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Ukrainian girls’ team finds hockey haven at Wickenheiser festival
Mets could sign former Yankees All-Star closer as starting pitcher, per insider | Sporting NewsIt's been a long road back to the highest levels of motorsport for Canadian driver Robert Wickens. Six years after he was paralyzed in a violent wreck, Wickens will again be behind the wheel against some of the best drivers in North America. Wickens, from Guelph, Ont., was named the newest driver for DXDT Racing earlier this week, moving the 35-year-old up to IMSA GTD competition for 2025, the highest class on the WeatherTech SportsCar Championship series. His promotion was made possible by a new hand control braking system created by Bosch Electronics, with help from GM Motorsports and Corvette Racing/Pratt Miller. "It's not going to be easy but I wanted to get to the highest levels of motorsport again because, frankly, that's where I was when I was injured," said Wickens, who crashed at Pocono Raceway in 2018 during IndyCar's ABC Supply 500. "But not only that, I want to prove to myself and other generations of people with disabilities that you can really do anything. "Maybe you're having a hard time getting back to your place of work after a life-altering accident and — whatever your discipline, it doesn't even have to be athletics — but I know it's possible as long as you align yourself with a strong support system." For Wickens, that's been his wife Karli Wickens, his family and, in his professional life, organizations like Bosch and GM. Wickens's crash left him with a thoracic spinal fracture, a neck fracture, tibia and fibula fractures to both legs, fractures in both hands, a fractured right forearm, a fractured elbow, four fractured ribs, a pulmonary contusion, and an indeterminate spinal injury that combined to make him a paraplegic. As he has slowly recovered some movement in his legs, Wickens has eased back into motor racing. He drove the parade lap of the 2019 Honda Indy Toronto, competed in the IndyCar iRacing Challenge during the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic, and then in January 2022 it was announced he would drive in the Michelin Pilot Challenge for Bryan Herta Autosport. He and co-driver Mark Wilkins won twice in the Michelin Pilot Challenge's TCR category with three podiums in 2022. In 2023 the pairing didn't win, but they reached the podium seven times to earn the TCR championship. All of Wickens's post-accident cars have been fitted with hand controls. Those conventional systems rely on paddles around the steering wheel that activate pneumatics that then press the foot pedals. Hand controls like that are acceptable for regular road vehicles and even lower levels of motorsports but in the highest classes, like IMSA GTD where cars top out at more than 280 kilometres, the lag between the driver toggling the paddle and the car responding is unacceptably slow. That's where the Bosch electronic system comes in, with the controls linked directly to the car's braking system, removing the pneumatics as an intermediary. "When you hit the brakes to slow the car down for each corner that was always a big challenge for me where (with) the Bosch electronic system, the latency is milliseconds not tenths of a second," said Wickens. "It's basically as accurate as I would be if I was an able-bodied driver wanting to apply the brake. "Honestly, it's just better in every facet imaginable. It's just been a true blessing." Advances in physical rehabilitation from spinal cord injuries as well as the ongoing development of vehicle technology has made Wickens's return to competitive motorsport possible. "I'm very fortunate in the timing of my paralysis and my career," Wickens said Wednesday from Tampa, Fla. "If this was even a decade ago we'd be having a very different conversation today." The IMSA WeatherTech SportsCar Championship has four classes of vehicles: two sports prototype categories and two grand tourer classes. GTD is considered the highest of the four classes because each team must have at least a silver or bronze driver and more than one platinum-rated driver on a team is prohibited. "I want to win," said Wickens. "I think the big thing for me on this journey back was I wanted to race again because I truly felt like I could still win. "I want to raise awareness for spinal cord injury and disability, not by just being a participant, but by being the guy. I want to win races, fight for podiums, win championships, every time I'm sitting in the car." Wickens said he won't just be a role model for people living with paralysis or other mobility disabilities, but the technology his car will employ in 2025 will likely become commercially available for use in road vehicles. "Motorsports and the automotive racing industry were founded to be a proving ground for everyday automotive vehicles," he said. "From there you make road cars and road safety better. "Hopefully we can provide the technology and have regularly available components that can make any race car accessible for anyone that needs hand controls or any other form of disability." This report by The Canadian Press was first published Nov. 27, 2024. Follow jchidleyhill.bsky.social on Bluesky. John Chidley-Hill, The Canadian Press
Article content Never make predictions, especially about the future. So said baseball great (and quipster) Casey Stengel, and he was of course right. The prediction business is high-risk and low-reward. The punditocracy loves making predictions, however, especially at year’s end. So who am I to buck a trend? Here’s five of mine for 2025. Justin Trudeau is going to leave. I’ve got several lunches riding on this one, so I’d better be right. My reasons? For starters, he’s been behind Pierre Poilievre’s Tories by double digits for more than a year. Nothing he’s tried has reversed his downward spiral. Another reason: along with public opinion, he’s lost the support of most of the Liberal caucus, a sizeable chunk of cabinet, and every party in the House of Commons. There’s is simply no viable path back to victory. So, sometime soon, he will say he’s written to the president of the Liberal Party to say that he plans to step down when a new leader is picked, give us all a Trudeau-esque wave, and then jet off to do some international sight-seeing. All at taxpayer expense, naturally. The Liberals will have a leadership race and their numbers will improve. There’ll be plenty of contestants, too, the party’s present crummy poll numbers notwithstanding. Why? Because the Liberals firmly believe that the yawning gap in the polls is mostly about hatred for Trudeau, not love for Poilievre. And they’re not totally wrong about that. Like Stephen Harper did in similar circumstances in 2008, the Grits will prorogue to avoid getting defeated in a confidence vote. That’ll give them some breathing room. Trudeau’s announced departure will boost their numbers, as will a leadership race. And then, with a shiny new leader at the fore, the Libs will get even more popular – because every new leader gets a bit of a honeymoon. But who will that leader be? The new Liberal leader will be an outsider. That is, someone who isn’t in Trudeau’s cabinet, all of whom are too close to the blast radius. Outsiders always tend to do better in leadership races, particularly if a party has been in power for too long. Voters are looking for fresh faces, and so are party members. The Grit tradition of alternation between French and English leaders narrows the field even more. That all leaves just three options. One is Christina Freeland, who executed a brilliant pirouette out of Trudeau’s circle, and has effectively become the leader of the opposition from within Trudeau’s caucus. Another is Mark Carney, who has been a former governor of both the Bank of Canada and the Bank of England – and therefore a good guy to have around when facing the economic existential threat of Trump tariffs. The third choice is Christy Clark. The Liberals want a female leader to offset Poilievre’s angry guy: Clark, a happy warrior, offers that. They’ll want someone who knows how to govern: Clark, a former Premier, offers that. They’ll want someone who has never been part of the Trudeau oxymoronic brain trust: only Clark offers that. Christy Clark is the only viable alternative to Pierre Poilievre. Big question: does she speak French well enough? Pierre Poilievre will win. Doug Ford will win. Notwithstanding everything above, the federal Conservatives are still going to win a majority. It won’t be nearly as big as it would be, were an election to be held today. But Poilievre is still going to win. He may not be the cuddliest guy to ever offer himself to the people, but the people aren’t looking for cuddly, these days. They’re mad as Hell at all incumbents, and they’ve had time to get used to the idea of Poilievre as prime minister. He’ll win. So will Doug Ford. As my colleague Brian Lilley has reported, a debate is raging within Ford’s team about when to seek re-election – this Spring, or later. Either way, Ford will still win. Ontario Liberal Leader Bonnie Crombie remains an unknown quantity, and the Ontario NDP (like their federal cousins) seem to be more preoccupied with Gaza than Guelph. Ford is routinely underestimated by his opponents, he’s coated in several layers of Teflon, and he’s morphed into the anti-Trump Captain Canada. He’ll win, too. Big. The world will continue to orbit to the Right. A variety of factors are at play: an increasingly-dangerous world, which progressives seem unable to understand or fix. Anger towards political elites, who always tend to be pointy-headed political progressives. Frustration about the cost of living and porous borders, which have always been winning themes for conservatives. For the next year, the Right will continue to dominate – and then, by 2026, the Left will come roaring back. Politics is pendulum, always swinging between Left and Right. Which is always predictable, too!HYDRAA commissioner A.V. Ranganath on Sunday denied reports in some newspapers and on social media about his residence allegedly being in the buffer zone of Krishna Kant Park’s Peddacheruvu. He said said his house was almost a kilometre away from the park. In a press release, Ranganath stated his house is “about one kilometre from the lake’s bund, and nearly 380 metres from aerial distance.” He stated that his house is towards the lake’s bund area, and the irrigation department considers only 5-10 metres of land from the lake’s bund area as buffer zone. Through the press release, he stated “25 years ago, there was a lake in Krishna Kanth Park’s land called Peddacheruvu. In 1980, my father A.P.V. Subbayya constructed the house, and for 44 years we've been living in the same house. Even if the old lake’s buffer zone is considered, we’re well away from the area.” Explaining how FTL is determined towards the bund side, he said “For any lake, FTL and buffer zones are not fixed around the lake’s bund. But to accommodate for any repairs, a 5-10 metre buffer zone is allocated towards the bund side. And my home, even at an aerial distance, is nearly 380 metres away.” He requested media personnel not to spread misinformation about his house being in the buffer zone of the lake.WILMINGTON, N.C. (AP) — Dior Conners led Appalachian State with 19 points and Myles Tate made a jumper from the free-throw line with 25.1 seconds left as the Mountaineers knocked off Sam Houston 66-63 on Wednesday night. Conners shot 4 of 9 from the field, including 2 for 5 from 3-point range, and went 9 for 10 from the line for the Mountaineers (4-2). Tate scored 17 points, going 6 of 14 from the floor, including 3 for 6 from 3-point range, and 2 for 4 from the line. Jackson Threadgill had 11 points and shot 4 for 11, including 1 for 3 from beyond the arc. Javascript is required for you to be able to read premium content. Please enable it in your browser settings.