P.E.I.'s golden girl

http://www.theguardian.pe.ca/index.cfm?sid=329653&sc=98

P.E.I.'s golden girl VICKI HALL Canwest News Service Canada's Kaillie Humphries, left, and Heather Moyse, celebrate winning a gold medal in women's bobsled competition at the Whistler Sliding Centre at the 2010 Vancouver Olympic Winter Games in Whistler, B.C., Wednesday. Canadian Press photo

Whistler, B.C. — Kaillie Humphries considered defecting to the British bobsled team after she was benched by Canada at the 2006 Winter Olympics in Turin, Italy.

Good thing she didn’t.

On Wednesday night, the Calgary pilot and brakeman Heather Moyse of Summerside, P.E.I., led a Canadian charge at the Whistler Sliding Centre, winning the gold medal in women’s bobsled at the Vancouver Winter Games.

With a four-run combined time of three minutes 32.28 seconds, Humphries and Moyse edged Canadian teammates Helen Upperton of Calgary and Shelley-Ann Brown of Pickering, Ont., who captured the silver medal in 3:33.13.

Erin Pac and Elana Meyers, of the U.S., finished third in a time of 3:33:40.

“I don’t think I can put it into words yet,” Humphries said with a faraway look in her eyes. “We did our job, you know.’’

With a Maple Leaf tattooed to her left cheek, Humphries, 24, seemed dazed in her post-race news conference more than 30 minutes after she crossed the finish line.

“I know it’s happened,” she said, looking as if the exact opposite were true. “It just hasn’t quite sunk in yet.”

Canada might not own the podium at these Olympics, but they certainly rented the prime spots for Wednesday’s flower ceremony.

The bobsled performance marks the first time Canada has won multiple medals in a single Olympic event since Duff Gibson of Vaughn, Ont., won gold and Jeff Pain of Calgary captured silver in men’s skeleton at the Turin Games in 2006.

Considered an inexperienced pilot with just three years of driving experience, Humphries won the bobsled equivalent of the Indianapolis 500 with a learner’s permit.

And she did it with Moyse — a powerful fullback with the national rugby team — pushing the Canada-1 sled.

Moyse, 31, just happens to be the woman who bumped Humphries out of a job as a brakeman for Upperton in Turin.

Upperton and Moyse went on to finish fourth by an agonizing 5/100ths of a second.

All is forgotten now.

“Kaillie was saying it hasn’t quite set in yet,” Moyse said. “When it does, I’ll be bawling.”

“Five-100ths away from the podium is what made me come back to bobsledding. I guess I’ve got to be thankful for that five-100ths because a gold in my home country with Kaillie is better than a bronze would have been in Torino.”

The four Canadians linked arms in triumph and shared the glory of winning Olympic gold and silver on the same night.

“It feels like such a long four years,” Upperton said. “I’ve actually had more tough times in the sport than good times. But for some reason, you only remember the good times.

“The last Olympics, it wasn’t really a great memory. I was so intimidated by the whole experience.”

Not this time

“It can’t be better than this,” Upperton said. “This is the best. Doesn’t get any better. One-two at home.”

And to think Humphries figured she was done in terms of Team Canada after the 2006 Winter Olympics.

Her future husband, Dan, represented Britain as a brakeman in Turin. They wanted to be together and she wanted to compete at the Games. So she seriously considered moving across the pond and trading in the Maple Leaf for the Union Jack.

“It was the worst time,’’ she said. “To be at an Olympic Games and be so close and not be able to compete? That’s extremely hard. It was heartbreaking. It was devastating, and it definitely took me a very long time to recover.’’

She took the first step toward recovery a month after the closing ceremony by enrolling in bobsled driving school.

And amends were made last year when Humphries hooked up with Moyse in spite of the hurt feelings and acrimony of Turin.

“It was a weight off my shoulders,” Moyse said. “I didn’t realize how much guilt I was holding from four years ago, even though that’s all about the sport and everything.

“It’s good for me to be on the podium, but it’s an awesome feeling to know I helped Kaillie get to the top.”

• NEW - Family in B.C. to support Moyse
• Canadian women's bobsleigh teams win gold, silver
• Upperton, Moyse reach podium on separate teams
• Summerside celebrates Moyse's gold medal win
• BREAKING NEWS: P.E.I.'s HEATHER MOYSE WINS GOLD
• This time, it's gold
• Moyse wins gold
• It's a gold medal for Moyse
• Moyse golden
• Moyse erases memories of 2006
• Kara Grant column: It's been quite a journey for Moyse

Competing in Olympics on home soil would be amazing, says Moyse

http://www.journalpioneer.com/index.cfm?sid=305542&sc=119

Competing in Olympics on home soil would be amazing, says Moyse

Related video-on-demand :

• Olympic Torch Relay (News Coverage)

	Heather Moyse at the Olympic torch relay stop in Summerside on Sunday evening. Stephen Brun/Journal Pioneer

STEPHEN BRUN
The Journal Pioneer

SUMMERSIDE — Heather Moyse carried the Olympic flame through her hometown last weekend, and now she’s setting her sights on following the flame to Vancouver.
The 31-year-old bobsledder narrowly missed out on a bronze medal with driver Helen Upperton at the 2006 Olympics in Torino, Italy.
The Summerside native is in the midst of an eight-race tour through the United States and Europe, which will determine her fate in 2010.
Moyse said she’ll find out after the seventh race whether she’ll be a brake person for a Canadian driver in the Olympics.
“I think it will be even more amazing to go this year because the Olympics are in Canada and in front of the people I do this for,” Moyse said at the torch relay ceremony in Summerside. “It’s really rare that you get to go to the Olympics at home and it would be an honour.
“It’s a pretty emotional topic for me because I want to make people proud and I want to put where I’m from on the map.”
Moyse is vying for an Olympic spot along with two other world-class brakers, Jenny Ciochetti of Edmonton, and Shelley-Ann Brown of Pickering, Ont.
This year is slightly different, however, because the Canadian team has the opportunity to qualify three sleds for Vancouver. If that happens, none of the three brakers will be cut.
Moyse said choosing a braker is subjective to the sledders’ chemistry with the driver, something she’s been feeling with Calgary’s Kaillie Humphries, 24.
“We shattered the start record together in Park City, Utah, and we just push so well together,” said Moyse. “The race we just had (in Lake Placid, N.Y.), we tied the push start record there and we ended up with a bronze medal.
“It’s hard to directly compare braking when you’re working with different drivers. I just have to do my job and push as well as I can every race.
“I’m just going to take it one run at a time because it’s even more stressful to think about the long term.”
Shortly after the Torino Games, Moyse took time off to earn her masters degree and injured her shoulder the following year.
But if she does realize her Olympic dream for the second time, Moyse feels she’s better prepared this time around.
“The year after I did my masters I was really tired and the season looked OK on paper, but it wasn’t the greatest,” Moyse said. “I’ve had a few injuries I was dealing with over the summer, but the first race of the season felt great and I finally feel like I’m back to what I was at the last Olympic season, only with a little more training and a little more substance behind it.”

Olympic flame now in Canadian hands

http://www.cbc.ca/sports/amateur/story/2009/10/29/sp-olympic-flame-handover.html

Canada receives Olympic flame

The Greek, Olympic and Canadian flags fly near the Olympic
flame as it burns in a cauldron on top of the Acropolis in Athens
prior to Thursday's handover. (Jonathan Hayward/Canadian Press)

The Olympic flame is now in Canadian hands.

The Vancouver Organizing Committee for the 2010 Olympic and Paralympic Winter Games, including Gov. Gen. Michaëlle Jean, were entrusted with the flame at a ceremony at Panathinaiko Stadium in Athens on Thursday.

The final torchbearer in the Greek portion of the Vancouver 2010 Olympic torch relay was Nikki Georgiadis, a Greek-Canadian figure skater and an Olympic hopeful in ice dance.

Georgiadis brought the Olympic flame into the stadium, where the Hellenic Olympic Committee handed it over to Canadian officials.

The symbolic flame will arrive in Victoria on Friday via a Department of Defence chartered aircraft for the start of the Vancouver 2010 Olympic torch relay across Canada.

The 106-day torch relay will be the longest domestic torch relay in Olympic history, travelling over 45,000 kilometres across the country before ending in Vancouver for the opening ceremonies of the Games on Feb. 12.

http://www.vancouversun.com/news/Olympic+flame+touch+down+Victoria+Friday+morning/2154949/story.html

Olympic flame now in Canadian hands

for 2010 Games

The Olympic flame was presented to Canada Thursday at a special ceremony in Greece.

Olympic flame to touch down in Victoria

Friday morning

By JEFF LEE, Vancouver SunOctober 28, 2009

Basketball player Kostas Papanikolaou lights the cauldron at the altar in Grevena, Greece
on Day 4 of the Olympic Torch Relay, Oct. 25, 2009.

ATHENS - When the Olympic flame touches down in Victoria aboard a Canadian Forces jet Friday morning with an entourage of politicians and media, it will be accompanied by a crate of garbage.

Actually, 675 pieces of recyclable metal, to be exact.

For eight days the flame travelled across Greece after it was lit Oct. 22 in Ancient Olympia. And for eight days, Patrick Tremblay, an employee of Bombardier, the maker of the Vancouver 2010 torch, has been gutting torches after they have been used. At the end of each torchbearer's run he quickly opens the casing, strips out the fuel tank and piping to disable it from future use, and hands it back to the runner.

But those tanks and piping have to be disposed of, and the Vancouver Organizing Committee decided to bring them back to Canada for proper disposal, said Jim Richards, the director of torch relays. Vanoc shipped over 675 of the torches to be used on the Greek leg of the relay. But it didn't want to try and find a place to recycle the fuel canisters once the torches were used.

"We decided it was easier to simply bring them all home with us," Richards said. "The tanks will be properly emptied of excess fuel and then the material will be recycled."

By doing that Vanoc and Bombardier also make sure that no one can rebuild the torches to be used again, but Richards said that wasn't the prime reason.

"It's all being done in an environmentally-friendly way," he said. "It's part of our sustainability commitment."

jefflee@vancouversun.com

Read Jeff Lee's Olympics blog at www.vancouversun.com/insidetheolympics

Meet the Medals of the 2010 Olympic Winter Games

http://www.vancouver2010.com/en/news/feature-stories/-/170520/32574/mpnnia/meet-the-medals.html



Meet the Medals

Their undulating forms evoke British Columbia’s mountains, ocean and snow. Their faces are drawn from West Coast First Nations artwork depicting the orca and raven. Each is unique. And their substantial size gives them a significant presence. Meet the medals of the Vancouver 2010 Olympic and Paralympic Winter Games.

Today, VANOC and Vancouver 2010 Official Supporters — the Royal Canadian Mint and Teck Resources Limited — unveiled the Olympic and Paralympic medals that will decorate the gold, silver and bronze medallists of the 2010 Winter Games.

The Creators

Paralympic medals Making the 2010 Winter Games medals was a two-year project because they’re so unique. It was a collaborative effort between Canadian Aboriginal designer/artist, Corinne Hunt, internationally renowned industrial designer, Omer Arbel, the Royal Canadian Mint, Teck Resources Limited, and VANOC’s in-house design team. Together this team created medals that reflect the magnitude of the accomplishments they represent: They are among the heaviest medals in Olympic and Paralympic history, weighing between 500 grams to 576 g depending on the medal. As for size, the Olympic medals are 100 millimetres in diameter and about six mm thick, while the Paralympic medals are 95 mm wide and about six mm thick.

Orca and the Raven

The blueprints for these medals are based on two large master artworks (Olympic and Paralympic) from which each of the medals was hand-cropped. No crop is the same as another so that ensures every medal is unique. The master artworks were created by Corrine Hunt, a Vancouver, BC-based artist of Komoyue and Tlingit heritage. Hunt chose the orca as the motif for the Olympic medals, and the raven as the motif for the Paralympic medals.

Olympic medals reverse side The orca, designed across four panels in the style of a traditional West Coast First Nations bentwood box, is often associated with the attributes of strength, dignity and teamwork. The sleek and powerful black and white whales are common to travel in pods through the waters off Canada’s West Coast, but are also found in all the world’s oceans.

“The orca is a beautiful creature that is strong but also lives within a community. I felt the Olympic (Games) are a community, too. The athletes may be training but they’re always somehow connected to their community, to their teammates, or to their country. The orca is a creature that has wonderful capabilities but can’t really survive without its pod.”

Overall Olympic medal design For Hunt, the raven is symbolic of Paralympians. The strong black wings and proud profile appear in a three-part composition in the style of a totem pole. The raven, a species that can be found around the globe, is often associated with transformation and healing abilities and represents determination, creativity and wisdom.

“My design for the Paralympic medal — a raven on a totem rising — is close to my heart and in honour of my uncle who is a paraplegic. The raven is a creature that is all things and I think Paralympic athletes have that in them. They’re sometimes given challenges and they rise above them and the raven does the same. I think the creativity of the raven gives us hope — to accept when things don’t work out and really rejoice when they do.”

The International Paralympic Committee also recognizes the great significance of the raven for the Paralympic medal design.

“The choice of the raven as the artwork is especially important to us because it symbolizes the powers of transformation and determination — qualities every Paralympian embodies on and off the field of play,” said Sir Philip Craven, President of the International Paralympic Committee (IPC). "No doubt the beauty of these medals will spur them even higher as they strive to reach their dreams and triumph against adversity yet again in 2010.”

More Unique Traits

Overall Paralympic medal design The matte orca or raven design is lasered onto the front face of the medals, and within this design is a delicate wood grain pattern that can be seen up close. Canadian industrial designer and architect Omer Arbel, also of Vancouver, used his extensive knowledge of materials and fabrication processes to create the innovative undulating design of the medals, which are struck nine times each to achieve the distinctive look as part of the 30-step medal fabrication process.

The Olympic medals are circular in shape, while the Paralympic medals are a superellipse or squared circle.

Production Details

On the reverse side, the medals contain the official names of the Games in English and French, the official languages of Canada and the Olympic Movement, as well as Vancouver 2010’s distinctive emblems and the name of the sport and the event the medal was awarded in. On the Paralympic medals, braille is also used. The entire medal is protected to prevent tarnishing, nicks and scratches.

Paralympic medal reverse side The Games motto With Glowing Hearts/Des plus brillants exploits is written in white lettering on the medal’s blue and green ribbon where it will rest at the base of the neck.

The Royal Canadian Mint will produce 615 Olympic and 399 Paralympic medals for the 2010 Winter Games at their headquarters in Ottawa, Ontario. The Mint began striking the medals in July and will finish the historic task this November. It is the second time the Mint has manufactured Olympic medals; the first time they produced them was for the Montreal 1976 Olympic Games. Teck Resources Limited, a Vancouver-based mining, mineral processing and metallurgical company, is supplying the 2.05 kilograms of gold, 1,950 kg of silver and 903 kg of copper used in the production of the medals. The metals were sourced from Teck’s operations in British Columbia, Ontario and Newfoundland and Labrador, as well as Alaska, Chile and Peru.

Medals to Inspire

The word athlete is derived from the Greek word for prize-seeker. Looking at recent Games medals, it’s certain that athletic prizes have certainly evolved since the ancient Greek games in Olympia, where a wreath of olives was the only reward.

The hope is that these medals will be shared with children, families and the watching world. It symbolizes a life’s accomplishment and a dream come true, forever.

Canadian Veronica Brenner, 2002 Olympic silver medallist in aerials: “The great part about the medals is it’s something that reminds you for the rest of your life of the journey. Every single medal and every athlete have their own story about what they had to put into it and how they got there. A medal should be shared. I know I wasn’t alone in winning this medal. When I was standing up on the podium the last person I was thinking of was myself.”