.
Case in point: A few years back, when she was putting the finishing touches on Running With Swords, her often-humorous look at her sport and her life (still plenty available at a Chapters near you and well worth the read), the book was still untitled at the time. Smart ass that I can be sometimes, I suggested "Piste Off" (a reference to the fencing court) during a telephone conversation. Not missing a beat, Sherraine told me she'd already had the same thought. Alas, while great minds thought alike, it didn't make it to print.
We've fallen out of touch since I moved on from the Sun (and off the amateur sports beat) last fall. But as the days and weeks to Beijing grew closer, I picked up on her story once more. And there is no Canadian athlete I'll be cheering more loudly for at these Beijing Games.
While Sherraine calls Montreal home now (she spent a lot of her pre-Olympic training time in Hungary), with any luck, she'll make her way back to Ottawa sometime after the Games are done. Maybe she'll even do it with a precious Olympic medal in hand. With or without the big prize, though, she will still be the same Sherraine to me.
Her prodigious fencing talent is perhaps only surpassed by her ability to chronicle it all (her CBC blog being evidence of that). I've heard she might like to be a journalist someday and, well, the world I left behind can't help but become a better place if she chooses to be a part of it.
Let's just say it's a happening that surely wouldn't leave me feeling "piste off."
Nope, not at all. Not in the very least.

And So It Begins ...

Some spectacular show, wasn't it?
A whopping $100 million, it's been said, went into the Opening Ceremony for the Beijing Olympics. And the guess here is that one heck of a lot of it was poured into the fireworks the lit up the smoggy skies in the city of 17.4 million that is playing host to these Summer Games.
An interesting view of it all on this end. Woke up this morning and watched the first couple of hours of the big show at home on my HDTV, and what a stunning way to take it all in. These are the first-ever all-HD Olympics and we can hardly wait to see what the next 17 days bring from all the various venues in Beijing — many of which are truly a sight for the eyes (especially after the sun goes down).
Off to the office, then, where I caught a good chunk of the Parade of Nations on CBCSports.ca (shhhh!). The feed aired with no commentary, which brings a couple of thoughts to mind: On the one hand, it was a bit fun to feel the the sights and sounds the same way the 91,000 at National Stadium (a.k.a. the Bird's Nest) did today.
Some might even suggest it's a bonus to not hear TV voices yammering on ad nauseum, though it must be pointed out the CBC hosts Ron MacLean and Peter Mansbridge were respectful throughout, only interjecting when they felt the need to offer something informative that was needed to enhance the story (a side note: CBC is using the host broadcast feed, which will make for many a shot of a person in the stands that makes a viewer think 'who the hell is that?').
Had to move up to a regular TV here, though, to see the lighting of the Olympic flame, which signals the Games have truly begun. We've seen this done in many unique ways over the years (remember Cathy Freeman in the water at Sydney 2000, or the archer at Barcelona 1992?) but seeing Chinese gymnastics hero Li Ning (a six-time medallist in Los Angeles in 1984) traverse the length of the Bird's Nest on a trapeze might just have been an all-time topper.
The final verdict?
If the Opening Ceremony is any indicator about what's to come, we are in for an extraordinary two weeks in the Orient.
Let the Games begin, indeed!
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An on-site perspective from CBC blogger Bernice Chan that's worth a read. She was at the Bird's Nest for the Opening Ceremony.
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They were having great fun on ESPN Radio earlier today, chiding NBC for promoting "the Opening Ceremony tonight" on the The Today Show this morning — while said event was actually going on live in Beijing.
Thought it was only us Canadians who noticed such things.

Warming Up For The Big Show

In less than two year's time, they'll be kings of the rings.
But one more time, TSN will play the good partner to CBC for coverage of an Olympic Games. Beijing 2008 marks the final chapter in their five-Games shared arrangement, which began back in Sydney in 2000. A partnership, we might add, that has served Canadian viewers more than well over the past dozen years.
Come 2010 in Vancouver, CBC is out and CTV Globemedia (TSN's parent company) will team up with Rogers Communications (which includes Sportsnet, among others) — a consortium that also holds rights to the London 2012 Summer Games. But that's a blog post for another day.
So what's the deal for TSN in Beijing? Look for 150 hours of coverage (50 of them in prime time), the majority of it live and all of it in high-definition format (these being the first all-HD Olympics ever).
For the most part, TSN hits the air between 3 a.m. and 4 a.m. ET, with its morning coverage running as late as noon. Prime-time action generally begins at 7 p.m. Among the sports you'll see along the way: Rowing, canoe-kayak, basketball, soccer, boxing, tennis, baseball, softball and beach volleyball.
Gino Reda is TSN's early-morning host; Dave Randorf takes over in prime time. You'll also hear the voices of TSN's Vic Rauter and Russ Anber (boxing) throughout the Games, along with network alumni Paul Romanuk (basketball) and Jim Van Horne (baseball and softball).
Check out the complete TSN schedule in Beijing here.