So check out the control of this boy, Amezian Aherdane, as he juggles through the course (using his right foot only) to a jumpin’ backing track from DJ Hamida. AA is only 9 years old – we’ll be watching for him since he’s obviously off to such a great start. Once he gets that la jambe gauche in motion, look out.
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With just four teams left in the Stanley Cup playoffs (and all of BP’s picks now watching May’s games from the 19th hole), it’s time to name the two players who will have the biggest impact on their teams’ trip through to the finals.
You mean the goalies? Nope. King Henrik Lundquist and Jonathan Quick are both among the best goaltenders in the world, and they will star as they lead the Rangers and the Kings very close to the Cup. But it’ll be two skaters who truly carry their teams by scoring, assisting, and inspiring their teammates.
Brad Richards of the New York Rangers, and Dustin Brown of the Los Angeles Kings.
Richards is a blue-chip veteran who’s had success on each of his two previous teams. He won the Conn Smythe Trophy and the Stanley Cup as a 24-year-old in Tampa, and at 32 still has the jump and the leadership to be the Rangers’ key player. Although he didn’t stand out in the Rangers’ Game 1 win over New Jersey, he will soon step up with key plays at crucial times. He’s one of those players that does everything well, without any one part of his game standing out above the others. Richards is a complete player and a leader – that’s why the Rangers spent so freely to grab him in last summer’s UFA sweepstakes.
The Kings’ Dustin Brown has a similar effect on his teammates, though he gets things done a little differently than Richards does. Brown is skillful, for sure – but he’s also a fireplug and an agitator. He’ll score a key goal with sheer hustle, after levelling the other team’s top guy with a brutal hit. In these playoffs, he seems to have been operating at a different speed than anyone else on the ice, and he’s why the Kings’ #1 line (Brown, with Kopitar and Williams) has been the most dynamic of the post-season.
Watch for both these guys in a showdown for this year’s Conn Smythe.
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Jamaican sprint records: more where this came from
Usain Bolt, Asafa Powell, Veronica Campbell-Brown, Yohan Blake, Kerron Stewart, Nesta Carter, Merlene Ottey…just a few of the great Jamaican sprinters who have dominated athletics in recent years. But why them? And why Jamaica?
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Jamaica punches way above its weight when it comes to sprinting. One little island with just under 3 million people, it ranks 113th in the world in per-capita GDP ranks – down there with the Congo, Brunei, and Iceland. It doesn’t have leading universities, global corporations, a network of well-endowed pro sports clubs, or other institutions that support athletic excellence in the world’s developed nations. And yet, for decades, a disproportionate number of the world’s fastest men and women have run in the gold, green and black of Jamaica.
The two possible explanations for Jamaica’s success on the track? The same “explanations” habitually proposed for almost any variance in any human behaviour – it’s either genetics or culture. Nature v nurture. Or both.
A study published in 2008 and co-conducted by Errol Morrison, the president of the University of Technology in Kingston, Jamaica, seems to favour the genetic explanation. Morrison and his colleagues in Jamaica and in Glasgow (!) analyzed the chemical composition of the muscles in sprinters like Powell and women’s 100m national champ Sherone Simpson. A motherlode of an enzyme called Actinen A was found in the runners’ fast-twitch muscle fibres (the muscle components that determine acceleration, reflexes, and speed). Seventy per cent of the 200 Jamaican sprinters in the study were found to have Actinen A – but only 30% of Aussies (the control group in this study) have the magic ingredient in their muscle fibre.
(The Aussies, though, were off the charts in the occurrence of a digestive enzyme that makes it possible to drink enormous quantities of crap beer without showing any apparent effects.)
So if you believe this research, you’ll believe that Jamaicans are naturally gifted for sprinting and Australians are not. So far, though, I haven’t seen results for other nations that normally place runners on the start line at Olympic Games and World Championship sprint finals: principally other Caribbean countries and the United States. We need some data on top runners who don’t come from Jamaican bloodlines.
From Best Player’s perspective, the cultural explanation for Jamaica’s success is more interesting, because it suggests that excellence can be cultivated whether or not its potential is already there in the genes. In Jamaica, excellence in running is the thing: the same way Brazilians and Italians live for soccer or Canadians for hockey is how Jamaicans feel about athletics. In writing an in-depth Globe and Mail exploration of Jamaica’s love of running, columnist Jeff Blair attends the country’s 4-day high school track & field championships, along with 30,000 other fans, including the Prime Minister, some Olympic medalists, and execs from major corporate sponsors…and tells us of the massive effect that a running culture has on the track & field performance of the country’s young athletes.
Wait a sec: high school championships? Not even American football draws that much hometown support for 16- and 17-year-old athletes. In Jamaica, says one famous track coach, “We are a country of runners, who from a young age aspire to be stars.” Winners at this high-school meet have gone on – 26 times – to represent Jamaica at the Olympics. They’ve also gone on to become local and international stars, as Jamaican and global TV networks also cover the events, and those sponsors appear willing to bestow riches on the next Shelley-Anne Frasers and Yohan Blakes.
What effect does this have on the rest of the country? Well, put it this way: Jamaica doesn’t produce a lot of soccer players, hockey stars, boxers or basketballers. There are some cricketers who make it to the world stage, and the famed bobsled team – but mostly, kids grow up idolizing runners – especially sprinters – and competing in their own school and community races as long as they have a chance of succeeding.
So, sure – maybe Jamaicans have some genetic advantage over Australians, Poles, and Greeks when it comes to flat-out speed. But maybe more important is the advantage their culture gives them in incubating, fostering, and exploding their track stars onto podiums around the world. Expect to see more green-and-gold taking medals in London…and by the way, the East Africans had better be watching over their shoulders in the 10,000m and marathon a few years from now – Blair’s article mentions in passing that Jamaica’s next focus will be the middle- and long-distance events.
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Canada’s Milos Raonic defeated world #4 Andy Murray to advance to the semi-finals of the Barcelona Open Banc Sabadell.
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Raonic is one of tennis’s best young players and a massive hitter. He’s had some injury problems, though, missing parts of last year with hip troubles and twisting an ankle earlier in 2012. But when he’s on – as he was Friday – he’s hard to play against, even for a top-ranked guy like Murray.
Raonic hit 14 aces during his straight-set win. He moves on to meet world #6 David Ferrer, while on the others side of the draw it’s Fernando Verdasco v Rafael Nadal – who’s playing some of his best tennis in recent months.
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Braden Who? morphed into Braden Holtby, giant-killer, over the last two weeks as he backstopped his Washington Capitals to a 7-game series win over the defending Stanley Cup champ Boston Bruins.
In helping the Caps upset the heavily favoured Bruins, 22-year-old Holtby also outplayed Boston’s goaltender Tim Thomas, 2011′s Conn Smythe and Vezina Trophy winner. Holtby is only the third rookie goaltender to upset a previous-season Stanley Cup winner, and in doing so, he joins an elite group that includes only Ken Dryden and Mike Vernon.
Hardworking Holtby arrives in the Caps' dressing room direct from the construction site
Who is Braden Holtby? He was drafted by the Caps from the Saskatoon Blades in 2008 and toiled for a while in the minors before seeing a little NHL action in 2010 and 2011 as the Caps struggled with injuries and inconsistency in net. Although he has generally played well with the Capitals, he was playing in the minors again as recently as two months ago, and only found himself in net against the Bruins because of – again – injuries, this time to goalies Tomas Vokoun and Michael Neuwirth.
Holtby was solid against the Bruins and is sure to see more action in the Capitals’ next series. Meanwhile, he’s done a great favour for the politically astute Tim Thomas, who now won’t have to lose any sleep deciding whether it would be wise to skip the Cup winners’ White House visit a second straight year. Barack Obama will still be there in June – but Thomas won’t.
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Not long ago, Roberto Luongo was rightly considered one of the best goalies in the world.
When he was obtained by Vancouver a half-dozen years ago, he was hailed by all as the guy who would lead the Canucks to the Stanley Cup. He still hasn’t got there, but he and the Canucks did get to within one game of the Grail last year. Along the way, Luongo also backstopped the Canadian Olympic team to a 2010 gold medal.
But Luongo’s history hasn’t been all ups. He’s notoriously streaky, and while at times brilliant, he can go stone-cold as well. That’s why the Canucks turned to Cory Schneider with their backs against the wall against LA, and why the loving “Luuuuu”s have sometimes lately turned to boos at Vancouver’s Rogers Centre.
At one point – ridiculously – the Canucks’ captain, Luongo now looks a good bet to be on the move this summer. And he could land in Toronto, a town with a team that has way more money and fans than success, and that needs a proven #1 goalie in the worst way.
Luongo: worth a roll of the dice?
The Toronto Star’s Damien Cox succinctly runs down the issues on both sides of the Luongo-as-Leaf scenario. In Cox’s hands, these issues don’t sound as insurmountable as you might think – the huge contract, the recent sacrosanct status in Vancouver, the age of the man himself (um, Luongo, not Cox).
I think Luongo still has some great hockey left in him. Will Leafs GM Brian Burke, the Great Pontificator, will abandon his hitherto sketchy long-term plans in order to gamble on an aging player with a large long-term contract? Leafs fans will be hoping that if he does, he can swing the deal without giving up any of the few bright young lights in blue & white.
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