Connect with us
[the_ad id="89560"]

Sports

Third-generation bronc rider Logan Hay charges out of the gate on Day 1 of Canadian Finals Rodeo

Published

4 minute read

Strong First Night for Logan Hay

Logan Hay got the monkey off his back on night one of the Canadian Finals Rodeo. The third-generation bronc rider marked an impressive 85.75 points on Vold Rodeo’s 52 Elvira to top the field in a performance that saw the competitors take on the eliminator pen.

“I’ve never got a score in the first round at CFR in the three years I’ve been here,” the Wildwood, Alberta cowboy said. “The first time was first year jitters, then some bad luck honestly the next two. This year I knew I had one of the harder horses in there; she’s not easy. You have to go all or nothing as she bucks off a lot of people. All the guys had their hands full tonight. There wasn’t an easy one in there. A lot of guys stubbed their toes who don’t normally do that. I got by a tough one and I’m glad it worked out.”

Tonight’s performance was a re-match for the young athlete as he earned top honours on the same horse at the Strathmore Stampede earlier in the season. “It’s always good to get the first one under your belt. It’s good for your confidence.” Hay added.

Among the casualties on the night was three time and reigning World and Canadian Champion Zeke Thurston who bucked off Calgary Stampede’s Cloudy Skies.

In the ladies barrel racing event it was 17 year old rookie, Blake Molle from Chauvin, Alberta who turned in the winning time – a 13.78 second run on her gelding Mercy. The tough roster of barrel racers enjoyed a strong first out with half the runs under 14 seconds.

The first performance steer wrestling lead was shared by three men: North Dakota cowboy Riley Reiss and Albertans Ryan Shuckburgh and Ty Miller, all in at a solid 3.9 seconds.

In the bareback riding, 2019 Canadian Champion Orin Larsen teamed with Duane Kesler Championship Rodeo’s Knockout for 86 points and the $9335 cheque. The round win moved the Inglis, Manitoba cowboy into the early lead overall.

On a night when the team ropers as a group struggled, the combination of Tee Mcleod and Brady Chappel – both Saskatchewan athletes – took the round win with a 4.3 second run. The victory was doubly productive for Mcleod who moved to the lead in the All Around race.

Tie down roping saw Wimborne, Alta. cowboy Jason Smith earn top money with an 8.3 second run on Moon, Canadian Tie-Down Horse of the Year.

And 2019 Canadian Champion bull rider Edgar Durazo was flawless in covering last year’s Bull of the Year, Duane Kesler’s Alberta Prime Devils Advocate. Durazo marked 89 points to move closer to season leader Coy Robbins who bucked off in the round.

In the novice bareback, season leader Chase Siemens won first with a 77.5 effort while defending novice Saddle Bronc Champion Colten Powell was 72.5 to win his event in the first performance.

Brodi Beasley was awarded 82.5 points to claim the junior steer riding win in performance one.

And 2006 Canadian Bull Riding Champion and youth rodeo coach Tanner Girletz was presented with the prestigious Cowboy of the Year award sponsored by Legend Rodeo. Congratulations Tanner!

Go to rodeocanada.com for Canadian Finals Rodeo results. Check out www.cfrreddeer.ca/ for additional event details.

CFR ’49 performance two kicks off at 6:00 pm Nov 2 at the Peavey Mart Centrium, Westerner Park in Red Deer, Alta. If you cannot attend the event, sign up to follow the action on The Cowboy Channel.

Bruce Dowbiggin

MLB’s Exploding Chequebook: Parity Is Now For Suckers

Published on

MLB has seen parity and proclaimed, “We don’t give a damn!” Okay, they didn’t say that. In fact they insist the opposite is true. They’re all about competition and smaller markets getting a shot at a title. But as the 2024 offseason spending shows, believe none of what you hear and half of what you see in MLB.

Here’s the skinny: Juan Soto‘s contract with the NY Mets — 15 years and guaranteeing $765 million, not a penny of which is deferred. Max Fried signed an eight-year, $218 million deal with the New York Yankees. Later, Nathan Eovaldi secured a three-year, $75 million contract to return to the Texas Rangers. Blake Snell (five years, $182 million with the Los Angeles Dodgers) and Matthew Boyd (two years, $29 million with the Chicago Cubs) added to the splurge.

There’s one more thing that stands out. MLB has no trouble with the financial big boys in New York, Los Angles, Texas, Toronto, Atlanta and Chicago shelling out money no small market dare pay. In the MLB cheap seats, Tampa, Pittsburgh  and Miami can’t send out quality players fast enough. But MLB is cool with that, too, as those paupers get a healthy slice of TV money.

So yes, they’re all about talking parity with their luxury tax system. But to keep the TV, digital, betting and marketing lucre flowing they have to have large media markets swinging the heaviest bats come postseason. The question is, do MLB fans care the way they used to about parity? It says here they don’t. More want to seed best-on-best more often. Which is brutal but refreshing.

Their sister leagues, married to draconian salary cap systems, are still pushing parity, even as they expand beyond recognition. In our 2004 book Money Players, legendary Boston Bruins coach/ GM Harry Sinden noted, “The problem with teams in the league, is that there were (then) 20 teams who all think they are going to  win the Stanley Cup and they all are going to share it. But only one team is going to win it. The rest are chasing a rainbow.”

And that was before the expansion Vegas Golden Knights won a Cup within five years while the third-year Seattle Kraken made a run in those same 2023 playoffs. There are currently 32 teams in the league, each chasing Sinden’s rainbow of a Stanley Cup. That means 31 cranky fan bases every year. And 31 management teams trying to avoid getting fired.

Maybe we’ve reached peak franchise level? Uh, no. Not so long as salary-capped leagues can use the dream of parity to sell more franchises. As we wrote in October of 2023, “If you believe the innuendo coming from commissioner Gary Bettman there is a steady appetite for getting a piece of the NHL operation. “The best answer I can give you is that we have continuous expressions of interest from places like Houston, Atlanta, Quebec City, Salt Lake City, but expansion isn’t on the agenda.” In the next breath Bettman was predicting that any new teams will cost “A lot, a lot.”

Deputy commissioner Bill Daly echoed Bettman’s caution about a sudden expansion but added, ”Having said that, particularly with the success of the Vegas and Seattle expansions, there are more people who want to own professional hockey teams.” Translation: If the NHL can get a billion for a new team, the heck with competitive excellence, the clock might start ticking sooner. After all, small-market Ottawa just went for $950.”

It’s not just the expansion-obsessed NHL talking more teams. MLB is looking to add franchises. Abandoned Montreal is once more getting palpitations over rumours that the league wants to return to the city that lost its Expos in 2005. Recent reports indicate that while MLB might prefer Salt Lake City and Nashville it also feels it must right the wrong left when the Expos moved to Washington DC 19 years ago.

The city needs a new ballpark to replace disastrous Olympic Stadium. They’ll also need more than Tom Brady to fund the franchise fee and operating costs. And Quebec corporate support— always transitory in the Expos years— will need to be strong. But two more MLB franchises within five years is a lock.

While the NBA is mum on going past 30 teams it has not shut the door on expansion after seeing the NHL cashing in. Neither has the cash-generating monster known as the NFL where teams currently sell for over six billion US. The NFL is eyeing Europe for its next moves.

The question that has to be asked in this is, WTF, quality of competition? The more teams in a league the lower the chances of even getting to a semifinal series let alone a championship. Fans in cities starved for a championship— the NFL’s Detroit Lions or Cleveland Browns are entering their seventh decade without a title or the Toronto Maple Leafs title-less since 1967— know how corrosive it can be.

Getting to 34, 36, maybe 40 teams makes for a short-term score for owners, but it could leave leagues with an entire strata of loser teams that no one—least of all networks, carriers and advertisers—wants to see. Generations of fans will be like Canuck supporters, going their entire lives without a championship.

In addition, as we’ve argued in our 2018 book Cap In Hand: How Salary Caps Are Killing Pro Sports and How The Free Market Can Save Them, watering down the product with a lot of teams no one wants to watch nationally or globally seems counter productive. The move away from quality toward quantity serves only the gambling industry. But since when has Gary Bettman Truly cared about quality of the product? So long as he gets to say, “We have a trade to announce” at the Draft, he’s a happy guy.

When we published Cap In Hand we proposed a system like soccer with ranked divisions using promotion and relegation to ensure competition, not parity. Most of the interviewers we spoke to were skeptical of the idea. But as MLB steams closer to economic Darwinism our proposal is looking more credible every day. Play at the level you can afford. Or just watch Ted Lasso. Your choice.

Bruce Dowbiggin @dowbboy is the editor of Not The Public Broadcaster  A two-time winner of the Gemini Award as Canada’s top television sports broadcaster, he’s a regular contributor to Sirius XM Canada Talks Ch. 167. His new book Deal With It: The Trades That Stunned The NHL And Changed hockey is now available on Amazon. Inexact Science: The Six Most Compelling Draft Years In NHL History, his previous book with his son Evan, was voted the seventh-best professional hockey book of all time by bookauthority.org . His 2004 book Money Players was voted sixth best on the same list, and is available via brucedowbigginbooks.ca.

Continue Reading

Sports

LPGA bans ‘transgender’ male players after hundreds of female golfers speak out

Published on

From LifeSiteNews

By Calvin Freiburger

The Ladies Professional Golf Association released an updated policy limiting participation to actual biological ladies after calls by hundreds of female golfers to keep confused men such as ‘Hailey’ Davidson out of the game.

The Ladies Professional Golf Association (LPGA) has released an updated policy limiting participation to actual biological ladies after calls by hundreds of female golfers to keep confused men out of the game.

Two hundred seventy-five female golfers signed an August 19 letter calling on the LPGA to remove self-professed “transgender” golfer “Hailey” Davidson, to “repeal all policies and rules that allow male golfers to participate in women’s golf events,” and to “establish and enforce the right of female professional golfers to participate in women’s golf based on sex-eligibility (which) must be limited to members of the female sex.”

“The male advantage in driving the ball is estimated around a 30% performance advantage; this is an enormous difference in the context of sport,” the letter argued. “Anatomical differences between males and females affect clubhead speed and regulating consistency at ball contact. Females have higher mean heart rates and encounter greater physiological demands while playing, especially at high altitudes. The anatomical differences are not removed with male testosterone suppression.”

On December 4, the LPGA announced an updated Gender Policy for Competition Eligibility, which was “informed by a working group of top experts in medicine, science, sport physiology, golf performance and gender policy law,” and will take effect starting in 2025, effectively disqualifying Davidson.

“Players assigned male at birth and who have gone through male puberty are not eligible to compete in the aforementioned events,” the organization confirmed. “The policies governing the LPGA’s recreational programs and non-elite events utilize different criteria to provide opportunities for participation in the broader LPGA community.”

“Can’t say I didn’t see this coming,” Davidson complained on social media. “Banned from the Epson and the LPGA. All the silence and people wanting to stay ‘neutral’ thanks for absolutely nothing. This happened because of all your silence.”

Mandatory inclusion of gender-confused individuals in opposite-sex sports is promoted as a matter of “inclusivity,” but critics note that indulging “transgender” athletes undermines the original rational basis for having sex-specific athletics in the first place, thereby depriving female athletes of recognition and professional or academic opportunities, as well as undermining female players’ basic safety and privacy rights by forcing them to share showers and changing areas with members of the opposite sex.

There have been numerous high-profile examples in recent years of men winning women’s competitions, and research affirms that physiology gives males distinct athletic advantages that cannot be fully negated by hormone suppression.

In a 2019 paper published by the Journal of Medical Ethics, New Zealand researchers found that “healthy young men (do) not lose significant muscle mass (or power) when their circulating testosterone levels were reduced to (below International Olympic Committee guidelines) for 20 weeks,” and “indirect effects of testosterone” on factors such as bone structure, lung volume, and heart size “will not be altered by hormone therapy;” therefore, “the advantage to transwomen (biological men) afforded by the (International Olympic Committee) guidelines is an intolerable unfairness.”

Continue Reading

Trending

X