Lifestyle

That’s the sound of me laughing while I watch the women’s race walking. Which is mean, I know, especially because it’s pouring rain, but there’s something about that sport that makes me revert to 10-year-old maturity. What am I going to watch when this is over? Who will make me laugh? Cry? Stay up late? […]

For the love of gold, Aliant, if you’re going to buy up every second of CBC commercial time can you please find a new song? If I hear Suzie MacNeil’s “Believe” one more time, I’m going to let the shotputters and javelin tossers practise with my TV set. We get it already.

Canadian Alexander Despatie cuts the water like a knife—and wins silver with a 9.4 dive. China’s He Chong could have done a belly flop, or dove off the divingboard stairs onto the concrete for his final dive off the three metre board and still taken home a medal. Instead, he gets gold with a complicated, […]

Oh gymnastics. Right now there’s a camera in American gymnast Nastia Liukin’s face, and she looks like she’d like to wrap it around a pummel horse. She was tied with China’s He Kexin, and after two tiebreakers (as reliable as rock, paper, scissors, apparently) they were still tied to the thousandth – 16.725. Liukin’s actually […]

So I was just reading this story on CBC.ca. Trampolinist Jason Burnett, who’s going for gold tomorrow morning at 9:15am (AT), says, “Usually, right before my turn, I’ll watch the judges to see who’s up there. They’re the scariest part of the competition, you know, five suits sitting there getting ready to watch us…” This […]

26-year-old Yelena Isinbaeva just vaulted higher than anyone else in the history of everything. After two sloppy-looking attempts, the Russian gymnast gracefully arched over the bar placed 5.05m (16 feet) above the ground. So cool. I’m glad I got to see it. This was her 14th world record in gymnastics. Watch her break her own […]

It sounds like a stupid sport. “Trampoline.” It’s got the word tramp in it. It doesn’t help the uniforms are covered in sequins like olympic figure skaters. But there is a reason our country is full of bouncy castles, water trampolines and jungle jim restaurants. We like to bounce it. Unsafe? Bah! Canada has been […]

British athletes are on fire this year. Beijing Olympics have been the country’s personal best in 100 years. (They were top medal earners at the 1908 Olympics in London. Height of Empire and so on.) Now, post-empire, post-spice girls, post-punk, post-Britart/Britpop, they seem to be a country more at ease with itself. Once they stopped […]