Everyone wants to be famous for something, right? That includes David Eliuk.
Eliuk is looking to get himself into the Guinness Book of World Records for wearing the most amount of T-shirts in a half-marathon. He wore a total of 90 during the Hypothermic Half Marathon in Edmonton on Feb. 20 and if Guinness decides it’s good, it will break the mark of 76 set in 2019 by British runner David Smith. Eliuk said he trained for five months before the attempt, but still hit some unforeseen difficulties from the weight and constriction of his wardrobe, such as constriction on his arms. Look, I get that people want their 15 minutes but pick something worthwhile. Like eating pizza. Or moonshine.
Anyway:
I ain’t rubbing anything
So the Winter Olympics in Beijing are over and they went exactly the way the authorities wanted them to go: choreographed right down to the colourful nuclear reactors.
But spare a thought for poor Remi Lindholm of Finland, who suffered the cruel fate of frostbite. You know it isn’t ending with just that, right? You know I wouldn’t just put any old frostbite incident in the sports pages. No, Lindholm was racing in the men’s 50-km freestyle cross-country ski event on Feb. 20 (shortened to 30-km because it was that cold at race time) and ended up freezing his bishop. Yes, that thing. Good and hard. Yes, well …
The temperature dropped to -18 C, which is really pushing it for competition, and Lindholm, who was out in that for more than a hour, ended up coming in with chilled wedding tackle. He was given a heat pack to thaw things out and that’s when he said the pain really kicked in. Yeah, I can imagine it would. What makes this even worse is this isn’t the first time this has happened to him. Yes, the poor bastard suffered snow balls during a race in Ruka, Finland last year.
There is a joke in there about what you should do whenever something happens to the vitals but that’s even something I wouldn’t write in these pages. It’s bad enough and as a fellow male, I’m grieving along with him.
I’m, like, totally shocked
Because the Winter Olympics were held in China, that meant the country would do whatever it could to make sure it controlled everything. Proof of that was all over the place but some reporters were telling us what it was like.
For example, Nathan Fenno of the Los Angeles Times talked abut how several sites were blocked for “security reasons” (sounds like something Justin Trudeau would pull … oh, I said that out loud). Tamara Anthony, who is the Beijing bureau chief for German broadcaster ARD, published a screenshot of the German message coming up when she tried to go somewhere the Chinese overlords didn’t want her to go.
It goes without saying that nothing happened that the Chinese Communist Party didn’t want to have happen and they will say it was a success. You know what really sucks? The International Olympic Committee will go right along with it and nod in agreement while patting the world on its head.
And finally …
Good Idea: Remonstrating with an official in a respectful manner.
Bad Idea: Remonstrating with an official and punching them for good measure.
I don’t know what possessed Paul Halloran to take a shot at a linesman during a hockey game but needless to say, he won’t be playing much any time soon.
Halloran, who is now formerly of the South Shore Kings of the U.S. Premier Hockey League (I’ll get to that in a second), got mixed up with the official in question during the first period of a game between the Kings and the Wilkes-Barre Scranton Knights on Feb. 20. You can see Halloran give the linesman an initial shove, which earned him a penalty. The linesman then said something that Halloran didn’t like and Halloran proceeded to start swinging, getting a couple of decent shots in.
The linesman wasn’t hurt and Halloran received a game misconduct, which was turned into the bonus prize of a lifetime ban from the league. A statement from Bob Turow, the league’s commissioner, the following day made it clear that Halloran is no longer welcome to play within its purview.
You know, as an umpire, I sometimes wished a player would come after me the way Halloran did that linesman. I haven’t had a good fight since university and if a player wanted to have it out, they may start it but I’d be the one finishing it.
Until next time, folks …