CANADIAN OLYMPIC TRIALSSource:
www.vancouversun.com/sports/Short+track+speed+skating+team+selection+trials/1867584/story.html- - - - - - -
Short track speed skating team selection trialsVancouver Sun August 6, 2009
SHORT TRACK SPEED SKATINGWhat: Canadian team selection trials for the 2010 Olympics
Where: Pacific Coliseum
When: Afternoon and evening racing Sunday, Wednesday, Aug. 15, 17 and 18. Open to the public. Admission is free. Times vary so check
www.speedskating.ca for more information.
Format: Sixteen men and 16 women will each race three times at 500, 1,000 and 1,500 metres. With Charles Hamelin of Montreal already pre-qualified, three male and four female positions will be determined. The fifth spot on each squad will be selected at the discretion of the high performance committee.
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Source:
www.theglobeandmail.com/sports/more-sports/canadians-seeking-home-snow-advantage-wherever-possible/article1246359/- - - - - -
Canadians seeking home-snow advantage Matthew Sekeres
Vancouver — From Monday's Globe and Mail Last updated on Monday, Aug. 10, 2009 04:56PM EDT
The Vancouver Organizing Committee for the 2010 Olympic Winter Games has always walked a fine line between putting on the best Games, and doing what it can to help Canada’s athletes win medals. The home-snow advantage, which Olympics officials had touted as a major element of playing host to the Games, isn’t always readily apparent.
But six months out from the start of the Games, most national sports organizations are happy.
Cross Country Canada interim executive director Bruce Jeffries, along with officials in both speed skating disciplines, says that VANOC, in concert with the management of 2010 Olympic venues and Own the Podium (a $117-million funding program), are putting homegrown athletes in position to beat the world in February.
“We would probably always want more, but we’re happy with what we’ve got,” Jeffries said. “If we’re not able to deliver a medal, we would be bitterly disappointed. VANOC is really committed to seeing Canadian athletes do well. VANOC’s first priority is to run a great and fair Games. They are working hard to help us within the rules.”
All sports have quibbles with Olympic organizers when their requests for special treatment are denied, and Cross Country Canada is no different.
Because Whistler Olympic Park, the venue for cross-country skiing, biathlon and ski jumping, will be under construction in December, the Canadian trials will take place in Canmore, Alta. That’s not ideal, but Jeffries said VANOC reached a compromise with his organization to hold the trials as planned, and that Cross Country Canada ultimately decided to move them.
“It’s not advantageous,” Jeffries said. “But we’ve thanked them for their efforts.”
The same goes for long-track speed skating.
Several weeks ago, coaches and athletes learned that their trials, set for late December, would conflict with planned construction at the Richmond Olympic Oval. The competition had to be moved to Calgary. Speed Skating Canada high performance director Brian Rahill said his only complaint was that VANOC could have been given them more notice.
But Rahill, who also oversees short track, said that nitpicking at minor details was overshadowed by larger efforts to help the Canadians. He praised management at the Pacific Coliseum, the venue for short track and figure skating.
By Games time, the Canadian short-track team will have received nine weeks of training at the facility, while the rest of the world had just one opportunity to test the ice at a world cup event last year.
The same imbalance exists at the Whistler Sliding Centre, where Canadian bobsleigh, luge and skeleton athletes will have a major advantage based on a huge disparity in run volume. Canadian sliders will know the run like the back of their hands, while the rest of the world will be scrambling for course knowledge in training sessions just before the competition.
“We’re going to get run volume, and that’s definitely going to let us compete more on a level playing field,” Canadian luger Jeff Christie said last March when asked about his underdog team’s chances at the Olympics.
In Vancouver, the 14,200-seat Coliseum is an oft-booked venue, hosting concerts and more than 40 junior hockey games per year, yet was still able to accommodate all of Speed Skating Canada’s request, save for two additional weeks of training.
Staff at the Coliseum also co-operated with an ambitious plan from national team leader Yves Hamelin. Most of the short-track team trains in Montreal, and Hamelin wanted to clone the ice surface that his athletes felt most comfortable with.
The Coliseum staff learned new ice-making techniques, used the same type of water and the same type of cooling. Hamelin admits it won’t be the best ice for speed skating, but it will be most familiar surface for Canadians.
“The Coliseum has been a great partner,” Rahill said. “They bent over backwards to learn our ice requirements.”
For Cross Country Canada, it seems the squeaking from Wood and Renner has been quieted with some grease.
Jeffries said that negotiations are ongoing to get Canada two additional accreditations, up from five to seven, for its technicians. And those technicians may be as close to the venue as possible.
The Italian team has already secured use of the private Callaghan Backcountry Lodge, the closest possible location, for its ski-grinding machine. The grinding machine shapes the base of the skis and makes them most suitable for the specific snow condition.
Jeffries said that since originally being denied access to the lodge, VANOC has changed its position. Organizers initially told the national team that the lodge was off-limits for security reasons, but Jeffries said the Canadian Olympic Committee intervened after the Italians swooped in and secured its use.
Now, Cross Country Canada is deciding whether it will be worth the expense to rent the facility, or whether it should take the grinding operation to Black Tusk village, which is about one hour away.
“Turnaround time is important if you want to change skis and grind for new snow conditions,” he said.
In the days before Own the Podium, renting the lodge would have been impossible for Cross Country Canada. But Jeffries said the team received $5.5-million from OTP, its largest cash influx ever, and now has options.
He also said that VANOC construction teams were co-operative in December and January when Canadian coaches and technicians descended on the Callaghan Valley and began testing snow conditions so that athletes could have the optimal ski and wax setups at the Games.
Cathy Priestner Allinger, VANOC’s executive vice-president of sport, Paralympic Games and venue management, said that home advantage was best created by the unprecedented plan to have facilities ready two years before the Games. The short-track skaters, for example, now consider the Pacific Coliseum a home away from home.
“In my view, we’ve done as much as we can and it’s going well,” said Priestner Allinger, a former speed skater and silver medalist at the 1976 Innsbruck Games.
Because it has received so much time and preparation at the host venue, Speed Skating Canada has modelled the short-track trials, which take place this week, after the Olympic schedule.
The skaters will compete on the same days, with the same amount of rest between race days. They are staying at a hotel near the athletes’ village, and will even enter and exit the arena as though it were the real thing.
“It’s kind of a replica of what we’re going to have at Games time,” Hamelin said. “We’re going to see how the athletes deal with such a process, then we’ll make observations and see how this is going.”- - - - - -
*Oly Trials News - Tania VincentSource: www.vancouversun.com/sports/2010wintergames/Short+track+speed+skaters+Olympic+team+spots/1867522/story.htmlSimiliar Articles:
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Short-track speed skaters vie for Olympic team spotsBy Gary Kingston, Vancouver Sun August 7, 2009
VANCOUVER — Tania Vicent fidgets with an earring and good-naturedly admonishes a couple of reporters for pointing out that she will be 34 by the 2010 Olympics and an old-timer on the Canadian short track speed skating team.
"Oh God, you guys, you're making me ill right now," says the Laval, Que., native who some younger teammates affectionately call Grandma.
Vicent was at Pacific Coliseum on Thursday preparing for her fifth — and final — Olympic team selection trials. She didn't make the 1994 team, but was a member of the past three Olympic teams, earning relay bronze in '98 and 2002 and silver at Turin in 2006. She was also fourth in the 1,000 metres in Italy.
Vicent thought about retiring after the last Olympics because she was "getting up there" and needed hip surgery that forced her to miss all of the 2006-07 World Cup season.
"But I didn't want to feel guilt sitting on my couch and going 'Oh my God, it's Vancouver Olympics. I should have tried. It's home. I didn't want to have that feeling, so I'm giving it my all to be there. If I am sitting on my couch, at least I'll know why I'm sitting on my couch."
Vicent is one of 16 women, including Kamloops product Jessica Hewitt, who will be vying for five spots on the Olympic team. Four will be determined by results over five days of racing beginning Sunday — three races each at 500, 1,000 and 1,500 metres — with the fifth spot to be decided at the discretion of the high performance committee.
Canada's quotas for the individual men's and women's races during the Olympics, to a maximum of three per distance, will be determined at World Cups in Montreal and Marquette, Wisc., in November.
Given her experience, her willingness to mentor and her strength in the relay, Vicent could well be a strong candidate for the discretionary pick if she doesn't automatically qualify skating against a deep, talented women's field. But she doesn't even want to think about that scenario.
"You don't want to leave your destiny or fate into someone else's hands," says the 5-foot-4 skater with the engaging smile. "You want to place yourself where there's no doubt in anyone's minds that you're going to make it."
Vicent, who is keen to start a family and open a clothing store post-2010, missed the first half of last season with a pulled quad muscle that was slow to heal and then failed to qualify for the world championships.
Too old, began the talk. She's done.
"It was probably one of my worst seasons ever, which is good," counters Vicent. "It was the kick in the butt that I needed. 'You wanted to be at the Olympics. You want to be strong, so let's go do this.'"
She says training has been going very well and even though trials are "always nerve-wracking" she believes she knows how to turn the stress to a "good energy, so it's a good adrenalin for me."
She's a big fan of the ice at the Coliseum and, interestingly enough, the wooden interior roof in the nearly 40-year-old building. "There's something rustic about it, which I really like."
Hewitt, 22, who trains in Calgary and who was ranked eighth in Canada last year, says she's eager to face the challenge posed by a field that includes a dozen Quebec-based athletes.
"I feel great right now . . . feel like I've never skated better," said the soft-spoken Hewitt. "I'd say my nervous time was maybe a month ago. Of course on race day, I'm going to be a little bit nervous, that's normal. But I feel really confident. I'm excited. I feel the Olympics are within my reach if I focus on the right things, have the right race plans and things go my way."
— On the men's side, there could just be three spots up for grabs. Charles Hamelin of Montreal has already pre-qualified for the Olympic team based on his third overall finish at last year's worlds. And double Turin silver-medallist Francois-Louis Tremblay of Montreal, who isn't fully recovered from a severely sprained ankle and won't race next week, is a strong bet to claim the discretionary spot on the men's team.
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Pictures:
tania.
kalyna roberge. alanna kraus. amanda overland. tania vcent. anouk leblanc-boucher.
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*Oly Trials News - Francois-Louis Tremblay Source:
www.canada.com/sports/2010wintergames/Short+track+hopeful+aims+discretionary+spot/1869788/story.html- - - - - - -
Short track hopeful aims for discretionary spotBy Terry Bell, The Province August 7, 2009
Starting Sunday, Canada's top short track speed skaters will be on trial at the Pacific Coliseum to determine who gets spots on the 2010 Olympic team.
It's an intense, do-or-die series of races, and Montreal's Francois-Louis Tremblay would like nothing more than to be out there elbow-to-elbow fighting for one of the spots.
But Tremblay, who suffered a severe ankle sprain in May, has chosen not to race here. Instead, he has asked for a bye on to the team and his fate will be in the hands of a high performance short track committee."I'm positive and confident, but I'm not assuming anything," Tremblay, who is in Vancouver training with the team, said Thursday. "I don't consider the spot mine until it's really mine.
"I would totally prefer to win my own race. Now I rely on the committee. I'm pretty confident that it's going to work out -- but still, it's not in my hands, and that's what is bugging me at this point."
But his case looks solid. A silver medallist in both the 500 metres and the relay at the 2006 Olympics in Turino, and the 2008-09 World Cup champion at 500 metres, Tremblay should be a lock for the team.
"If we look at the performance for the last three years, Francois-Louis is on the podium nine times out of 10 at 500 metres," said Montreal's Yves Hamelin, short track's national team program director.
"If we look at the quality of his recovery and all the commitment from this guy, for sure the committee will evaluate that really closely. I'm not that worried to see him on the team, but we'll wait for what we're going to see on the ice."
Tremblay suffered a high ankle sprain while running the stairs during dry land training on Mont Royal. He was off the ice for about two months.He considered racing here, but on the advice of doctors, training staff and coaches, he decided to stay on the sidelines. By racing he risked further injury and this route actually gives him a better shot at making the team.
Sixteen men and 16 women have been invited to skate at trials, which run until Aug. 18. A maximum of five men and five women will be selected for the Olympic team, but one berth per gender will be a discretionary choice by the committee.
Speed Skating Canada added the discretionary spots for 2010 after seeing two top skaters -- Mathieu Turcotte and Charles Hamelin -- blow it in the 1,000 metres at trials prior to Turino."We changed the system to make sure that we had the best athletes on the ice," said Yves Hamelin, who's also Charles's dad.
"In Turino we had some examples where our best athletes were in the stands. Mathieu Turcotte and Charles Hamelin were in the stands for the 1,000 and they were the two best guys on the previous year's World Cup circuit."
All five spots are open on the women's side, but Charles Hamelin has already secured one of the men's berths thanks to his third-place finish at the 2009 world championships.
Tremblay could have raced here and hoped to earn the discretionary spot. But that would have been risky. What if another top skater -- and Canada has a boatload of them -- had a bad trial and became a worthy discretionary candidate? Now Tremblay is eligible for the injury bye or the discretionary spot.
"I think I have a better chance this way," he said.
Olympic selections can be a testy affairs. Sometimes lawyers become involved. But Tremblay said there have been no complaints from teammates.
"No, that's the good thing," he said. "I was worried about that but I didn't hear any of that. I think they've reacted pretty well."
Yves Hamelin concurs.
"There's no doubt about his condition," he said. "We've had no significant comments about that. It's not an issue about it at this time."
Racing is open to the public and admission is free. It starts Sunday at 3 p.m., with competition scheduled for Wednesday, Aug. 12, Saturday, Aug. 15, Monday, Aug. 17 and Tuesday, Aug. 18.
The team will be named on Aug. 26.
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Source:
www.theglobeandmail.com/sports/injured-tremblay-skipping-short-track-trials/article1244242/- - - - - - -
Injured Tremblay skipping short-track trialsMATTHEW SEKERES
VANCOUVER — From Friday's Globe and Mail Last updated on Friday, Aug. 07, 2009 03:29AM EDT
Short track speed skater François-Louis Tremblay, the only Canadian male to win an individual medal at the 2006 Turin Olympics, will improve his chances of qualifying for the 2010 Games this week.
The 28-year-old Montrealer will do so by skipping the Canadian trials, which begin Monday at Vancouver's Pacific Coliseum.
Tremblay, who is recovering from a serious ankle injury that is still slowing him down, admits that not skating for his Olympic spot is killing him. But he is also confident that Speed Skating Canada will afford him a "bye" onto the team."I would totally prefer to have destiny in my hands," he said yesterday, quick to note that the "bye" is not a formality. "Now, I have to rely on the committee."
Tremblay, who will spend the next week training alongside teammate Charles Hamelin, who has already qualified for the Vancouver Olympics, has applied for an exemption onto the team based on a high ankle sprain that kept him off the ice for nine weeks this spring. He suffered the injury while running down Mount Royal on May 20 during a training session."We would've liked him to skate," said Yves Hamelin, national team director for short track. "It's a better process when you have an athlete like François-Louis racing and proving himself ... but he's not able to be competitive."
Tremblay is almost one-half second per lap off his usual pace, which would leave him disadvantaged against the strong Canadian field. He is hoping that a decision about his status comes down when the High Performance Short Track Committee, which determines the makeup of the Olympic team, meets later this month.
By skating, Tremblay would forfeit his case for an exemption. By sitting the competition out, Tremblay has two routes to an Olympic berth.
Speed Skating Canada decided after the last Olympics that it would leave two spots on the team - one male, one female - for "discretionary" selections. To wit, three men's spots and four women's spots are up for grabs (Charles Hamelin has already made the team) next week as the 10-member team is determined.
Yves Hamelin said that the selection process was changed because two 1000-metre specialists - his son Charles and Mathieu Turcotte - were in the stands in Turin, watching inferior skaters compete in a discipline where the duo could have won medals."It's to make sure we have the best athletes on the ice and at the right distances," Yves Hamelin said.
Short track is unpredictable because of the amount of contact during the race, and because athletes are frequently disqualified after the fact. Both Hamelin and Turcotte crashed at the trials in Chicoutimi, Que. four years ago.
For Tremblay, the new selection criteria mean he could either be granted a bye onto the team, or he could be the committee's discretionary selection."The doctor was not totally comfortable with making me skate, and with the probability of making it worse," he said of his left ankle injury. "I had to face that possibility. I had the whole summer to think about it, and with my performance in the latter years, in the last Olympic cycle, I think I've shown some pretty good results."
Tremblay, who won silver in the 500 metres at the last Olympics, said he will be 100 per cent come the World Cup season in September.
The team will be announced by Aug. 26.
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Picture:
apolo ohno. francois-louis tremblay. eric bedard.
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*Oly Trials News - Jessica Gregg Source:
www.cbc.ca/sports/blogs/2009/08/final_countdown_to_the_olympic.html- - - - - - -
Final countdown to the Olympic trialsAugust 5, 2009 12:46 AM | Posted by Jessica Gregg
The countdown is almost over.
On Thursday we're flying to Vancouver where the short track Olympic trials are taking place. We start racing on Aug. 9 and go through Aug. 18.
The objective of the competition is simple: to select the five best male and female short track speed skaters to represent Canada in 2010. To do this, Speed Skating Canada wanted to create an environment for the trials that would be as similar as possible to the Olympics. That means we'll have some off days in between the race days, imitating the Olympic schedule, as well as racing in the afternoon to finish roughly around the same time at night that the Olympic races will.
To prepare for this, we've been practicing in the afternoons on the ice instead of our normal time in the morning. It’s weird changing the schedule that I'm used to, but considering this should get us better prepared I've been willing to sleep in almost every morning!I've had this competition in the back of my mind for about the last year, so I’m really starting to get excited that it’s finally here. I’ll admit that I was a little nervous thinking about how I would feel a couple days before these trials, but I'm happy to say that now that they're here, I am way more excited then nervous.
Home-ice advantage
Of course, in the sport of short track nothing is written in stone, so even the best of the best have to perform on any given day to stay at the top and earn a spot on the team. Thinking about missing out on the team isn’t an option right now, so all my focus is on what I have been doing to prepare and getting excited to race, while at the same time relaxing.
A favourite question of a lot of people is, “What are you going to do if you don’t make the team? Or if you do?” Right now my answer is, I will cross that bridge when I get to it. All I can do is go out there and give everything I have in every race, and if that happens I'll have to be happy with whatever the outcome. Obviously it will be a dream come true if I'm able to be a part of the team, but life goes on either way.Right now we're in our tapering phase of training. We've done all the hard work to get in shape, and now it's all about fine-tuning. We'll have four opportunities to skate on the ice in Vancouver before we start racing, so that will be enough time to adjust to the ice and feel confident in that environment again. Being there for a good part of the summer really helped us out, and I think it's safe to say that everyone feels very comfortable there. It will be a nice feeling during our trials, but even nicer for the team that will skate there during the Games. That’s what home-ice advantage is all about.
I skated in the last Olympic trials four years ago, so I have an idea of what to expect for the competition. But since the field of the top 16 girls has really changed, the racing will be different for sure. Everyone is going to have to be on the top of his or her game, but I am definitely looking forward to the challenge!
Hopefully there will be good news to come!
