Primer triunfo en un ATP 500 del chileno, a quien los vecinos le ponen para la Davis en San Juan la cancha que más le favorece: arcilla en pista cubierta y altitud.
La Copa Davis ya comienza a palpitarse. Chile vuelve a enfrentarse a Argentina tras la serie de los sillazos hace 20 años. Y lo hará en San Juan, una ciudad con una altitud promedio de 600 metros y muy cercana a La Serena.
Ayer se firmó el acuerdo entre la Asociación Argentina de Tenis y el Gobierno de San Juan para albergar el enfrentamiento del 6 y 7 de abril, en el estadio techado Aldo Cantoni, conocido por los campeonatos de hockey patín que se han realizado ahí, y en una poco tradicional superficie de arcilla.
Justamente, el escenario de la confrontación ha despertado algunas suspicacias al otro lado de la cordillera, ya que las condiciones aparecen bastante favorables para Nicolás Jarry, cuyas principales fortalezas están en el servicio y la potencia de sus tiros.
“A Nico (Jarry) lo respeto muchísimo, es un amigo, tiene un gran presente, pero tampoco es que está viniendo Nadal, al que si le pones polvo de ladrillo sabes que tienes un 90% de chances de perder. A Nico lo favorecen las condiciones rápidas, porque tiene un gran saque”, dijo el más probable segundo singlista, Guido Pella, al diario argentino La Nación.
Ni Pella ni el capitán Daniel Orsanic consideran que la altitud sea tan significativa. No obstante, Juan Ignacio Chela, entrenador de Diego Schwartzman, el primer singlista transandino, expresó en el mismo matutino lo contrario: “Conociéndolo a Diego, sé que prefiere jugar en el nivel del mar. Me parece que lo mejor es jugar donde los argentinos se sientan más cómodos. Además, ellos tienen a un gran sacador y en la altura se complica más devolver el saque. Para mí lo mejor es jugar en el llano. Hay que priorizar la comodidad de los jugadores, las condiciones de juego y ganar, tratar de volver al Grupo Mundial”.
San Juan presentó la propuesta económica más atractiva, lo que le garantiza a la AAT no tener pérdidas. “Ninguna decisión la tomamos sin consultar primero con el capitán (Orsanic) y los jugadores. Todos estuvieron de acuerdo con la sede y las condiciones”, explicó ayer Armando Cervone, presidente de la entidad, durante la presentación.
Pero Nicolás Jarry (94º) respondió en la cancha a los dichos de Pella y ayer en el ATP 500 de Río de Janeiro logró un nuevo hito en su carrera al vencer por 6-3 y 7-6 (3) al español Guillermo García López (67º) y transformarse en el primer chileno en ganar en un torneo de esta envergadura, desde que lo consiguiera Fernando González en el ATP de Acapulco, en febrero de 2010. Además, igualó su mejor victoria en el circuito (el año pasado había vencido al australiano Jordan Thompson, también 67º del mundo en ese momento).
En octavos de final, su adversario será otro español, Albert Ramos Viñolas (19º), quien superó al local Rogerio Dutra Silva (106º), por 6-3, 3-6 y 6-4.
En tanto, las buenas noticias para el tenis chileno continuaron en el Challenger de Morelos, donde Christian Garin (296º) superó por 6-2 y 6-4 al australiano Marinko Matosevic (334º).
And so moments after three-time world champions Tessa Virtue and Scott Moir kept Canada’s grip on gold with a solid short dance Sunday, the veteran ice dancers talked about the privilege of skating on Olympic ice with the rings under their blades, and the rare experience of sharing it with teammates. READ MORE: Canada’s Max Parrot wins silver, Mark McMorris bronze in men’s snowboard slopestyle at 2018 Winter Games
“You just don’t get too many shots at an Olympic medal, let alone an Olympic gold medal,” Moir said. “And I think Canada has a great chance, and I think we’re a great skating country, the choreographers, the coaches, the skaters that have come from our country are second to none, and I think it’s very important for us to win this event.”
Dressed in dazzling black and gold, Virtue and Moir scored 80.51 points for their short dance to the Rolling Stones’ “Sympathy For The Devil,” “Hotel California” by the Eagles and Santana’s “Oye Como Va.”
Their score, about two points off their season’s best, had Moir’s brows furrowed in a frown in the kiss and cry, but the 30-year-old from Ilderton, Ont., said that’s the bonus of giving their programs a test run in the team event before they go for individual gold next week.
“I think it does say that it’s a tough panel,” Moir said. “But that’s a good sign. This is the Olympic Games. You’re looking for the harshest panel, especially when you’re going to have the best field that we’ve had in four years.
It’s about both the chance at an Olympic gold medal, and about writing the final chapter of their distinguished careers together.
Canada’s top figure skaters didn’t blink about the prospect of doubling their workload to compete in the team event at the Pyeongchang Olympics.
And so moments after three-time world champions Tessa Virtue and Scott Moir kept Canada’s grip on gold with a solid short dance Sunday, the veteran ice dancers talked about the privilege of skating on Olympic ice with the rings under their blades, and the rare experience of sharing it with teammates. READ MORE: Canada’s Max Parrot wins silver, Mark McMorris bronze in men’s snowboard slopestyle at 2018 Winter Games
“You just don’t get too many shots at an Olympic medal, let alone an Olympic gold medal,” Moir said. “And I think Canada has a great chance, and I think we’re a great skating country, the choreographers, the coaches, the skaters that have come from our country are second to none, and I think it’s very important for us to win this event.”
Dressed in dazzling black and gold, Virtue and Moir scored 80.51 points for their short dance to the Rolling Stones’ “Sympathy For The Devil,” “Hotel California” by the Eagles and Santana’s “Oye Como Va.”
Their score, about two points off their season’s best, had Moir’s brows furrowed in a frown in the kiss and cry, but the 30-year-old from Ilderton, Ont., said that’s the bonus of giving their programs a test run in the team event before they go for individual gold next week.
“I think it does say that it’s a tough panel,” Moir said. “But that’s a good sign. This is the Olympic Games. You’re looking for the harshest panel, especially when you’re going to have the best field that we’ve had in four years.
Tessa Virtue, Scott Moir eyeing gold as pair keeps Canada in 1st in figure skating team event
“What an advantage to get these calls now,” he added. “Also, to be on Olympic ice, the energy in this building, being part of team Canada, what an experience for us. The calls are important, but we just need to learn from them, that’s the biggest thing.”
Kaetlyn Osmond of Marystown, N.L., scored 71.38 to finish third in the women’s short program, and her eight points was enough to keep Canada in the lead with 35 points overall.
Then two-time world pairs champs Meagan Duhamel and Eric Radford did their free skate to Adele’s “Hometown Glory,” scoring 148.51 and adding 10 to Canada’s cumulative score to bring it up to 45 by the end of the day.
Olympic Athletes from Russia sat second at 39 and the United States were third at 36. READ MORE: Canada could reach podium multiple times on Day 2 of Winter Olympics
Virtue and Moir’s top rivals Gabriella Papadakis and Guillaume Cizeron – they edged the Canadians for gold at the Grand Prix Final in December – didn’t skate for France in the short dance, and because the bottom five teams are eliminated after the short programs, the French won’t move on.
“Surprised? Yes,” Virtue said on the absence of the French skaters, who train at the same Montreal rink and share the same coaches in Marie-France Dubreuil and Patrice Lauzon.
“Just because we’re clearly such different competitors, we were so eager to get on the ice as many times as possible,” she added. “If we could compete 10 times here at the Olympics, we would be thrilled to do so. But we respect their strategy.”
The team event made its Olympic debut to mixed reviews four years ago in Sochi, where Canada captured silver.
Canada’s Tessa Virtue and Scott Moir perform during the ice dance short team event in the Gangneung Ice Arena at the 2018 Winter Olympics in Gangneung, South Korea, Feb. 11, 2018.
AP Photo/Morry Gash
Four years later, the event is one of Canada’s best hopes for a gold on the ice in Pyeongchang. Canada’s team from Sochi has remained virtually intact, and they arrived in South Korea as the world’s No. 1-ranked team.
“We’ve talked about how we weren’t really thrilled with our approach in Sochi,” Moir said. “Some team members thought it was a dress rehearsal, others were trying to go after it and win that gold medal, and we had our signals crossed. It didn’t work out for us.
“This time the goal is clearly to win. Our goal is to have our best skates . . . and to experience that as a team and have all that emotion could be really special.”
Virtue and Moir’s gold in 2010 in Vancouver was Canada’s last Olympic victory in figure skating.
Much like golf’s Ryder Cup, the world’s top 10 countries compete in the short program of all four disciplines. Their teammates cheer them on from rinkside boxes. Five countries are then eliminated before the free skate.
Canada took a three-point lead over the United States into Day 2 of the team event, with Japan just a point behind the Americans.
The team event ends Sunday with the men’s, women’s, and ice dance free programs.
“She goes about a buck-ten, five feet tall, but she can sweep better than a lot of men out there. And she makes clutch shots,” John Morris said of his partner, Kaitlyn Lawes. “It’s been a privilege and an honour to play with her.”
Canada's mixed doubles curling team of Kaitlyn Lawes and John Morris celebrate after beating Switzerland for gold. Mixed doubles may be less offensively stagnant than the team event, more conducive to rallies closing the gap, but the Canadians proved themselves masters of defence too, choking off any comeback gambit.
PYEONGCHANG, SOUTH KOREA—So maybe The A-Team doesn’t travel well in reruns to yodelling country.
Certainly the Swiss curler looked a bit, uh, uncomprehending when asked a press conference question about Mr. T.
Martin Rios’ answer kind of rambled and then came to a wobbly halt — rather like some of the stones he threw at the gold medal mixed doubles match Tuesday evening.
That would be the Mr. T who has been live-tweeting the Winter Olympics and apparently fallen Mohawk-head-over-heels enthralled with curling: “I am watching events I never thought I would watch before, like curling. You heard me, curling Fool!”
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The sport had its come-to-Jesus moment at the Nagano Games, suddenly finding an enthusiastic global viewing audience among non-rockheads.
But John Morris picked up ball smoothly — just like he’d handled the stones.
“We would accept a challenge from Mr. T. Not an arm-wrestling challenge but maybe a mixed doubles curling challenge, if he’s around.”
I don’t know about putting a 20-kilogram hunk of granite in Mr. T’s hands. He might enjoy the “social” aspect of the sport, though, which Morris emphasized.
“We have some very good traditions in the game which I think are in line with a lot of the Olympic values, which are fair play and ethical. At the end of the day, if you have a hard match with an opponent, it’s a curling tradition to go and share a drink after the game.” Read more: Canada’s Kaitlyn Lawes and John Morris capture gold in mixed doubles curling Curlers’ on-ice banter a hit with fans Opinion | Rosie DiManno: Canadian curlers believe new mixed doubles event will sweep the nation
Good chance Rios and partner Jenny Perret — reigning world champions in the mixed doubles discipline that is enjoying its inaugural Olympics inclusion — were crying into their beers late last night, Canadian shout at the bar as the Scots say. Because Morris and Kaitlyn Lawes just smoked ‘em, a 10-3 thrashing, conceded with a handshake after six ends, making them the first MD duo to smackdown cop an Olympic gold.
Really, it was all but over in the third end, Lawes adroitly curling a tap for four, putting Canada up 6-2 after the teams had traded deuces in the first two ends. The Swiss were throwing up bricks, especially in the third end when Rios hurled an attempted hit through the rings, missing everything on a poor angle line. Morris made a hit and roll to lay five, then Lawes finessed a delicate raise with Canada’s last stone, scoring quadruple points.
"We just had to figure out a way to improve a couple of percentage points each game,” said Lawes. (Steve Russell/Toronto Star)
Mixed doubles may be less offensively stagnant than the team event, more conducive to rallies closing the gap, but the Canadians proved themselves masters of defence too, choking off any comeback gambit. The Swiss, after a long ponder, tried setting up for a multi-point end in the six, with a mess of stones in the house, but a wow shot by Lawes resulted in a steal for two and that’s all she wrote.
“One of our best assets was playing power-play defence,” said Morris, the 39-year-old firefighter from Canmore, Alta.. “The power play is a chance to get multiple points and it really favours the team with the hammer. Our power-play defence all week was fantastic. Kaitlyn made most of her first shots and we really didn’t let the opposition score big points on the power play. If you can do that you’re going to win a lot of games. That’s where our defence really shone through.”
He calls her
Mighty Mouse. “She goes about a buck-ten, five feet tall, but she can sweep better than a lot of men out there. And she makes clutch shots. It’s been a privilege and an honour to play with her.”
That, coupled with Morris’ shotmaking savvy, goes a long way toward explaining their 70-33 scoring tally over the tournament, dropping only their opener of the round-robin stage, going 7-1.
Both Morris and Lawes are previous gold medal Olympians in the team event — Lawes was third for the Jennifer Jones rink that won in Sochi; Morris was vice for Kevin Martin when they took the team title in Vancouver.
Kaitlyn Lawes and John Morris celebrate after winning the gold medal at the Winter Olympics. (Steve Russell/Toronto Star)
Each was disappointed when their teams failed to qualify for Pyeongchang. Morris said he’d hung his tail between his legs for a couple of days, then perked up for a second shot at the Games as Lawes’ partner. They’d played MD together in the Continental Cup years back but, at the Olympic mixed doubles qualifier in January, had only 30 minutes to train as a combo before getting it on. On that occasion, they’d fallen to 2-3 before righting themselves.
“The thing for us is that when we were two and three, we really didn’t feel like we were playing that badly,” recalled Lawes, the 29-year-old from Winnipeg, of the trials in Portage la Prairie. “We just weren’t getting the breaks. We wanted to make sure that we hung tough and continued to learn. We didn’t let that frustrate us. Same thing here when we lost our first game. We didn’t think we were playing that poorly. We just had to figure out a way to improve a couple of percentage points each game.”
And they discovered they were mucho simpatico.
Lawes added: “For me, was in that semifinal game.” Dumped Norway 8-4. “I was really struggling the first half. John just reassured me that we have to be patient, we’ll find a way to make those shots. He gave me the confidence to make those last shots, to not give up on yourself. I’m really lucky that John brought out the best in me.”
At the Gangneung Curling Centre — with IOC president Thomas Bach looking on — the Canadians were clearly the crowd favourite, although it should be noted that the Swiss tandem did earn their country’s first medal of these Games while Canada made it 10: Three gold, four silver, three bronze.
Still, at times it sounded like Morris and Lawes were trying to convince their journo audience of the merit of mixed doubles.
“Asseyez-vous!” Morris urged a francophone correspondent. “Because it’s so much fun and it’s easy to catch the bug.”
Lawes: “It’s harder than it looks.”
In any event, they are the first two Canadians to win gold in curling at the Winter Olympics twice. That’s rad.
“It sounds surreal,” said Lawes, “and I don’t know if that’s ever going to sink in. The first one still hasn’t.”
Backyard excavation reveals no more bodies at home where remains of six people were found in
large planter pots.
No human remains have been found buried in the backyard of a Leaside home where the remains of at least six individuals were discovered in planter pots, Toronto police said Tuesday.
“That’s not to say we’re not going to revisit it when the weather’s a bit warmer,” lead investigator Det.-Sgt. Hank Idsinga told the Star. Police were also finishing a dig into the main drain in the front yard on Tuesday.
A garage at the house, which is owned by Karen Fraser and Ron Smith, was used by accused killer Bruce McArthur to store his landscaping equipment.
McArthur, 66, has been charged with five counts of first-degree murder in the disappearances of Andrew Kinsman, Selim Esen, Majeed Kayhan, Soroush Mahmudi and Dean Lisowick. Police have described the deaths as the work of a serial killer.
Last week, police confirmed that Kinsman’s remains were among those of at least six people recovered from planter pots they say McArthur placed in the yard. They have not said if they have identified any of the other remains.
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Investigators have cordoned off the yard since Jan. 18, when McArthur was arrested on the first two murder charges. A green tent was set up outside and heaters were brought in so investigators could thaw out and probe the frozen ground which was also scanned with ground penetrating radar. Constant police presence cast an eerie atmosphere over the quiet street for weeks.
Idsinga declined on Tuesday to disclose how police identified what he called the “very specific area” they were searching beneath the tent. Originally, he had estimated the excavation could take police up to a week and a half.
“We hope to dig down, until we can’t dig anymore, which may be a matter of inches,” Idsinga said last week. “And then we may have to leave it for another day or two, let it thaw some more and then continue digging.”
But speaking to the Star Tuesday, Idsinga said that timeline was sped up when Dr. Kathy Gruspier – the first and only fulltime forensic anthropologist in Canada, who oversaw the excavation – didn’t find any sign of previous digging.
“You’d focus on if you found a spot that looked like it’d been excavated before,” he said. “Then keep digging in that spot until you get to a reasonable depth. We never found anything that would indicate that.”
If they found something in the specific area they’d identified under the tent, it could take over a week to excavate and sift the earth properly.
“If we do go back there when the weather is warmer, we’ll probably take some more time checking some of the other areas,” he said. “And we could be in the same boat. We find another area that we’re interested in, we start digging. We could be done in 24 hours, or if we start finding stuff, it could take a lot longer.”
Bruce McArthur, 66, has been charged with five counts of first-degree murder in the disappearances of Andrew Kinsman, Selim Esen, Majeed Kayhan, Soroush Mahmudi and Dean Lisowick. (Andrew Francis Wallace / Toronto Star)
Police have identified another Toronto property they’re interested in searching. “But it really was dependent whether or not we found anything here,” Idsinga said. “We’re going to wait for the weather to get a bit warmer, do some further forensic testing and decide whether we’re going to dig there or not.”
They have a few more tips to follow up on from individuals that believe they may have planters from McArthur in their possession, but not many. “It’s quieted down a little bit,” Idsinga said.
Meanwhile, the still-frosty weather has put a strain in particular on the police dogs working on the case. “With the dogs, they just don’t work that well when everything is frozen,” Idsinga said.
Investigators may revisit all the properties flagged in the investigation when the spring thaw hits, he told the Star.
“It depends what we find elsewhere, right?”
Idsinga has said repeatedly that police expect to lay more charges against McArthur. In the meantime, the Leaside backyard will be released back to the homeowners, though they’ve requested police keep tape around the yard.
“To keep you guys out,” Idsinga said, chuckling. “Those pesky reporters.” Read more
