Final Medal Count

Travis Mushett    Articles    

Pic courtesy of ChirsD.ca.

And thus the Games come to an end with Russia standing tall atop the medal count with a seriously impressive tally of 38 pieces of hardware. Germany, too, had a stellar Paralympics, leading the gold medal count with 13 and taking home a total of 24 medals. The US squad matched its 5th place performance from four years ago in Torino. While it wasn’t a landmark  performance overall for the US, the ice sledge hockey team did win a high profile gold and BlazeSports’ own Ann Cody was there in her capacity as an IPC Governing Board Member to present flowers to the American squad.

1. Russian Federation: 12G, 16S, 10B – Total 38
2. Germany: 13G, 5S, 6B – Total 12
3. Canada: 10G, 5S, 4B – Total 19
3. Ukraine: 5G, 8S, 6B – Total 19
5. United States: 4G, 5S, 4B – Total 13
6. Slovakia: 6G, 2S, 3B – Total 11
6. Austria: 3G, 4S, 4B – Total 11
6. Japan: 3G, 3S, 5B – Total 11
9. Belarus: 2G, 0S, 8B – Total 9
10. Italy: 1G, 3S, 3B – Total 7
11. France: 1G, 4S, 1B – Total 6
11. Norway: 1G, 3S, 2B – Total 6
13. Australia: 0G, 1S, 3B – Total 4
14. Spain: 1G, 2S, 0B – Total 3
14. Switzerland: 1G, 2S, 0B – Total 3
16. Finland: 0G, 1S, 1B – Total 2
16. Sweden: 0G, 0S, 2B – Total 2
18. New Zealand: 1G, 0S, 0B – Total 1
18. Korea: 0G, 1S, oB – Total 1
18. Czech Republic: 0G, 0S, 1B – Total 1
18. Poland: 0G, 0S, 1B – Total 1

3/17 Medal Count

Travis Mushett    Articles    

Pic courtesy of ChirsD.ca.

While I was busy traveling across the continent yesterday, Russia surged again, taking 8 medals on St. Patrick’s Day. Germany had a good day, as well, doubling their medal count and leaping into a tie for 2nd place. Full results can be found here.

1. Russian Federation: 8G, 10S, 5B – Total 23
2. Germany: 7G, 3S, 2B – Total 12
2. Ukraine: 3G, 4S, 5B – Total 12
4. Canada: 3G, 3S, 2B – Total 8
5. Austria: 2G, 2S, 1B – Total 5
6. Slovakia: 3G, 0S, 1B – Total 4
6. United States: 1G, 2S, 1B – Total 4
6. Belarus: 1G, 0S, 3B – Total 4
9. Norway: 1G, 2S, 0B – Total 3
9. Italy: 0G, 0S, 3B – Total 3
9. Japan: 0G, 0S, 3B – Total 3
12. Spain: 0G, 2S, 0B – Total 2
12. Australia: 0G, 0S, 2B – Total 2
14. New Zealand: 1G, 0S, 0B – Total 1
14. Finland: 0G, 1S, 0B – Total 1
14. Switzerland: 0G, 1S, 0B – Total 1
14. France: 0G, 0S, 1B – Total 1
14. Poland: 0G, 0S, 1B – Total 1

3/16 Medal Count

Travis Mushett    Articles    

Pic courtesy of ChirsD.ca.

It appears that the Russians read my medal count post from yesterday, and have amicably obliged my request. A pair of alpine medals have pushed the US into a tie for 5th place, a development that nicely compliments the sledge hockey teams 6-0 trouncing of Japan. The Canadians have much to celebrate as well, as they move into a tie for 2nd in the overall medal count and their hockey squad is currently up 5-0 against historic powerhouse Norway with 10 minutes left in the match. As always, full results can be found here.

1. Russian Federation: 6G, 6S, 3B – Total 15
2. Canada: 2G, 3S, 2B – Total 7
2. Ukraine: 2G, 2S, 3B – Total 7
4. Germany: 4G, 2S, 0B – Total 6
5. Austria: 2G, 1S, 1B – Total 4
5. United States: 1G, 2S, 1B – Total 4
5. Belarus: 1G, 0S, 3B – Total 4
8. Slovakia: 3G, 0S, 0B – Total 3
8. Italy: 0G, 0S, 3B – Total 3
8. Japan: 0G, 0S, 3B – Total 3
11. Spain: 0G, 2S, 0B – Total 2
11. Norway: 0G, 2S, 0B – Total 2
11. Australia: 0G, 0S, 2B – Total 2
14. New Zealand: 1G, 0S, 0B – Total 1
14. Finland: 0G, 1S, 0B – Total 1
14. Switzerland: 0G, 1S, 0B – Total 1
14. Poland: 0G, 0S, 1B – Total 1

Oh, Vancouver!

Travis Mushett    Articles    

Sadly enough, today is my final day in Canada for the foreseeable future. It’s been grand, but I regret that I didn’t really get the opportunity to take in Vancouver until now. The Weather Gods seemed to know of my predicament and provided me with a character that’s been absent during the duration of my trip, the sun.

Pure luck led me to a statue of Rick Hansen, the wheelchair athlete whose globe spanning Man in Motion World Tour raised $26 million for spinal cord research. This statue is placed prominently outside of GM Place, home of the Vancouver Canucks, and helped explain to me the unbelievably warm reception Rick received at the Opening Ceremony. This man resides with Mark Messier, Wayne Gretzky, Steve Yzerman, and Terry Fox on the pantheon of Canadian sport legends.

A short walk from the Hansen statue is the Falls Creek seawall. Along the water are hundreds, if not thousands, of rocks stacked into spikes and formations:

At first I thought the stones had rods running through them to make them stand upright, but a quick lifting up a top stone revealed that they were simply balanced on one another. Luckily, I managed to find the man responsible for creating and maintaining these stacks. Ziggy, an older gentlemen with an indeterminate (Greek?) accent, was wandering amongst the rocks, stacking and restacking them as he saw fit. After he explained that the work was his and his alone, I Ziggy if anyone paid him for his labor. “No, it’s relaxing,” he said. “You ask anyone, they know. They say, that’s what Ziggy do.”

This is only the tip of the Vancouver iceberg. The Games celebration in Robson Square features a zip line and an ice skating rink. The Hudson Bay Company’s Olympic/Paralympic Superstore is still loaded with shirts, stuffed animals, and pairs of the ubiquitous red Canada mittens, mittens so popular that they often force the checkout line to nearly an hour’s length. And MacLeod’s Books is a secondhand bookstore of the first caliber. With any luck, I’ll be back someday when the Games aren’t bouncing me around British Columbia like a pinball. The Paralympics are an intense kind of awesome, but I think a full experience of Vancouver would require an awesome of a more leisurely variety.

3/15 Medal Count

Travis Mushett    Articles    

Pic courtesy of ChirsD.ca.

Dear Russia,
All right. You’ve had your fun. You’ve got more than double the medals of the second place nation. How about you take it easy for the rest of these Games? Rest up for when the Paralympics hit your home turf in 2014? We’d all appreciate it.

Yours,
Travis

P.S. Full results can be found here.

1. Russian Federation: 6G, 6S, 3B – Total 15
2. Ukraine: 2G, 2S, 3B – Total 7
3. Canada: 2G, 3S, 1B – Total 6
4. Germany: 3G, 2S, 0B – Total 5
5. Belarus: 1G, 0S, 3B – Total 4
6. Austria: 2G, 0S, 1B – Total 3
7. Norway: 0G, 2S, 0B – Total 2
7. United States: 0G, 1S, 1B – Total 2
7. Australia: 0G, 0S, 2B – Total 2
7. Italy: 0G, 0S, 2B – Total 2
11. New Zealand: 1G, 0S, 0B – Total 1
11. Slovakia: 1G, 0S, 0B – Total 1
11. Spain: 0G, 1S, 0B – Total 1
11. Finland: 0G, 1S, 0B – Total 1
11. Japan: 0G, 0S, 1B – Total 1
11. Poland: 0G, 0S, 1B – Total 1

Wandering Whistler

Travis Mushett    Articles    

If I ever start complaining about the sturm und drang of city life, please remind me to shut up and move to Whistler. Maybe it’s not always as vibrant as it is here in the midst of Games fever, but even absent that, I am pretty certain that this little ski town is as close to paradise as your going to find east of Waikiki. The mountains are lovely, the people are friendly, and it seems like every plot of Village real estate is occupied by a restaurant, bar, or coffee shop just waiting to charm you out of a few dollars.

After navigating the crowd at yet another concert in the Village Square, I checked out “Spirit in Motion – Discover What Moves Us,” an exhibit on the history and technology of Paralympic sport. Tucked inside of an igloo-like tent in the center of Whistler, the exhibit features a timeline of the Games from Stoke Mandeville, UK in 1948 to the present. Visitors can check out prostheses, watch video clips concerning the Paralympic movement, and even try taking shots from a hockey sledge, like this little guy here:

The only thing about British Columbia that is unpalatable is the weather. True to the Pacific Northwest stereotype, it has rained literally every day I’ve been here, and I have a feeling that the mountains would be even more picturesque if that mess of gray clouds ever lifted. Still, if anyone ever offers you a job visiting Whistler, watching some sports, wandering the Village, and writing up some blog posts about your adventures… well, you got a pretty good gig going.

Eight Teams Enter, One Team Leaves! The Mad Men of Ice Sledge Hockey Enter the Thunderbird

Travis Mushett    Articles    

Pic courtesy of Chicago Now.

The Vancouver venue that houses Paralympic ice sledge hockey is called UBC Thunderbird Arena, a name that evokes–for this fan, anyway–Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome, one of the high points of 1980s kitsch cinema. In the post-apocalyptic world of the movie, leather-clad desert dwellers settle their differences inside the jungle gym styled structure you see above. The rules were simple: “Two men enter, one man leaves.” Now, if you change “Thunderdome” to “Thunderbird” and “leather-clad desert dwellers” to “icepick-wielding elite athletes on sleds,” you’ve got an idea of the tournament that’s unfolding up here. I was lucky enough catch some of the competition yesterday, and I doubt Mad Max would last a single period against any of the eight teams battling it out for Vancouver gold.

Courtesy of USA Hockey.

Canada is a nation that has hockey on the back of its five dollar bill, and Canadians–along with fans from around the world–have spent bucketfuls of these bills on sledge hockey tickets. 13 of the 19 scheduled matches were sold out before the Games even started. It’s no wonder. The play is as fast and aggressive as anything you saw in the Olympics. And with the home team and the American squad both undefeated, we could be looking at a reprise of the gold medal match-ups in both the men’s and women’s Olympic gold medal matches, but this time around, BlazeSports’ own Ann Cody will be awarding medals to the winning squad.

More hockey coverage tomorrow! Stay tuned!

3/14 Medal Count

Travis Mushett    Articles    

Pic courtesy of ChirsD.ca.

The first alpine skiing medals were awarded today, hence the Austrian and Canadian surge into third place. And with a pair of cross-country events handing out hardware, the Russians maintained their position atop the overall medal count. Full results can be found here.

1. Russian Federation: 4G, 4S, 2B – Total 10
2. Ukraine: 2G, 1S, 3B – Total 6
3. Austria: 2G, 0S, 1B – Total 3
3. Canada: 0G, 3S, 0B – Total 3
5. Germany: 2G, 0S, 0B – Total 2
5. Belarus: 1G, 0S, 1B – Total 2
5. United States: 0G, 1S, 1B – Total 2
5. Italy: 0G, 0S, 2B – Total 2
9. Slovakia: 1G, 0S, 0B – Total 1
9. Spain: 0G, 1S, 0B – Total 1
9. Finland: 0G, 1S, 0B – Total 1
9. Norway: 0G, 1S, 0B – Total 1
9. Australia: 0G, 0S, 1B – Total 1
9. Japan: 0G, 0S, 1B – Total 1

A Word From Ricky

Travis Mushett    Articles    

Ricky is the main character of Ricky Played, the first in a series of children’s books published by BlazeSports’ own TorchRunner Press. He watched NBC’s coverage of the Paralympic Opening Ceremony on Sunday, and was a tad peeved by what he saw.

Hi everybody. I’ve been looking forward to the Paralympics for a long time, for months (just ask my Mom and Dad!). When NBC showed the Opening Ceremony on Saturday, my whole family got together in the living room to watch. Mom even made popcorn. For the most part it was really fun! I especially liked the part with Sumi the bear, and the part with the guys in wheelchairs doing flips. But I got a little confused when they showed all those kids dancing, and none of them were in wheelchairs. There were so many kids who got to play in the Ceremony, but they all looked like my sisters and none of them looked like me. I thought the Paralympics were about bringing everyone together, no matter if they have one leg or use a wheelchair or whatever. So why didn’t the people who put together the Opening Ceremony invite all kinds of kids to join the fun? I know the President of the Paralympics uses a chair like me. His name is Philip Craven, and he’s a knight! But NBC didn’t even show his speech. You’d think they’d have some respect for the President! Oh, well. There’s lots of sports to go, so I’ll still get a chance to see all my favorite athletes compete. I just wish the Opening Ceremony was more inclusive of kids like me.

Wheels on Ice: Curling Rocks the Paralympic Centre

Travis Mushett    Articles    

Speaking on behalf of my countrymen and women–especially those of us who spent our formative years below the Mason-Dixon–Americans often find their knowledge of curling to be, shall we say, a bit spotty. This is decidedly not the case for our northern neighbors. Canadians adore curling, and at major events like the Paralympics, their enthusiasm for the sport can be deafening. Every time their squad delivered a good stone today at the Paralympic Centre, the Canadian fans roared. And today they were not disappointed. Canada edged out the Norwegian team 6-5 and maintained their perfect record with a third consecutive win. That said, I think even the proudest Canuck would concede that the Norwegians sported the hippest pants:

Other results from today’s curling:

Italy 13
Switzerland 4

USA 6
Germany 5

Japan 5
South Korea 7

Sweden 1
Italy 9

Japan 4
Germany 12

Switzerland 2
Great Britain 10