BEIJING — If you build it, he will come,” Ray Kinsella, the farmer in the 1989 film “Field of Dreams,” hears, mystically, as he walks through his cornfield. So at seemingly ruinous cost, he razes the cornfield and builds a ball field, and is rewarded with an endless stream of ticket buyers stretching to the rural Iowa horizon.
In 2008, the Chinese built a ball field — boy, what a ball field — known worldwide for its lattice-like architecture as the Bird’s Nest. Alas, after the 2008 Olympics, the ticket buyers haven’t come. Right now, the Bird’s Nest serves as a winter amusement park known as the Happy Ice and Snow Season. In April, a promoter may stage a celebrity rock concert to “establish China as a world leader for global peace and a healthier planet.” Or not.
We are very pleased to announce our eight graduate scholar recipients for the Inaugural International Conference on Sport and Society! We are very excited to have their assistance with running the conference and eagerly welcome them to Vancouver!
Our Scholarship Winners:
Nancy Anderson
Curtis Suver
Anne-Marie Bourgeois
Cindi Textor
Rook Campbell
Jesse Wagner
Colin McGuire
Jun Yue
Please click here to find out more about each of these recipients!
THE Winter Olympics begin in Vancouver in three weeks’ time. An audio guide from our local correspondent tells visitors what to expect of this diverse, temperate city.
“You need to recognise that while we may seem very similar in many respects, Canadians are not exactly like Americans. American executives, for example, are commonly inclined to move quickly and cut right to the chase when advancing a project or coming to a decision. Canadians generally don’t do that.”
Will Vancouver-born Milan Lucic make Canada’s 2010 Olympic hockey team when the roster is announced on Wednesday? Pray that the Zamboni gods will be so kind: the world wouldn’t want to be denied of what could be an epic Olympic rivalry between the 21-year-old Boston Bruins winger and the Toronto Maple Leafs’ defenseman Mike Komisarek, 27, a contender for a spot on Team U.S.A. In November 2008, when Komisarek was playing for the Montreal Canadiens, the two players exchanged such monster blows that Lucic literally dismantled Komisarek, whose shoulder popped out of its socket, forcing the Habs bruiser to the bench for more than a dozen games. Komisarek retaliated the following April by cross-checking Lucic in the face.
“Hypothetically speaking, let’s say you have a rival in the National Hockey League,” I said to Lucic when I met up with the six-foot-three-inch brawler a few weeks ago at the N.H.L. offices in New York City. “Would that carry over onto an Olympic stage if you are playing for Team Canada and your league rival is playing for, say, Team U.S.A.?”
Lucic’s toothy grin suggested he knew exactly to whom I was alluding. But then again, I could have been referring to any number of players: Lucic got into 13 fights in 2007, his rookie year, leading the Bruins in roughhousing. In his sophomore regular season, his fight card totaled 10. (By comparison, Komisarek, whom Sports Illustrated nominated one of the 12 most rugged players in N.H.L., recorded a total of six fights in the 2007 and 2008 regular seasons.)
The first thing that struck me when I met 2006 Turin silver medalist Gretchen Bleiler earlier this year was how much bad ass is contained in such a little frame. After all, the five-foot-five-inch half-pipe snowboarder is best known for a daredevil trick called the Crippler 540—an inverted aerial move with one and a half rotations and a backflip. “But new for this year will be a Crippler 720,” the 28-year-old e-mailed me last week, “where you rotate 180 degrees more.” Yowsers.
Bleiler was in New York City last summer unveiling her winter 2010 Oakley snowboarding outerwear and clothing line. After having skied Park City wearing her faux-fur-trimmed jacket, flattering snow pants, and super-soft organic T-shirts a few months before, I was looking forward to seeing her new pieces. From the playful urban hints on this season’s coat—including a graffiti graphic and toggle buttons—to snowboarding pants with an adjustable gathered cuff, I nearly forgot that the blonde sartorialist walking me through her stylish collection is also a three-time X Games gold medalist who can throw down tricks that put the word “extreme” in the term “extreme sports.”
Pro tennis could teach the mafia about omertà. Although dozens of champions have chattered away to ghostwriters, their memoirs have generally remained silent about the game’s seamy realities. Presented to the public as clean family fun, an upscale entertainment for the country-club set, top-level tennis is actually played by the physical and emotional mutants of a misery machine that leaves them too ill-educated or psychically damaged to understand what has happened to their lives. Like most victims of abuse, they’d rather not talk about it.
So it’s both astonishing and a pleasure to report that Andre Agassi, who was castigated for an ad campaign saying “Image is everything,” has produced an honest, substantive, insightful autobiography. True to the genre of jock hagiography, it has its share of stock footage — total recall of famous matches, the thrill of victory, the agony of defeat and an upbeat ending. But the bulk of this extraordinary book vividly recounts a lost childhood, a Dickensian adolescence and a chaotic struggle in adulthood to establish an identity that doesn’t depend on alcohol, drugs or the machinations of PR.
BEIJING — If you build it, he will come,” Ray Kinsella, the farmer in the 1989 film “Field of Dreams,” hears, mystically, as he walks through his cornfield. So at seemingly ruinous cost, he razes the cornfield and builds a ball field, and is rewarded with an endless stream of ticket buyers stretching to the rural Iowa horizon.
THE Winter Olympics begin in Vancouver in three weeks’ time. An 
The first thing that struck me when I met 2006 Turin silver medalist Gretchen Bleiler earlier this year was how much bad ass is contained in such a little frame. After all, the five-foot-five-inch half-pipe snowboarder is best known for a daredevil trick called the Crippler 540—an inverted aerial move with one and a half rotations and a backflip. “But new for this year will be a Crippler 720,” the 28-year-old e-mailed me last week, “where you rotate 180 degrees more.” Yowsers.
Pro tennis could teach the mafia about omertà. Although dozens of champions have chattered away to ghostwriters, their memoirs have generally remained silent about the game’s seamy realities. Presented to the public as clean family fun, an upscale entertainment for the country-club set, top-level tennis is actually played by the physical and emotional mutants of a misery machine that leaves them too ill-educated or psychically damaged to understand what has happened to their lives. Like most victims of abuse, they’d rather not talk about it.