Sailing sisters from N.S. make waves on international stage again
The siblings from Chester landed on the podium at an event in France last month as they started ramping up their journey to make the 2028 Summer Olympics in Los Angeles. Josh Hoffman has the story.
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Winnipeg Free Press
3 hours ago
- Winnipeg Free Press
Mr. Clutch: Tyrese Haliburton keeps delivering in the ultimate moments for the Pacers
OKLAHOMA CITY (AP) — You are Tyrese Haliburton. You went to the Eastern Conference finals last year and got swept. You went to the Olympics last summer and didn't play much. You came into this season with high expectations and your Indiana Pacers got off to a 10-15 start. And on top of that, some of your NBA peers evidently think you are overrated. You got angry. 'I think as a group, we take everything personal,' Haliburton said. 'It's not just me. It's everybody. I feel like that's the DNA of this group and that's not just me.' The anger fueled focus, the focus became confidence, and the confidence delivered a 1-0 series lead in the NBA Finals. Haliburton's penchant for last-second heroics — one of the stories of these playoffs — showed up again Thursday night, his jumper with 0.3 seconds left going into finals lore and giving the Pacers a 111-110 win over the heavily favored Oklahoma City Thunder. The Pacers led for 0.0001% of that game. It was enough. 'When it comes to the moments, he wants the ball,' Pacers teammate Myles Turner said. 'He wants to be the one to hit that shot. He doesn't shy away from the moment and it's very important this time of the year to have a go-to guy. He just keeps finding a way and we keep putting the ball in the right positions and the rest is history.' Haliburton is 4 for 4 in the final 2 seconds of fourth quarters and overtimes in these playoffs, all of those shots either giving the Pacers a win or sending a game into OT before they won it there. The rest of the NBA, in those situations this spring: 4 for 26, combined. If Haliburton takes one of those beat-the-clock shots in the first three quarters of games in these playoffs, he's a mere mortal, just 1 for 7 in those situations. But with the game on the line, he's perfect. 'You don't want to live and die with the best player on the other team taking a game winner with a couple seconds left,' Thunder guard Alex Caruso said. No, especially when that best player on the other team is Haliburton. Just ask Milwaukee. Or Cleveland. Or New York. They could have all told Oklahoma City who was going to take the big shot and what was probably going to happen. Against the Bucks on April 29, it was a layup with 1.4 seconds left that capped a rally from seven points down in the final 34.6 seconds of overtime. Final score: Pacers 119, Bucks 118, and that series ended there. In Cleveland on May 6, it was a 3-pointer with 1.1 seconds left for a 120-119 win — capping a rally from seven points down in the final 48 seconds. At Madison Square Garden against the Knicks on May 21, a game the Pacers trailed 121-112 with 51.1 seconds left, he hit a jumper with no time left to force OT and Indiana would win again. All those plays came with a little something extra. His father, John Haliburton, got a little too exuberant with Giannis Antetokounmpo after the Bucks game and wasn't allowed to come to the next few games; the ban has since been lifted. Haliburton did a certain dance that the NBA doesn't like much after the shot against the Cavs. He made a choke signal, a la what Pacers legend Reggie Miller did against New York a generation earlier, after hitting the shot against the Knicks. But on Thursday, all business. These finals are a long way from over, and he knows it. Game 2 is Sunday night in Oklahoma City. 'Again, another big comeback but there's a lot more work to do,' Haliburton said. 'That's just one game. And this is the best team in the NBA, and they don't lose often. So, we expect them to respond. We've got to be prepared for that. We got a couple days to watch film, see where we can get better.' Haliburton is in his first year of a supermax contract that will pay him about $245 million along the way. He has the Olympic gold medal from last summer and surely will be a serious candidate to play for USA Basketball again at the Los Angeles Games in 2028. He's now a two-time All-NBA selection. And he's officially a certified postseason, late-game hero. Three more wins, and he'll be an NBA champion as well. The anger is gone. Haliburton was all smiles after Game 1, for obvious reasons. Thursdays Keep up to date on sports with Mike McIntyre's weekly newsletter. 'Ultimate, ultimate confidence in himself,' Turner said. 'Some players will say they have it but there's other players that show it, and he's going to let you know about it, too. That's one of the things I respect about him. He's a baller and a hooper and really just a gamer.' And in his NBA Finals debut, Haliburton reminded the world that's the case. 'This group never gives up,' Haliburton said. 'We never believe that the game is over until it hits zero, and that's just the God's honest truth. That's just the confidence that we have as a group, and I think that's a big reason why this is going on.' ___ AP NBA:
CBC
5 hours ago
- CBC
In crokinole country
At the World Crokinole Championship in Ontario, a Canadian math prof is vying to take back the title from the current American champ. Justin Slater, right, shakes hands with Connor Reinman after being knocked out in the semifinal round of the World Crokinole Championship in Tavistock, Ont., on June 1, 2024. Reinman went on to win the tournament — his second in a row. On Saturday, Slater — who has five world titles — will try to reclaim his crown. Evan Mitsui/CBC By Evan Mitsui Jun. 6, 2025 Justin Slater may be one of the most dominant competitors you've never heard of. His game is crokinole and, on Saturday, the Canadian will attempt to reclaim his crown from American upstart Connor Reinman, who's chasing his own place in history. ADVERTISEMENT The World Crokinole Championship will run — as it has for a quarter century — on the first Saturday of June in Tavistock, Ont., about 50 kilometres from Kitchener, near the spiritual heartland of a game that's been played in this country longer than organized hockey. Crokinole is a game where finger dexterity is key. It lands somewhere at the nexus of air hockey, pool and curling and is played on a wooden board with a shallow hole in the centre. Players typically discover it at the family cottage as kids, then rediscover it as adults in the basement or shed. It pairs well with beer, but not at the highest levels of play. The game is in the midst of a renaissance and competition at the world's toughest tournament has never been stiffer. The defending champ 'It's the precision that drew me to it initially and then the strategy,' said Reinman, a day after clinching his second world championship in a row last June. A graduate student at Indiana University's Jacobs School of Music, Reinman, 28, has a head for numbers and compares the action of crokinole to billiards. 'You can see the physics playing out' when you line up a shot, he said over FaceTime from his home in Bloomington, Ind., where he and his now fiancée, Michelle Astorsdotter, (who competes in the recreational division) had returned after the tournament. A numbers guy Slater, 32, is an assistant professor of math and statistics at the University of Guelph. Like Reinman, he's a numbers guy and, like Reinman, started playing serious crokinole as a teenager. 'When I didn't want to do my calculus homework or whatever, I would sit at the kitchen table and just shoot 20s,' Slater said, seated across from a crokinole board set on his kitchen table in Guelph, Ont. Scoring in crokinole is not dissimilar from darts or curling with points ascribed to concentric zones radiating out from the centre. A 20 is when a player sinks their piece in the centre hole. Right on the button. At the top echelon of competition, where Slater and Reinman play, competitors tend to sink 20s as if guided by magnets, seldom missing the mark. Slater is the winningest player in competitive crokinole with five world titles to his name — more if you include the doubles trophies he has won with his father. The Slater name dominates the leaderboard between 2015 and 2019. Only COVID could stop his run when competitions were cancelled from 2020 to 2022. Another win is a chance to prove he's still got it. 'I was clearly the best for a while, not anymore though,' he said. 'It's cool to be the best at something, even if it's just crokinole.' When tournaments resumed in 2023 Reinman emerged seemingly out of nowhere, first winning regional competitions then the world title back-to-back in 2023 and 2024. Now, faced with the possibility of a three-peat, Reinman is breathing rarefied air. Slater does not want that to happen. Their Canada-U.S. rivalry makes a win for either of them sweeter still. A game older than hockey Hockey may be Canada's game but crokinole's been around longer. There are similar games played around the world, including carrom, developed in India in the mid-1800s and played on a square board. Crokinole historian Wayne Kelly, of Stratford, Ont., died in 2016 but not before addressing the game's origins in The Crokinole Book, which describes a game of the same name being played in Ontario farmhouses as far back as 1867. (The first game of organized hockey was played in 1875 in Montreal.) And then there's Eckhardt Wettlaufer's 1876 board, on display at a museum in Kitchener, Ont., which every player knows and references as the oldest known crokinole artifact and proof of the game's Canadian provenance. 'It's Canada's game' Origins aside, the game's popularity is rising and much of that interest is coming from south of the border at clubs like the Extra Pint, in Voorheesville, N.Y. Club founder Jason Molloy's friendly games soon outgrew the garage and now, thanks largely to word-of-mouth and YouTube, Extra Pint has chapters across the East Coast and Texas. The U.S. Open, now in its fifth year, is hosted in Voorheesville, a small town like Tavistock. 'We take pride in Connor [Reinman],' Molloy said over the phone from his office in Albany County, N.Y. 'There is definitely a friendly rivalry between the American and Canadian players,' but, he added, 'Connor is a dual citizen so we joke that he's got to pick a side.' Reinman, who even Slater will admit is the best player right now, is the son of a Canadian mother and learned the game visiting the family farm in Blyth, Ont. 'There's no question it's Canada's game,' Molloy said. 'The top 20 players are all Canadian but that means we've got nothing to lose. What's the goal? To beat the Canadians.' The boardmaking market When it comes to boardmaking, Canada, too, has the market cornered for quality, and the tournament boards are made at nearby Tracey Boards. After a YouTube video went viral, 'We got more orders in three days than we usually got in a month," Jeremy Tracey said in his new boardmaking shop in Elmira, Ont. An apprentice of Willard Martin, who had been building boards in the region for three decades, Tracey hoped to hit 500 boards per year after hanging his own shingle at a smaller location in 2018. Demand has been such that he's moving several times that volume and employs a staff that includes a full-time craftsman plus three sons, Reid, Nolan and Garret. Their mother keeps the books. The growth in his business, Tracey said, is mainly through word-of-mouth and boots on the ground, specifically his (though he prefers flip-flops). He spends weeks on the road, travelling to tradeshows like PAX in the U.S. and Australia, where he hosts tournaments for beginners. Many place orders for boards on the spot. 'It's so fun, they get hooked. It snowballs from there.' A sold-out championship Back in Tavistock, this year's championship tournament sold out months ago and will include 400 players. 'An all-time record,' according to organizer Nathan Walsh. Of those competitors, a strong international contingent includes Ryotaro Fukuda, travelling from Japan. It's Fukuda's second time at worlds and this time, he's bringing an apprentice who will play as his doubles partner. The No. 2 U.K. player, Mike Ray, is also entered as are Dutch champions Sander Brugman and Joert Edink, known in their native Holland as The Roaring Twenties — a nod to the period garb they compete in. Hungary, too, is an emerging powerhouse with players flying in to compete. But the main draw is Reinman and Slater. For Reinman, a three-peat would cement his place in history, a feat only achieved once before, by Toronto's Brian Cook. For Slater, a sixth world title would solidify his G.O.A.T. status and put the record for most wins that much further from Reinman's reach — and put the top prize in Canada's oldest board game back in Canadian hands. Editing and layout by photo editor Showwei Chu and senior editor Lisa Johnson About the Author Related Stories Footer Links My Account Profile CBC Gem Newsletters Connect with CBC Facebook Twitter YouTube Instagram Mobile RSS Podcasts Contact CBC Submit Feedback Help Centre Audience Relations, CBC P.O. Box 500 Station A Toronto, ON Canada, M5W 1E6 Toll-free (Canada only): 1-866-306-4636 TTY/Teletype writer: 1-866-220-6045 About CBC Corporate Info Sitemap Reuse & Permission Terms of Use Privacy Jobs Our Unions Independent Producers Political Ads Registry AdChoices Services Ombudsman Public Appearances Commercial Services CBC Shop Doing Business with Us Renting Facilities Accessibility It is a priority for CBC to create a website that is accessible to all Canadians including people with visual, hearing, motor and cognitive challenges. Closed Captioning and Described Video is available for many CBC shows offered on CBC Gem. About CBC Accessibility Accessibility Feedback © 2025 CBC/Radio-Canada. All rights reserved. Visitez
Winnipeg Free Press
8 hours ago
- Winnipeg Free Press
Texas Tech alum Patrick Mahomes cheers Red Raiders on to victory in Game 2 of the WCWS
OKLAHOMA CITY (AP) — Texas Tech evened up the finals of the Women's College World Series on Thursday night with one of the Red Raiders' biggest supporters on hand. Kansas City Chiefs quarterback and former Texas Tech signal caller Patrick Mahomes and his wife, Brittany, cheered on the Red Raiders, who hung on to beat Texas 4-3 in Game 2 of the series behind the solid pitching of NiJaree Canady, forcing a decisive third game on Friday night. Both teams will be trying to win their first national championship. 'Come on!!! Let's go!' Mahomes posted on social media during the game, which started 50 minutes late because of storms. Mahomes and his wife were animated and seemingly in full 'sports fan' mode throughout the game. He appeared to be as involved in the game as he was in all his Super Bowl appearances, standing, clapping, yelling and encouraging the Red Raiders, hanging on every pitch. Prior to Game 1 on Wednesday, Mahomes gifted each Texas Tech player with a letterman-style jacket and a pair of shoes in Texas Tech Colors. 'First off, I love Texas Tech and everything Texas Tech's about,' Mahomes told ESPN from an extension of the press box at Devon Park. 'To have Nija here along with the other girls has been fun to watch. I've always loved softball and watching it. I'm happy it's been back in the Olympics and happy to have them here in Oklahoma City.' ___ AP sports:
