All kinds of blurbs to pass along today...
• Paralympic golden boy Chris Daw (photo) is in The Curling Show hotseat. Meanwhile there are some disturbing rumours floating around that Daw recently turned down a 150,000-pound wheelchair job in Scotland (that's right, pounds, which would be over 300K in Canuck bucks) to stay in and show loyalty to Canada, but is now struggling to keep his head above water. Say it ain't so...
• Meanwhile, two of Daw's arch-rivals on the Scottish wheelchair squad – which earned silver in Pinerolo – have retired. One of them, skipper Frank Duffy, has been struggling with ill health... in fact, Duffy suffered a heart attack after the competition and while still in Italy...
• First, the Vancouver 2010 curling arena promised for a vacant lot in Vancouver at a price tag of $28-million will now cost $37.1 million and has been moved to a heritage ball park, which will be destroyed in the process. Now, the city of Whistler has voted against building a stadium to host Paralympic sledge hockey, which means that sport – and wheelchair curling – will now move down the hill to Vancouver. Which also means the legacy of having all Paralympic sports in one area (Whistler) for the first time is toast, and we may yet see more Paralympic sports depart the mountain city. The official news is here, with a couple of stories here and here...
• So, you're a Canadian curler and you're upset that your national association is raising competitor fees. Our take? We're of two minds. First of all, $15 per event is a joke in this underpriced sport. You’re lucky you don’t pay between $500 and $1,000 per entry, like you do for a sanctioned World Curling Tour event. So quit your whinging! Secondly, as for the principle of the thing, that seems to be another story altogether...
• More Buckets tales following Monday's funeral, from Terry Jones and ex-Journal and The Curling News scribe Ray Turchansky. Finally, a service wrapup from the Con Man...
• Scottish national team members are now in dry-land training...
• As expected, Winnipeg's fire-razed Thistle club may not survive...
• A tale of McGill students charging forward with University curling...
• And finally, a great outdoor curling/activity piece, and in a New Zealand newspaper to boot!
2 comments:
I must admit that I'm a little confused about how you can declare that a heritage baseball park is being destroyed by the curling facility (which it should be mention will also include a swimming pool, skating rink, and other rec. centre facilities in a city that hasn't had a new public rec complex built in many years).
Nat Bailey stadium remains untouched, to the best of my knowledge. Some greenspace gets moved around. There are still the same number of ball diamonds, and they're in the same spots. It should be noted that the old curling club also exists in the park and will be removed as a result of the development and reallocation of greenspace.
Really, the new facility removes some parking space, and then sits in between some ball diamonds.
It is sad how everything is going up in price though.
Here are two images you can use to compare:
http://www.city.vancouver.bc.ca/communitypages_wa/index.cfm
http://www.vancouver2010.com/en/WinterGames/2010GamesVenues/Competition/HBSP
This is all unless there have been yet some more redesigns :)
(oh, in the photo, the current curling club is on the left hand side, just off the picture, that will be made into greenspace)
Oh yeah, I had a question for you. Where was the empty lot the facility was originally intended to go in?
I hadn't heard that before.
Cheers,
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