– A record-breaking winter storm slammed New York and much of the U.S. Northeast on Friday, forcing businesses, schools and transportation systems to shut down as nearly two feet of snow fell in the city.
Commuters struggled in the absence of suburban train and bus services into New York City, where the National Weather Service said more than 20 inches of snow had fallen so far with the storm set to become the third heaviest on record.
The heaviest storm to hit New York was in February 2006 when 26.9 inches blanketed the city. The latest storm took New York City's total snowfall for February to more than 36 inches, making it the snowiest month on record.
"Enough is enough -- I am tired of shoveling," said retired Ron Rigo, 62, as he tried to dig out his car in a Manhattan street. "It's the worst winter in recent years."
The storm also dampened enthusiasm on Wall Street where trading on Friday was light. U.S. Treasury and bond trading was also dull.
The slow-moving wintry blast, which began on Thursday and was predicted to last through Saturday with several more inches of snow forecast for New York City, was the third heavy storm to hit the region in a month.
More than one million homes and businesses across the Northeastern United States had suffered blackouts in the past day and about 700,000 were still without power on Friday.
The effects of the bad winter weather could be felt throughout a U.S. economy struggling to emerge from recession.
"The issue ... has been the unusual weather this quarter, said Subodh Kumar, chief investment strategist at Subodh Kumar & Associates, in Toronto.
SCHOOLS CLOSED, FLIGHTS CANCELED
At the United Nations, the Palestinian Authority's permanent observer Riyad Mansour told the 192-nation General Assembly that the storm was to blame for 56 countries failing to show up for a vote on a resolution demanding credible Israeli and Palestinian investigations into U.N. allegations of war crimes during last year's conflict in the Gaza Strip.
In New York City, subway service was slowed and buses struggled to navigate snow-covered streets.
Strong winds, gusting up to 60 miles per hour in eastern Long Island, posed danger to those venturing outside, the National Weather Service said. In Philadelphia, winds gusted up to 50 miles per hour and the city declared a snow emergency, its fourth of the winter.
Among the storm's casualties, a man was struck and killed by a snow-laden tree limb that fell in Central Park on Thursday and the roof of a home in suburban New Jersey collapsed under the heavy snow.
Schools were closed in New York City, Philadelphia and elsewhere in the Northeastern states.
Hundreds of flights were canceled at Newark Liberty International Airport, while delays were reported at John F. Kennedy International Airport and flights canceled at Philadelphia's airport, authorities said.
Amtrak canceled regional trains in upstate New York, and commuter bus service was suspended in northern New Jersey.
"I like the snow. I am from Russia. For me it's nothing," said Nadia Asanova, 31, as she sipped on a cup of coffee. "I don't think it's a big deal."
Sunday, February 28, 2010
Winter storm
Winter storm
Seasons
Spring · Summer
Autumn · Winter
Tropical
A winter storm is an event in which the dominant varieties of precipitation are forms that only occur at cold temperatures, such as snow or sleet, or a rainstorm where ground temperatures are cold enough to allow ice to form (i.e. freezing rain). In temperate continental climates, these storms are not necessarily restricted to the winter season, but may occur in the late autumn and early spring as well. Very rarely, they may form in summer, though it would have to be an abnormally cold summer, such as the summer of 1816 in the Northeast United States of America. In many locations in the Northern Hemisphere, the most powerful winter storms usually occur in March[citation needed] and, in regions where temperatures are cold enough, April.Contents [hide]
Snow
Approaching winter storm in Salt Lake City.
Snowstorms are storms where large amounts of snow fall. Snow is less dense than liquid water, by a factor of approximately 10 at temperatures slightly below freezing, and even more at much colder temperatures.[citation needed] Therefore, an amount of water that would produce 0.8 in. (2 cm.) of rain could produce at least 8 in (20 cm) of snow. Two inches of snow (5 cm.) is enough to create serious disruptions to traffic and school transport (because of the difficulty to drive and maneuver the school buses on slick roads). This is particularly true in places where snowfall is uncommon but heavy accumulating snowfalls can happen (e.g., Atlanta, Seattle, London, Dublin, Canberra, Vancouver and Las Vegas). In places where snowfall is common, such as Utica, Detroit, Denver, Ottawa, Montreal, Quebec City, Chicago, Pittsburgh, Buffalo, NY, Toronto and Minneapolis, such small snowfalls are rarely disruptive, because winter tires are used, though snowfalls in excess of 6 in (15 cm) usually are.
A massive snowstorm with strong winds and other conditions meeting certain criteria is known as a blizzard. A large number of heavy snowstorms, some of which were blizzards, occurred in the United States during 1888 and 1947 as well as the early and mid-1990s. The snowfall of 1947 exceeded two feet with drifts and snow piles from plowing that reached twelve feet and for months, temperatures did not rise high enough to melt the snow. The 1993 "Superstorm" was manifest as a blizzard in most of the affected area.
Dangers of Snow
Snowstorms are usually considered less dangerous than ice storms. However, the snow brings secondary dangers that can affect us thoroughly if we are near the place. Mountain snowstorms can produce cornices and avalanches. An additional danger, following a snowy winter, is spring flooding if the snow melts suddenly due to a dramatic rise in air temperature. Deaths can occur from hypothermia, infections brought on by frostbite or car accidents due to slippery roads. Fires and carbon monoxide poisoning can occur after a storm causes a power outage. There are also several cases of heart attacks caused by overexertion while shovelling heavy wet snow.
Wintry showers or wintry mixes
Freezing rain
Ice storm
Coated in ice, power and telephone lines sag and often break, resulting in power outages.
Plants wrapped in 6 mm (0.2 in) of ice. Severe ice storms, which may occur in the spring, can kill plant life.
Crabapple covered in icy glaze due to freezing rain.
Heavy showers of freezing rain are one of the most dangerous types of winter storm. They typically occur when a layer of warm air hovers over a region, but the ambient temperature is near 0 °C (32 °F), and the ground temperature is sub-freezing. A storm in which only roads freeze is called a freezing rain storm; one resulting in widespread icing of plants and infrastructure is called ice storm.
While a 10 cm (4 in) snowstorm is somewhat manageable by the standards of the northern United States and Canada, a comparable 1 cm (0.4 in) ice storm will paralyze a region: driving becomes extremely hazardous, telephone and power lines are damaged, and crops may be ruined. Because they do not require extreme cold, ice storms often occur in warm temperature climates (such as the southern United States) and cooler ones. Ice storms in Florida will often destroy entire orange crops.
Notable ice storms include an El Niño-related North American ice storm of 1998 that affected much of eastern Canada, including Montreal and Ottawa, as well as upstate New York and part of New England. Three million people lost power, some for as long as six weeks. One-third of the trees in Montreal's Mount Royal park were damaged, as well as a large proportion of the sugar-producing maple trees. The amount of economic damage caused by the storm has been estimated at $3 billion Canadian.
The Ice Storm of December 2002 in North Carolina resulted in massive power loss throughout much of the state, and property damage due to falling trees. Except in the mountainous western part of the state, heavy snow and icy conditions are rare in North Carolina.
The Ice Storm of December 2005 was another severe winter storm producing extensive ice damage across a large portion of the Southern United States on December 14 to 16. It led to power outages and at least 7 deaths.
In January 2005 Kansas had been declared a major disaster zone by President George W. Bush after an ice storm caused nearly $39 million in damages to 32 counties. Federal funds were provided to the counties during January 4–6, 2005 to aid the recovery process.[1]
The January 2009 Central Plains and Midwest ice storm was a crippling and historic ice storm. Most places struck by the storm, saw 2 inches or more of ice accumulation, and a few of inches of snow on top it. This brought down power lines, causing some people to go without power for a few days, to a few weeks. In some cases, some didn't see power for a month or more. At the height of the storm, more than 2 million people were without power.
Graupel
Ice pellets
Main article: Ice pellets
Out ahead of the passage of a warm front, falling snow may partially melt and refreeze into a frozen rain drop before it reaches the ground. These ice pellets are called sleet. Because it is easily seen and does not accumulate ice, it is not as dangerous as freezing rain.
Rime
Rime is a milky white accumulation of super-cooled cloud or fog droplets that freeze when they strike an object that has a temperature of 32 degrees F, 0 degrees C, or freezing. The process is called riming when super-cooled cloud droplets attach to ice crystals in the formation of graupel. Rime ice can pose a hazard to an airliner when it forms on a wing as an aircraft flies through a cloud of super-cooled droplets.
Sunday, February 14, 2010
MYAD
Danica Sue Patrick (born March 25, 1982)
is an American-born auto racing driver, currently competing in the IndyCar Series, the ARCA Racing Series presented by RE/MAX and Menards, and the NASCAR Nationwide Series, as well as a model and advertising spokeswoman. Patrick was named the Rookie of the Year for both the 2005 Indianapolis 500 and the 2005 IndyCar Series season. With her win in the 2008 Indy Japan 300, Patrick became the first woman to win an Indy car race. Patrick currently drives the #7 GoDaddy.com Honda/Dallara for Andretti Autosport. In 2010, Patrick will race in the NASCAR Nationwide Series, driving the #7 GoDaddy.com Chevrolet Impala for JR Motorsports part-time. She also has an equity stake in her #7 team.[1] She placed 3rd in the 2009 Indianapolis 500, which was both a personal best for her at the track and the highest finish by a woman in the event's history.
Chinese New Year
or Spring Festival is the most important of the traditional Chinese holidays. It is also called "Lunar New Year", because it is based on the lunisolar Chinese calendar. The festival traditionally begins on the first day of the first month (Chinese: 正月; pinyin: zhēng yuè) in the Chinese calendar and ends on the 15th; this day is called Lantern Festival. Chinese New Year's Eve is known as chú xī. It literally means "Year-pass Eve".
Chinese New Year is the longest and most important festivity in the Chinese Lunar Calendar. The origin of Chinese New Year is itself centuries old and gains significance because of several myths and traditions. Ancient Chinese New Year is a reflection on how the people behaved and what they believed in the most.
Chinese New Year is celebrated in countries and territories with significant Han Chinese populations, such as Mainland China, Hong Kong, Macau, Singapore, Taiwan, Indonesia, Laos, Malaysia, the Philippines, and Thailand. Chinese New Year is considered a major holiday for the Chinese and has had influence on the new year celebrations of its geographic neighbors, as well as cultures with whom the Chinese have had extensive interaction. These include Koreans (Seollal), Tibetans and Bhutanese (Losar), Mongolians (Tsagaan Sar), Vietnamese (Tết), and the Japanese before 1873 (Oshogatsu).
In countries such as Australia, Canada and the United States, although Chinese New Year is not an official holiday, many ethnic Chinese hold large celebrations and Australia Post, Canada Post, and the US Postal Service issue New Year's themed stamps.
Within China, regional customs and traditions concerning the celebration of the Chinese new year vary widely. People will pour out their money to buy presents, decoration, material, food, and clothing. It is also the tradition that every family thoroughly cleans the house to sweep away any ill-fortune in hopes to make way for good incoming luck. Windows and doors will be decorated with red colour paper-cuts and couplets with popular themes of “happiness”, “wealth”, and “longevity”. On the Eve of Chinese New Year, supper is a feast with families. Food will include such items as pigs, ducks, chicken and sweet delicacies. The family will end the night with firecrackers. Early the next morning, children will greet their parents by wishing them a healthy and happy new year, and receive money in red paper envelopes. The Chinese New Year tradition is a great way to reconcile forgetting all grudges, and sincerely wish peace and happiness for everyone.
Although the Chinese calendar traditionally does not use continuously numbered years, outside China its years are often numbered from the reign of Huangdi. But at least three different years numbered 1 are now used by various scholars, making the year 2009 "Chinese Year" 4707, 4706
Animal Branch New Year dates
鼠 Rat 子 Zǐ February 19, 1996 February 7, 2008
牛 Ox 丑 Chǒu February 7, 1997 January 26, 2009
虎 Tiger 寅 Yín January 28, 1998 February 14, 2010
兔 Rabbit 卯 Mǎo February 16, 1999 February 3, 2011
龍 Dragon 辰 Chén February 5, 2000 January 23, 2012
蛇 Snake 巳 Sì January 24, 2001 February 10, 2013
馬 Horse 午 Wǔ February 12, 2002 January 31, 2014
羊 Sheep 未 Wèi February 1, 2003 February 19, 2015
猴 Monkey 申 Shēn January 22, 2004 February 8, 2016
雞 Rooster 酉 Yǒu February 9, 2005 January 28, 2017
狗 Dog 戌 Xū January 29, 2006 February 16, 2018
豬 Pig 亥 Hài February 18, 2007 February 5, 2019
The lunisolar Chinese calendar determines Chinese New Year dates. The calendar is also used in countries that have adopted or have been influenced by Han culture (notably the Koreans, Japanese and Vietnamese) and may have a common ancestry with the similar New Years festivals outside East Asia (such as Iran, and historically, the Bulgars lands).
In the Gregorian calendar, Chinese New Year falls on different dates each year, a date between January 21 and February 20. In the Chinese calendar, winter solstice must occur in the 11th month, which means that Chinese New Year usually falls on the second new moon after the winter solstice (rarely the third if an intercalary month intervenes). In traditional Chinese Culture, lichun is a solar term marking the start of spring, which occurs about February 4. The dates for Chinese New Year from 1996 to 2019 (in the Gregorian calendar) are at the left, along with the year's presiding animal zodiac and its earthly branch. The names of the earthly branches have no English counterparts and are not the Chinese translations of the animals. Alongside the 12-year cycle of the animal zodiac there is a 10-year cycle of heavenly stems. Each of the ten heavenly stems is associated with one of the five elements of Chinese astrology, namely: Wood, Fire, Earth, Metal, and Water. The elements are rotated every two years while a yin and yang association alternates every year. The elements are thus distinguished: Yang Wood, Yin Wood, Yang Fire, Yin Fire, etc. These produce a combined cycle that repeats every 60 years. For example, the year of the Yang Fire Rat occurred in 1936 and in 1996, 60 years apart.
Many confuse their Chinese birth-year with their Gregorian birth-year. As the Chinese New Year starts in late January to mid-February, the Chinese year dates from January 1 until that day in the new Gregorian year remain unchanged from the previous Gregorian year. For example, the 1989 year of the snake began on February 6, 1989. The year 1990 is considered by some people to be the year of the horse. However, the 1989 year of the snake officially ended on January 26, 1990. This means that anyone born from January 1 to January 25, 1990 was actually born in the year of the snake rather than the year of the horse. Many online Chinese Sign calculators do not account for the non-alignment of the two calendars, using Gregorian-calendar years rather than official Chinese New Year dates.
One scheme of continuously numbered Chinese-calendar years assigns 4706 to the year beginning January 26, 2009, but this is not universally accepted; the calendar is traditionally cyclical, not continuously numbered.
Sir Dr. Stephen T. Colbert, D.F.A.
(pronounced /koʊlˈbɛr/), is the persona of political satirist Stephen Colbert, portrayed most notably on The Colbert Report. Described as a "well-intentioned, poorly informed high-status idiot,"[1] the character is a self-obsessed right-wing commentator with a strong distaste for facts. He incorporates aspects of the real Colbert's life and interests, but is modeled primarily as a parody of cable news pundits, particularly Bill O'Reilly.[2]
Colbert first appeared as a correspondent on Comedy Central's news parody series The Daily Show in 1997 and remained a regular contributor until 2005, when he left to host The Colbert Report, a spin-off satirizing personality-driven political pundit programs. He has also been featured in a number of other public performances, most notably at the 2006 White House Correspondents' Association Dinner, and as the author of the 2007 book I Am America (And So Can Yo
Steve Nash '96 Helps Light Olympic Flame
Steve Nash '96,
who will start the 2010 NBA All-Star game on Sunday, helped Wayne Gretzky and three others light the Vancouver 2010 Winter Olympic Games Olympic Flame on Friday night in Vancouver.
Nash `96 will be making his seventh appearance in the 2010 NBA All-Star game on Sunday after receiving 1,222,235 votes, the eighth-highest total in 2010 All-Star voting. He will be joined by the Laker's Kobe Bryant as part of the Western Conference's backcourt. Nash is the only player from the West Coast Conference on the 2010 All-Star roster for both the NBAs Western and Eastern Conferences.
The 2010 All-Star game will be played at Cowboys Stadium in Arlington, Texas, before an expected crowd of more than 80,000 -- the largest group ever to witness a live basketball game -- on Sunday, Feb. 14, 2010.
The Bronco alum is a seven time all-star (2002-2003, 2005-2008, 2010) and was twice named the NBA MVP (2005 and `06).
Nash finished second in the 2006-07 MVP voting after garnering back-to-back NBA MVP awards the previous two seasons, joining Magic Johnson and Michael Jordan as the only other guards ever to accomplish this feat. Nash is shooting a career-best from the free-throw line this season; and is assists, and among league leaders in double-doubles, field goal percentage and free throw percentage. He averaged a career-best 11.6 assists in 2006-07. A veteran of the All-Star weekend, Nash won the 2005 NBA All-Star Skills Challenge. A three-time All-NBA First Team selection, he was selected by Phoenix in the first round (15th overall) of the 1996 NBA Draft after an illustrious career at Santa Clara where he led the team to three NCAA Tournament appearances, was twice named the West Coast Conference Player of the Year and finished as the team's all-time leader in assists.
The AT&T Pebble Beach National Pro-Am,
An event originally known as the Bing Crosby National Pro-Amateur, or just the Crosby Clambake, is a PGA Tour golf tournament that is held every year at Pebble Beach, California, in the United States. The tournament is typically held during the month of February on three different courses, Pebble Beach Golf Links, Spyglass Hill Golf Course and Monterey Peninsula Country Club.
Contents
[hide]
* 1 History
* 2 Pro-Am playing format
* 3 Format
* 4 Winners
* 5 Multiple winners
* 6 Notes and references
* 7 External links
History
In 1937, Bing Crosby hosted the first National Pro-Amateur Golf Championship at Rancho Santa Fe Golf Club in Rancho Santa Fe, California, the event's location prior to World War II. Sam Snead won the first tournament, in which the first place check was for $500. After the war, the event resumed play in 1947 on golf courses in Pebble Beach, where it has been played ever since. Beginning that year, it was played at Pebble Beach Golf Links, Cypress Point Club and Monterey Peninsula Country Club until 1966.
In 1967, Spyglass Hill replaced Monterey Peninsula Country Club as the third course (with the exception of 1977, when it returned to MPCC). In 1991, Cypress Point Club was dropped by the PGA Tour because it would not admit a black member, and was replaced as a tournament venue by Poppy Hills Golf Course, a move that finalized the current roster of tournament venues. In 2010, Monterey Peninsula Country Club will replace Poppy Hills.
Notable professionals in recent years have included Tiger Woods, Phil Mickelson, Mark O'Meara, Davis Love III, and Vijay Singh. Notable celebrities have included fan favorite Bill Murray, Glenn Frey, Kevin Costner, Steve Young, George Lopez, Tom Brady and Carson Daly.
The tournament continues to be a success every year despite the rainfall that typically slows down play, especially in 1996, 1998 and 1999 (see Format section below).
There is an equivalent celebrity pro-am event on the European Tour, called the Alfred Dunhill Links Championship.
[edit] Pro-Am playing format
The starting field consists of 156 professionals and 156 amateurs. One professional is paired with one amateur. Each day, 52 2-man teams will play on one of the three courses. Then on the final day, those professionals and pro-amateur teams making the 54-hole cut will play on the Pebble Beach Golf Links.
* Individual cut: At 54 holes, the low 60 scorers plus any ties. Players between 61st and 70th (and ties) will receive both official money and FedEx Cup points, as the cut for this tournament ensures the field is smaller than a standard tournament cut of 70.
* Pro-Amateur cut: At 54 holes, the low 25 teams, plus any ties.
Only professionals may compete in the individual competition part of the tournament. Amateurs are restricted to playing only in the pro-amateur team competition. The local Pebble Beach tournament officials handle pairing of professionals with amateurs, while the PGA Tour's weekly tournament officials handle the assignment of tee times.
According to the 2006 PGA Tour Media Guide --
* Any pre-2000 winner of the tournament itself, as well as any pre-2000 winner of the The Masters, U.S. Open, British Open, PGA Championship or The Players Championship, is eligible.
* There are 16, rather than the standard eight, sponsor invitations allowed, all going to various professionals.
* After these two special categories, invitations follow most normal PGA Tour Exemption Category rules. Among the exceptions - no Open Qualifying (category 15).
Format
Conducted as a planned 72-hole event, 1958-present. Exceptions are as follows:
* 18 holes: 1937
* 36 holes - planned: 1938 to 1942
* 36 holes - due to bad weather: 1952
* 54 holes - planned: 1947 to 1951, 1953 to 1957
* 54 holes - due to bad weather: 1974, 1981, 1986, 1998, 1999 and 2009
o In 1996, the first 36 holes were played as scheduled on Thursday and Friday. Rain on Saturday and Sunday prevented the completion of the tournament and it was canceled (54 holes required to be official due to three course setup).
o In 1998, weather conditions prevented the tournament from being finished on schedule (9 holes were played Thursday, 9 on Friday, 18 on Saturday, rain Sunday and Monday). The third round was delayed until August to prevent cancellation similar to 1996. 43 of 168 players withdrew rather than return for the final round.
Saint Valentine's Day
(commonly shortened to Valentine's Day)[1][2][3] is an annual holiday held on February 14 celebrating love and affection between intimate companions.[1][3] The holiday is named after one or more early Christian martyrs named Valentine and was established by Pope Gelasius I in AD 496. It is traditionally a day on which lovers express their love for each other by presenting flowers, offering confectionery, and sending greeting cards (known as "valentines"). The holiday first became associated with romantic love in the circle of Geoffrey Chaucer in the High Middle Ages, when the tradition of courtly love flourished.
Modern Valentine's Day symbols include the heart-shaped outline, doves, and the figure of the winged Cupid.
Since the 19th century, handwritten valentines have largely given way to mass-produced greeting cards.[4]
Lindsey Vonn,
the star of the U.S. ski team, is in crisis again at the Olympics. This time, though, her team within a team, the so-called Vonntourage, is ready to roll.
From the time Vonn suffered an excruciatingly painful deep tissue bruise on her right shin in a slalom training crash Feb. 2 in Austria, her team of physical and emotional supporters worked around the clock to try to salvage medal opportunities for Vonn, who has been marketed for months as a major star of the Vancouver Games.
"It was instant crisis," says Thomas Vonn, her husband, manager and unofficial coach. "When she got hurt, everything changed."
MEDALS PROJECTIONS: Expect the Canadians to reign
Instead of flying back to the United States as scheduled Feb. 4, the Vonntourage remained in Austria — in and around Innsbruck— for three days as Vonn received various types of therapy and attempted to maintain her conditioning.
The Vonns and their staff flew to Salt Lake City on Feb. 7 and then, two days later, to Vancouver, where on Wednesday they revealed the injury, throwing the international news media into high gear.
"We wanted to keep quiet to avoid a firestorm until we knew whether or not there would be a firestorm," Vonn's husband says.
What Team Vonn did and continues to do to prop up Lindsey physically and emotionally is the latest example of the kind of special attention Vonn has received that has taken her from being very good to being the best in the world.
"There isn't any athlete on the World Cup (circuit) that has anything close to what I have," Vonn says.
That might be why on Thursday, Vonn was able to ski for the first time since the crash and, though the women's downhill training was canceled because of snow and fog, she took a successful warm-up run and was thinking she might not have to skip any races. She was scheduled to run all five events.
"I was happy to be back on snow today," Vonn said. "My shin was still very painful, but I feel like the injury is finally progressing. I am always disappointed when a training run is canceled, but in this situation I definitely welcome the extra day to heal."
U.S. skier Stacey Cook crashed before the training run was canceled and was taken by helicopter off the mountain but suffered no serious injuries and is expected to be able to compete.
Weather permitting, Vonn is expected to attempt training runs today and Saturday.
Vonn's first scheduled race is the women's super combined Sunday, though that could be pushed because of expected weather delays. Her second scheduled race is Wednesday's women's downhill, in which she is considered an overwhelming gold medal favorite.
If she can fully recover, Vonn is favored to win two gold medals — downhill and super-G — and possibly add a third medal in super combined, further cementing her status as a skier for the ages.
This didn't really happen for Vonn until the 2007-08 World Cup season, when she went from being the best skier on the U.S. team to having the best team on the U.S. ski team, traveling the World Cup with not just her husband and her ski technician but also a physical trainer and a physiotherapist devoted to her.
Vonn, 25, of Vail, Colo., has become a juggernaut on the World Cup tour, dominating the speed events as she barrels down the world's mountains toward a potential third consecutive World Cup overall title.
She has eclipsed Tamara McKinney and Picabo Street to become the most decorated woman skier in U.S. history.
Building a 'team within a team'
Look at Vonn and see the face of these Games, a seemingly perfect combination of beauty, grace, strength, maturity and competitiveness. On top of all that, the 5-10, 160-pound Vonn, who spent her early childhood in Minnesota, is outgoing and friendly, described as "Minnesota nice."
She has an unusually light touch on the snow, the courage to seek the fastest line, the physical power to hold that line, a dogged work ethic and the perfect downhiller's body, seemingly everything she needs to be the best.
But look behind Vonn and see her incomparable support team and witness what might be the real reason she has become the world's best skier.
See Thomas, her husband since September 2007, a former U.S. ski team racer who has become her fulltime unofficial coach and adviser, traveling to all her races and working alongside the U.S. team coaches.
See Heinz Haemmerle, her veteran Austrian ski technician who previously tuned the skis of two-time World Cup overall champion Bode Miller and Austrian Olympic downhill champion Patrick Ortlieb.
See Martin Hager and Oliver Saringer, the physical trainer and physiotherapist supplied by one of Vonn's primary sponsors, Red Bull, the Austrian company that produces the world's most popular energy drink.
Hager and Saringer have reshaped and fine-tuned Vonn's body and her endurance to the point where she has become the beauty and the beast on the World Cup tour.
Lindsey calls it her "team within a team." Thomas came up with the name Vonntourage.
Shifting into crisis mode
In the past 10 days, the Vonntourage was challenged like never before.
Saringer worked on Vonn around the clock, performing lymph drainage (a type of massage used to improve flow and drainage and speed healing), cheese therapy (wrapping an injury in Austrian topfen cheese, thought by some to promote healing), swathing the shin in castor oil and wrapping it in saran wrap.
"Oliver was basically in charge of healing her," Thomas says.
To maintain her fitness, Hager put her on a hand bike routine instead of her normal cycle training.
The toughest part might have been handling her emotional care. She was, in a word, freaked.
"When she was laying in the snow, she thought her leg was broken," Thomas says. "She was crushed."
Things looks grim, and Vonn feared the worst. A broken leg. No Olympics, after having been shut out of the medals race four years ago, when she competed with terrible pain in her back and hip after crashing in an Olympic downhill training run.
She refused to allow an X-ray.
"She didn't want to know if it was broken," Thomas says. "We all tried to push her to do it. She just wanted to do the therapy and just not know. I thought it was silly, but that's what she wanted."
Turns out the leg wasn't broken, and the Vonntourage is now in Whistler, where it appears there will no shortage of day-to-day Vonn drama.
Behind the scenes, her team will be working overtime.
Saringer, Vonn says, "does all my massages. He also does specific core exercise, small muscles in my stomach and back. He has all these funky, cool coordination core exercises that I've never seen any other athlete do."
Hager, she says, "does all my programs. He does my biking core. Weightlifting. He's got the World Cup schedule. He's got the training schedule. He plans everything to what we're going to be doing in the winter and the summer."
Hager describes Vonn's training ethic as "amazing. I never hear, 'Martin, it's enough.' Instead she says, 'Martin, you are crazy.' "
And then she keeps working.
"Her whole body is in a perfect balance," Hager says.
Saringer's and Hager's travel and training expenses are paid by Red Bull through the company's Athletes Special Projects, headed up by former Austrian ski coach Robert Trenkwalder.
"He's kind of the mastermind behind it," Vonn says of Trenkwalder. "He got Martin and Oliver involved. He does things like upgrading me to business class so I can be rested, making sure I'm always at the best hotels. Those kind of things can make a huge difference."
Red Bull won't reveal financial details of its support of Vonn. But cutting her a check to wear the logo on her helmet, plus covering Saringer's and Hager's expenses, amounts to a bundle.
"We don't pay for any of that," Vonn's husband says. "That's very expensive, hundreds and thousands of Euros beyond the contract."
Husband's role: 'Whatever she needs'
While Vonn's physical makeover has been managed by Hager and Saringer, her emotional makeover can be credited to her husband.
Lindsey and Thomas, who is nine years older, are extraordinarily close, successful in marriage and in racing. In addition to being a husband, Thomas has become equal parts manager, spokesman, equipment specialist, race tactician and psychologist.
"My role can be anything, whatever she needs," he says. "Normally, I'm in a coaching role. But that can switch very quickly to emotional support."
That's what happened at last year's world championships in Val d'Isere, France. Vonn was an emotional wreck before the downhill, more nervous than she had ever been in a major race.
"I was shaking," she says. "I couldn't control myself."
She asked Thomas to come up to the start with her, something he had never done. He came up and talked her down from an emotional edge.
"He was just making jokes and made me really calm down," she says.
Thomas remembers it differently. "I said things to try to make it not the world championships, this huge race. I said, 'Let's not build this up too much. It's just another run.' "
Whatever was said — or heard — worked. Vonn earned her first victory in a world championships or Olympic race.
The Vonns inspect courses together. Normally, U.S. team coaches are stationed at several spots along the course during inspection, offering tips on snow conditions and the best line for the racers. Vonn has the added coaching level of her husband slipping the course with her, giving her his racer's perspective.
"I get the best information from all those guys," she says.
As one might expect, U.S. coaches are a little leery of boyfriends — husbands, even — taking an active interest in coaching.
"We all work together," U.S. ski team women's coach Jim Tracy says. "If we have ideas or thoughts, we talk to Lindsey. Thomas puts in his two cents. Bottom line, everybody comes up with the best solution to get her to be fast."
Though Tracy doesn't like to use the phrase "team within a team," he's accepting of Vonn's unique situation, partly because it's working so well, and partly because Vonn has remained a good and popular teammate.
"She works with the other girls," Tracy says. "She mentors the other girls. We have our team meetings."
Whether Vonn would have won two World Cup overall titles, 31 World Cup races and be headed to the Olympics as a strong favorite to win multiple medals without the Vonntourage is something we'll probably never know.
"That's really hard to say," Thomas says. "Maybe she could have. Obviously, Lindsey has incredible talent."
This much we know:
At the 2006 Olympics, when Vonn, then 21, crashed in downhill training and failed to win a medal while racing through the pain in her back and hip, she still had some baby fat. Now, that's pretty much gone.
In 2006, Thomas, then her boyfriend, watched the races from a distance. Now, he's just a radio transmission away from joining her at the start hut.
"I definitely think she's stronger emotionally," Thomas says. "Could she get really nervous again? Sure. But we know how to deal with it."
Daytona
It seems appropriate that this Daytona 500 falls on Valentine's Day, the day NASCAR hopes its fans will fall back in love with its sport.
The Great American Race is NASCAR's great American opportunity to rekindle a dying love affair.
NASCAR must transform what has become the mundanely monotonous Dulltona 500 back into the deliriously dramatic Daytona 500.
NASCAR entered the American sporting consciousness in 1979 when CBS first televised the race wire-to-wire on a day when the entire East Coast, because of a blizzard, was stuck in the house watching TV.
That historic, histrionic race ended with Cale Yarborough and the Allison boys wrecking each other on the final lap and brawling on the backstretch as the ultra-popular Richard Petty breezed by for the victory. That was America's first real taste of the rowdy, howdy world of stock-car racing.
Well, guess what? When the gentlemen (sorry, no Danica) start their engines at 10 a.m. PST, the East Coast will still be blanketed by the record-breaking snowfall of a few days ago and bracing for yet another snowstorm tomorrow.
Meanwhile, NASCAR is doing everything it can to return to its "If you ain't rubbin', you ain't racin' " roots that captivated the country three decades ago.
The powers that be are finally starting to listen to those who matter most: the fans and the drivers. NASCAR has always been the most autocratic of all the major sports. The France family founded it, funded it and ran it with an iron fist for three generations. And if you didn't like the way they did things -- too bad.
But there's an old proverb: "Arrogance diminishes wisdom." And that's what happened to NASCAR. Because of the sport's booming success in the 1990s and early 2000s, NASCAR thought it could do no wrong. Profits took precedent over product. NASCAR drove so fast into the future, its past was left choking on the dust.
"The days of exciting races at Daytona and Talladega [NASCAR's two superspeedways] are over," Dale Earnhardt Sr. said of all the changes to adjust the aerodynamics, regulate the engines and slow down the cars. "It's no fun anymore. They finally got it like Indy-car racing."
Turns out the Intimidator was right. The Daytona 500 turned into a bunch of puttering, powerless cars lollygagging around the track single file, afraid to get out of line for fear they would get shuffled to the rear of the pack. There was so little passing that NASCAR might as well have painted double yellow lines down the middle of Daytona's famous 2.5-mile tri-oval.
It's no wonder ticket sales have plunged and TV ratings declined in recent years. Even before the economy went into the tank, NASCAR had begun to alienate its fan base.
And that brings us to Sunday's Daytona 500, where the sport will attempt to drive its way back to the future. Speed will increase with the bigger restrictor plates. Aggressiveness will escalate now that NASCAR has legalized bump-drafting.
Robin Pemberton, NASCAR's vice president of competition, put it best during a preseason news conference when he sent this message to the drivers heading into the 2010 season:
"Boys, have at it."
SEARCH MY SEARCH
Chinese New Year
Chinese New Year is the longest and most important festivity in the Chinese Lunar Calendar. The origin of Chinese New Year is itself centuries old and gains significance because of several myths and traditions. Ancient Chinese New Year is a reflection on how the people behaved and what they believed in the most.
Chinese New Year is celebrated in countries and territories with significant Han Chinese populations, such as Mainland China, Hong Kong, Macau, Singapore, Taiwan, Indonesia, Laos, Malaysia, the Philippines, and Thailand. Chinese New Year is considered a major holiday for the Chinese and has had influence on the new year celebrations of its geographic neighbors, as well as cultures with whom the Chinese have had extensive interaction. These include Koreans (Seollal), Tibetans and Bhutanese (Losar), Mongolians (Tsagaan Sar), Vietnamese (Tết), and the Japanese before 1873 (Oshogatsu).
In countries such as Australia, Canada and the United States, although Chinese New Year is not an official holiday, many ethnic Chinese hold large celebrations and Australia Post, Canada Post, and the US Postal Service issue New Year's themed stamps.
Within China, regional customs and traditions concerning the celebration of the Chinese new year vary widely. People will pour out their money to buy presents, decoration, material, food, and clothing. It is also the tradition that every family thoroughly cleans the house to sweep away any ill-fortune in hopes to make way for good incoming luck. Windows and doors will be decorated with red colour paper-cuts and couplets with popular themes of “happiness”, “wealth”, and “longevity”. On the Eve of Chinese New Year, supper is a feast with families. Food will include such items as pigs, ducks, chicken and sweet delicacies. The family will end the night with firecrackers. Early the next morning, children will greet their parents by wishing them a healthy and happy new year, and receive money in red paper envelopes. The Chinese New Year tradition is a great way to reconcile forgetting all grudges, and sincerely wish peace and happiness for everyone.
Although the Chinese calendar traditionally does not use continuously numbered years, outside China its years are often numbered from the reign of Huangdi. But at least three different years numbered 1 are now used by various scholars, making the year 2009 "Chinese Year" 4707, 4706
Animal Branch New Year dates
鼠 Rat 子 Zǐ February 19, 1996 February 7, 2008
牛 Ox 丑 Chǒu February 7, 1997 January 26, 2009
虎 Tiger 寅 Yín January 28, 1998 February 14, 2010
兔 Rabbit 卯 Mǎo February 16, 1999 February 3, 2011
龍 Dragon 辰 Chén February 5, 2000 January 23, 2012
蛇 Snake 巳 Sì January 24, 2001 February 10, 2013
馬 Horse 午 Wǔ February 12, 2002 January 31, 2014
羊 Sheep 未 Wèi February 1, 2003 February 19, 2015
猴 Monkey 申 Shēn January 22, 2004 February 8, 2016
雞 Rooster 酉 Yǒu February 9, 2005 January 28, 2017
狗 Dog 戌 Xū January 29, 2006 February 16, 2018
豬 Pig 亥 Hài February 18, 2007 February 5, 2019
The lunisolar Chinese calendar determines Chinese New Year dates. The calendar is also used in countries that have adopted or have been influenced by Han culture (notably the Koreans, Japanese and Vietnamese) and may have a common ancestry with the similar New Years festivals outside East Asia (such as Iran, and historically, the Bulgars lands).
In the Gregorian calendar, Chinese New Year falls on different dates each year, a date between January 21 and February 20. In the Chinese calendar, winter solstice must occur in the 11th month, which means that Chinese New Year usually falls on the second new moon after the winter solstice (rarely the third if an intercalary month intervenes). In traditional Chinese Culture, lichun is a solar term marking the start of spring, which occurs about February 4. The dates for Chinese New Year from 1996 to 2019 (in the Gregorian calendar) are at the left, along with the year's presiding animal zodiac and its earthly branch. The names of the earthly branches have no English counterparts and are not the Chinese translations of the animals. Alongside the 12-year cycle of the animal zodiac there is a 10-year cycle of heavenly stems. Each of the ten heavenly stems is associated with one of the five elements of Chinese astrology, namely: Wood, Fire, Earth, Metal, and Water. The elements are rotated every two years while a yin and yang association alternates every year. The elements are thus distinguished: Yang Wood, Yin Wood, Yang Fire, Yin Fire, etc. These produce a combined cycle that repeats every 60 years. For example, the year of the Yang Fire Rat occurred in 1936 and in 1996, 60 years apart.
Many confuse their Chinese birth-year with their Gregorian birth-year. As the Chinese New Year starts in late January to mid-February, the Chinese year dates from January 1 until that day in the new Gregorian year remain unchanged from the previous Gregorian year. For example, the 1989 year of the snake began on February 6, 1989. The year 1990 is considered by some people to be the year of the horse. However, the 1989 year of the snake officially ended on January 26, 1990. This means that anyone born from January 1 to January 25, 1990 was actually born in the year of the snake rather than the year of the horse. Many online Chinese Sign calculators do not account for the non-alignment of the two calendars, using Gregorian-calendar years rather than official Chinese New Year dates.
One scheme of continuously numbered Chinese-calendar years assigns 4706 to the year beginning January 26, 2009, but this is not universally accepted; the calendar is traditionally cyclical, not continuously numbered.
Sir Dr. Stephen T. Colbert, D.F.A.
(pronounced /koʊlˈbɛr/), is the persona of political satirist Stephen Colbert, portrayed most notably on The Colbert Report. Described as a "well-intentioned, poorly informed high-status idiot,"[1] the character is a self-obsessed right-wing commentator with a strong distaste for facts. He incorporates aspects of the real Colbert's life and interests, but is modeled primarily as a parody of cable news pundits, particularly Bill O'Reilly.[2]
Colbert first appeared as a correspondent on Comedy Central's news parody series The Daily Show in 1997 and remained a regular contributor until 2005, when he left to host The Colbert Report, a spin-off satirizing personality-driven political pundit programs. He has also been featured in a number of other public performances, most notably at the 2006 White House Correspondents' Association Dinner, and as the author of the 2007 book I Am America (And So Can Yo
Steve Nash '96 Helps Light Olympic Flame
Steve Nash '96,
Nash `96 will be making his seventh appearance in the 2010 NBA All-Star game on Sunday after receiving 1,222,235 votes, the eighth-highest total in 2010 All-Star voting. He will be joined by the Laker's Kobe Bryant as part of the Western Conference's backcourt. Nash is the only player from the West Coast Conference on the 2010 All-Star roster for both the NBAs Western and Eastern Conferences.
The 2010 All-Star game will be played at Cowboys Stadium in Arlington, Texas, before an expected crowd of more than 80,000 -- the largest group ever to witness a live basketball game -- on Sunday, Feb. 14, 2010.
The Bronco alum is a seven time all-star (2002-2003, 2005-2008, 2010) and was twice named the NBA MVP (2005 and `06).
Nash finished second in the 2006-07 MVP voting after garnering back-to-back NBA MVP awards the previous two seasons, joining Magic Johnson and Michael Jordan as the only other guards ever to accomplish this feat. Nash is shooting a career-best from the free-throw line this season; and is assists, and among league leaders in double-doubles, field goal percentage and free throw percentage. He averaged a career-best 11.6 assists in 2006-07. A veteran of the All-Star weekend, Nash won the 2005 NBA All-Star Skills Challenge. A three-time All-NBA First Team selection, he was selected by Phoenix in the first round (15th overall) of the 1996 NBA Draft after an illustrious career at Santa Clara where he led the team to three NCAA Tournament appearances, was twice named the West Coast Conference Player of the Year and finished as the team's all-time leader in assists.
The AT&T Pebble Beach National Pro-Am,
An event originally known as the Bing Crosby National Pro-Amateur, or just the Crosby Clambake, is a PGA Tour golf tournament that is held every year at Pebble Beach, California, in the United States. The tournament is typically held during the month of February on three different courses, Pebble Beach Golf Links, Spyglass Hill Golf Course and Monterey Peninsula Country Club.
Contents
[hide]
* 1 History
* 2 Pro-Am playing format
* 3 Format
* 4 Winners
* 5 Multiple winners
* 6 Notes and references
* 7 External links
History
In 1937, Bing Crosby hosted the first National Pro-Amateur Golf Championship at Rancho Santa Fe Golf Club in Rancho Santa Fe, California, the event's location prior to World War II. Sam Snead won the first tournament, in which the first place check was for $500. After the war, the event resumed play in 1947 on golf courses in Pebble Beach, where it has been played ever since. Beginning that year, it was played at Pebble Beach Golf Links, Cypress Point Club and Monterey Peninsula Country Club until 1966.
In 1967, Spyglass Hill replaced Monterey Peninsula Country Club as the third course (with the exception of 1977, when it returned to MPCC). In 1991, Cypress Point Club was dropped by the PGA Tour because it would not admit a black member, and was replaced as a tournament venue by Poppy Hills Golf Course, a move that finalized the current roster of tournament venues. In 2010, Monterey Peninsula Country Club will replace Poppy Hills.
Notable professionals in recent years have included Tiger Woods, Phil Mickelson, Mark O'Meara, Davis Love III, and Vijay Singh. Notable celebrities have included fan favorite Bill Murray, Glenn Frey, Kevin Costner, Steve Young, George Lopez, Tom Brady and Carson Daly.
The tournament continues to be a success every year despite the rainfall that typically slows down play, especially in 1996, 1998 and 1999 (see Format section below).
There is an equivalent celebrity pro-am event on the European Tour, called the Alfred Dunhill Links Championship.
[edit] Pro-Am playing format
The starting field consists of 156 professionals and 156 amateurs. One professional is paired with one amateur. Each day, 52 2-man teams will play on one of the three courses. Then on the final day, those professionals and pro-amateur teams making the 54-hole cut will play on the Pebble Beach Golf Links.
* Individual cut: At 54 holes, the low 60 scorers plus any ties. Players between 61st and 70th (and ties) will receive both official money and FedEx Cup points, as the cut for this tournament ensures the field is smaller than a standard tournament cut of 70.
* Pro-Amateur cut: At 54 holes, the low 25 teams, plus any ties.
Only professionals may compete in the individual competition part of the tournament. Amateurs are restricted to playing only in the pro-amateur team competition. The local Pebble Beach tournament officials handle pairing of professionals with amateurs, while the PGA Tour's weekly tournament officials handle the assignment of tee times.
According to the 2006 PGA Tour Media Guide --
* Any pre-2000 winner of the tournament itself, as well as any pre-2000 winner of the The Masters, U.S. Open, British Open, PGA Championship or The Players Championship, is eligible.
* There are 16, rather than the standard eight, sponsor invitations allowed, all going to various professionals.
* After these two special categories, invitations follow most normal PGA Tour Exemption Category rules. Among the exceptions - no Open Qualifying (category 15).
Format
Conducted as a planned 72-hole event, 1958-present. Exceptions are as follows:
* 18 holes: 1937
* 36 holes - planned: 1938 to 1942
* 36 holes - due to bad weather: 1952
* 54 holes - planned: 1947 to 1951, 1953 to 1957
* 54 holes - due to bad weather: 1974, 1981, 1986, 1998, 1999 and 2009
o In 1996, the first 36 holes were played as scheduled on Thursday and Friday. Rain on Saturday and Sunday prevented the completion of the tournament and it was canceled (54 holes required to be official due to three course setup).
o In 1998, weather conditions prevented the tournament from being finished on schedule (9 holes were played Thursday, 9 on Friday, 18 on Saturday, rain Sunday and Monday). The third round was delayed until August to prevent cancellation similar to 1996. 43 of 168 players withdrew rather than return for the final round.
Saint Valentine's Day
Modern Valentine's Day symbols include the heart-shaped outline, doves, and the figure of the winged Cupid.
Lindsey Vonn,
From the time Vonn suffered an excruciatingly painful deep tissue bruise on her right shin in a slalom training crash Feb. 2 in Austria, her team of physical and emotional supporters worked around the clock to try to salvage medal opportunities for Vonn, who has been marketed for months as a major star of the Vancouver Games.
"It was instant crisis," says Thomas Vonn, her husband, manager and unofficial coach. "When she got hurt, everything changed."
MEDALS PROJECTIONS: Expect the Canadians to reign
Instead of flying back to the United States as scheduled Feb. 4, the Vonntourage remained in Austria — in and around Innsbruck— for three days as Vonn received various types of therapy and attempted to maintain her conditioning.
The Vonns and their staff flew to Salt Lake City on Feb. 7 and then, two days later, to Vancouver, where on Wednesday they revealed the injury, throwing the international news media into high gear.
"We wanted to keep quiet to avoid a firestorm until we knew whether or not there would be a firestorm," Vonn's husband says.
What Team Vonn did and continues to do to prop up Lindsey physically and emotionally is the latest example of the kind of special attention Vonn has received that has taken her from being very good to being the best in the world.
"There isn't any athlete on the World Cup (circuit) that has anything close to what I have," Vonn says.
That might be why on Thursday, Vonn was able to ski for the first time since the crash and, though the women's downhill training was canceled because of snow and fog, she took a successful warm-up run and was thinking she might not have to skip any races. She was scheduled to run all five events.
"I was happy to be back on snow today," Vonn said. "My shin was still very painful, but I feel like the injury is finally progressing. I am always disappointed when a training run is canceled, but in this situation I definitely welcome the extra day to heal."
U.S. skier Stacey Cook crashed before the training run was canceled and was taken by helicopter off the mountain but suffered no serious injuries and is expected to be able to compete.
Weather permitting, Vonn is expected to attempt training runs today and Saturday.
Vonn's first scheduled race is the women's super combined Sunday, though that could be pushed because of expected weather delays. Her second scheduled race is Wednesday's women's downhill, in which she is considered an overwhelming gold medal favorite.
If she can fully recover, Vonn is favored to win two gold medals — downhill and super-G — and possibly add a third medal in super combined, further cementing her status as a skier for the ages.
This didn't really happen for Vonn until the 2007-08 World Cup season, when she went from being the best skier on the U.S. team to having the best team on the U.S. ski team, traveling the World Cup with not just her husband and her ski technician but also a physical trainer and a physiotherapist devoted to her.
Vonn, 25, of Vail, Colo., has become a juggernaut on the World Cup tour, dominating the speed events as she barrels down the world's mountains toward a potential third consecutive World Cup overall title.
She has eclipsed Tamara McKinney and Picabo Street to become the most decorated woman skier in U.S. history.
Building a 'team within a team'
Look at Vonn and see the face of these Games, a seemingly perfect combination of beauty, grace, strength, maturity and competitiveness. On top of all that, the 5-10, 160-pound Vonn, who spent her early childhood in Minnesota, is outgoing and friendly, described as "Minnesota nice."
She has an unusually light touch on the snow, the courage to seek the fastest line, the physical power to hold that line, a dogged work ethic and the perfect downhiller's body, seemingly everything she needs to be the best.
But look behind Vonn and see her incomparable support team and witness what might be the real reason she has become the world's best skier.
See Thomas, her husband since September 2007, a former U.S. ski team racer who has become her fulltime unofficial coach and adviser, traveling to all her races and working alongside the U.S. team coaches.
See Heinz Haemmerle, her veteran Austrian ski technician who previously tuned the skis of two-time World Cup overall champion Bode Miller and Austrian Olympic downhill champion Patrick Ortlieb.
See Martin Hager and Oliver Saringer, the physical trainer and physiotherapist supplied by one of Vonn's primary sponsors, Red Bull, the Austrian company that produces the world's most popular energy drink.
Hager and Saringer have reshaped and fine-tuned Vonn's body and her endurance to the point where she has become the beauty and the beast on the World Cup tour.
Lindsey calls it her "team within a team." Thomas came up with the name Vonntourage.
Shifting into crisis mode
In the past 10 days, the Vonntourage was challenged like never before.
Saringer worked on Vonn around the clock, performing lymph drainage (a type of massage used to improve flow and drainage and speed healing), cheese therapy (wrapping an injury in Austrian topfen cheese, thought by some to promote healing), swathing the shin in castor oil and wrapping it in saran wrap.
"Oliver was basically in charge of healing her," Thomas says.
To maintain her fitness, Hager put her on a hand bike routine instead of her normal cycle training.
The toughest part might have been handling her emotional care. She was, in a word, freaked.
"When she was laying in the snow, she thought her leg was broken," Thomas says. "She was crushed."
Things looks grim, and Vonn feared the worst. A broken leg. No Olympics, after having been shut out of the medals race four years ago, when she competed with terrible pain in her back and hip after crashing in an Olympic downhill training run.
She refused to allow an X-ray.
"She didn't want to know if it was broken," Thomas says. "We all tried to push her to do it. She just wanted to do the therapy and just not know. I thought it was silly, but that's what she wanted."
Turns out the leg wasn't broken, and the Vonntourage is now in Whistler, where it appears there will no shortage of day-to-day Vonn drama.
Behind the scenes, her team will be working overtime.
Saringer, Vonn says, "does all my massages. He also does specific core exercise, small muscles in my stomach and back. He has all these funky, cool coordination core exercises that I've never seen any other athlete do."
Hager, she says, "does all my programs. He does my biking core. Weightlifting. He's got the World Cup schedule. He's got the training schedule. He plans everything to what we're going to be doing in the winter and the summer."
Hager describes Vonn's training ethic as "amazing. I never hear, 'Martin, it's enough.' Instead she says, 'Martin, you are crazy.' "
And then she keeps working.
"Her whole body is in a perfect balance," Hager says.
Saringer's and Hager's travel and training expenses are paid by Red Bull through the company's Athletes Special Projects, headed up by former Austrian ski coach Robert Trenkwalder.
"He's kind of the mastermind behind it," Vonn says of Trenkwalder. "He got Martin and Oliver involved. He does things like upgrading me to business class so I can be rested, making sure I'm always at the best hotels. Those kind of things can make a huge difference."
Red Bull won't reveal financial details of its support of Vonn. But cutting her a check to wear the logo on her helmet, plus covering Saringer's and Hager's expenses, amounts to a bundle.
"We don't pay for any of that," Vonn's husband says. "That's very expensive, hundreds and thousands of Euros beyond the contract."
Husband's role: 'Whatever she needs'
While Vonn's physical makeover has been managed by Hager and Saringer, her emotional makeover can be credited to her husband.
Lindsey and Thomas, who is nine years older, are extraordinarily close, successful in marriage and in racing. In addition to being a husband, Thomas has become equal parts manager, spokesman, equipment specialist, race tactician and psychologist.
"My role can be anything, whatever she needs," he says. "Normally, I'm in a coaching role. But that can switch very quickly to emotional support."
That's what happened at last year's world championships in Val d'Isere, France. Vonn was an emotional wreck before the downhill, more nervous than she had ever been in a major race.
"I was shaking," she says. "I couldn't control myself."
She asked Thomas to come up to the start with her, something he had never done. He came up and talked her down from an emotional edge.
"He was just making jokes and made me really calm down," she says.
Thomas remembers it differently. "I said things to try to make it not the world championships, this huge race. I said, 'Let's not build this up too much. It's just another run.' "
Whatever was said — or heard — worked. Vonn earned her first victory in a world championships or Olympic race.
The Vonns inspect courses together. Normally, U.S. team coaches are stationed at several spots along the course during inspection, offering tips on snow conditions and the best line for the racers. Vonn has the added coaching level of her husband slipping the course with her, giving her his racer's perspective.
"I get the best information from all those guys," she says.
As one might expect, U.S. coaches are a little leery of boyfriends — husbands, even — taking an active interest in coaching.
"We all work together," U.S. ski team women's coach Jim Tracy says. "If we have ideas or thoughts, we talk to Lindsey. Thomas puts in his two cents. Bottom line, everybody comes up with the best solution to get her to be fast."
Though Tracy doesn't like to use the phrase "team within a team," he's accepting of Vonn's unique situation, partly because it's working so well, and partly because Vonn has remained a good and popular teammate.
"She works with the other girls," Tracy says. "She mentors the other girls. We have our team meetings."
Whether Vonn would have won two World Cup overall titles, 31 World Cup races and be headed to the Olympics as a strong favorite to win multiple medals without the Vonntourage is something we'll probably never know.
"That's really hard to say," Thomas says. "Maybe she could have. Obviously, Lindsey has incredible talent."
This much we know:
At the 2006 Olympics, when Vonn, then 21, crashed in downhill training and failed to win a medal while racing through the pain in her back and hip, she still had some baby fat. Now, that's pretty much gone.
In 2006, Thomas, then her boyfriend, watched the races from a distance. Now, he's just a radio transmission away from joining her at the start hut.
"I definitely think she's stronger emotionally," Thomas says. "Could she get really nervous again? Sure. But we know how to deal with it."
Daytona
It seems appropriate that this Daytona 500 falls on Valentine's Day, the day NASCAR hopes its fans will fall back in love with its sport.
The Great American Race is NASCAR's great American opportunity to rekindle a dying love affair.
NASCAR must transform what has become the mundanely monotonous Dulltona 500 back into the deliriously dramatic Daytona 500.
NASCAR entered the American sporting consciousness in 1979 when CBS first televised the race wire-to-wire on a day when the entire East Coast, because of a blizzard, was stuck in the house watching TV.
That historic, histrionic race ended with Cale Yarborough and the Allison boys wrecking each other on the final lap and brawling on the backstretch as the ultra-popular Richard Petty breezed by for the victory. That was America's first real taste of the rowdy, howdy world of stock-car racing.
Well, guess what? When the gentlemen (sorry, no Danica) start their engines at 10 a.m. PST, the East Coast will still be blanketed by the record-breaking snowfall of a few days ago and bracing for yet another snowstorm tomorrow.
Meanwhile, NASCAR is doing everything it can to return to its "If you ain't rubbin', you ain't racin' " roots that captivated the country three decades ago.
The powers that be are finally starting to listen to those who matter most: the fans and the drivers. NASCAR has always been the most autocratic of all the major sports. The France family founded it, funded it and ran it with an iron fist for three generations. And if you didn't like the way they did things -- too bad.
But there's an old proverb: "Arrogance diminishes wisdom." And that's what happened to NASCAR. Because of the sport's booming success in the 1990s and early 2000s, NASCAR thought it could do no wrong. Profits took precedent over product. NASCAR drove so fast into the future, its past was left choking on the dust.
"The days of exciting races at Daytona and Talladega [NASCAR's two superspeedways] are over," Dale Earnhardt Sr. said of all the changes to adjust the aerodynamics, regulate the engines and slow down the cars. "It's no fun anymore. They finally got it like Indy-car racing."
Turns out the Intimidator was right. The Daytona 500 turned into a bunch of puttering, powerless cars lollygagging around the track single file, afraid to get out of line for fear they would get shuffled to the rear of the pack. There was so little passing that NASCAR might as well have painted double yellow lines down the middle of Daytona's famous 2.5-mile tri-oval.
It's no wonder ticket sales have plunged and TV ratings declined in recent years. Even before the economy went into the tank, NASCAR had begun to alienate its fan base.
And that brings us to Sunday's Daytona 500, where the sport will attempt to drive its way back to the future. Speed will increase with the bigger restrictor plates. Aggressiveness will escalate now that NASCAR has legalized bump-drafting.
Robin Pemberton, NASCAR's vice president of competition, put it best during a preseason news conference when he sent this message to the drivers heading into the 2010 season:
"Boys, have at it."
SEARCH MY SEARCH
Saturday, February 13, 2010
WINTER OLYMPICS
http://addmyad.blogspot.com/2010/02/and-now.htmlhttp://addmyad.blogspot.com/2010/02/february-12-2010-results-1000-ski.html
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