Dutch skater makes most of Games
Jorien ter Mors of the Netherlands finished fifth in the women’s 1,500-metre short-track speedskating event but placed first in versatility at the Pyeongchang Winter Games.
Three days prior, the 28-year-old won gold in the 1,000-metre long-track event, clocking one minute, 13.56 seconds to set an Olympic record.
Ter Mors won two golds in long-track speedskating at the 2014 Games in Sochi and has won five world championship medals since 2016. Her short-track career includes three world championship medals but she has never reached the podium at a Winter Olympics.
Of course, Canadian sports fans are familiar with crossover speed-skating stars.
Winnipeg’s Clara Hughes won a pair of bronze medals in road cycling at the 1996 Atlanta Summer Games. She then earned four medals — including a gold in the 5,000 — during an Olympic speedskating career spanning three Olympics.
But excelling in multiple sports in a single Games is a rare feat.
The most recent example in summer Games might be American distance runner Galen Rupp, who won marathon bronze eight days after finishing fifth in the 10,000-metre event in Rio.
MILAGRO SOBRE HIELO: If your cable package is expansive enough you can watch Olympic hockey in Spanish.
Saturday morning, Univision Canada aired the U.S. men’s hockey team’s 4-0 loss to the Olympic Athletes from Russia, and the broadcast featured Venezuelanborn Nelson Pérez Esis and Colombianborn Sergio Moyano calling the game from Telelatino’s studio in North York.
In 2011, the network also broadcast Maple Leafs games with Spanish commentary.
Perez, who shares play-by-play duties with compatriot Alexis Espejo, acknowl- edges hockey is not popular back home. But he says he caught occasional NHL broadcasts in the early 2000s while growing up in the western Venezuelan city of Maracaibo.
“ESPN had just launched ESPN Latinoamerica, and I imagine the rights cost practically nothing,” Pérez said in a Facebook message.
Much of hockey’s lingo doesn’t translate into Spanish, so you’ll hear Pérez, Espejo and Moyano using English terms like “puck,” “power play” and “goal.”
While no team from a Spanish-speaking country has qualified for Olympic hockey, the 2006 U.S. team featured former NHLer Scott Gomez, son of a Mexican father and Colombian mother.
STUNTMAN SPEAKS OUT: Swiss freestyle skier Fabian Boesch might not be the most accomplished competitor this weekend’s slopestyle competition but he’s already the most popular, thanks to the viral social media posts featuring him performing stunts at Olympic venues.
The best-known clip features him hanging over the side of an escalator, gripping the railing with one hand and riding it to the top.
Friday night, the 20-year-old explained himself to Yahoo Sports.
No, he’s not a professional stuntman but yes, his dryland training includes parkour. Boesch said he rode the escalator halfway up before dismounting, then jumped on again to complete the trip.
His social media capers are all spontaneous.
“It was hard to hold on (to the escalator),” he said.
Swiss freestyle skier Fabian Boesch is making a name for himself at the Games, thanks to social media