Monday, February 8, 2010

Jones, Howard and Lino

* Congrats to Jennifer Jones and her squad for another Scotties title. This one was well earned after getting off to a slow start, something that’s not unfamiliar for the foursome. I wonder if this will end any of the rumours of Cathy O-C getting the axe or moving on. After all, it’s hard to pass up another trip to the Canadian finals, especially since it’s in Charlottetown next year.
As impressive as the Jones team was, I have to guess many fans were hoping for that Cinderella story PEI team to pull it out. Kathy O’Rourke (whose haircut is probably closer to Cruella Deville than Cinderella) and her rink played solid except for that steal of two in eight. Ouch. But Erin Carmody was remarkable. My quads hurt just watching her stand in the hack and glare down at the broom for 30 seconds or whatever it was before she threw the rock. By the way, is she out of high school yet? She looks about 15.

* Glenn Howard went undefeated to win Ontario in Napanee. Brad Gushue takes Nfld/Lab. Yawn.

* Finally, here’s my story about Lino Di Iorio, the guy behind Balance Plus, who was rightfully fit to be tied when the CCA/COC started trumpeting all the top-secret results coming out of those two studies done at the University of Alberta and Wester using Own the Podium funds.
Lino’s been banging his head against the wall trying to get the folks up in Ottawa to buy in to his research with no luck. So he took his show to Scotland and other European countries, all of who have benefited. And many who were chuckling at how the Canadian media were reacting to the press conferences held to announce these revolutionary results. While we don’t know exactly what the Canadian studies came up with, a couple of people I talked to said they have a pretty good idea and they’ve known this type of stuff for, oh, almost a decade.

1 comment:

Kevin Palmer said...

Great article (had missed it originally). To a lesser extent, the work of myself (curlwithmath.blogspot.com) and Gerry and Dallas at www.curlingzone.com has been untapped by the CCA. Discussion's we've had over the past few years go nowhere. Some work has been done with the US surprisingly, who, like the European countries are willing to investigate traditional thinking to get better. You can't be surprised at the CCA and the "if it ain't broke" perspective. Also, top teams in Canada tend to have a traditional attitude about the sport. But I expect times will change. Practice sliding before games wasn't allowed until the 70's and then it took nearly a decade to let players throw rocks - something you see in virtually every other sport. While in Olds, AB this weekend, I saw a circa 1958 push broom from Switzerland. That must be 2 decades before one was used by Canadians. We are stubborn and old fashioned, but we will adapt.