World Cup finals canceled in Grindelwald
Nik Zoricic (photo: Canadian Ski Federation)
GENEVA / BERN, SWITZERLAND -Nik Zoricic of Canada, 29, died early Saturday afternoon in Grindelwald, canton Bern, after taking a bad fall during the Ski Cross World Cup 10 March. “Zoricic fell heavily just before the finish in the round of eight, crashing directly into the safety netting and thereafter lay motionless”, Swiss Ski, the organizers, said in a statement issued at 15:15. “The medical care from team doctors and Air Glacier followed immediately. Despite reanimation Zoricic died at 12.35 as a result of severe neurotrauma.”
Zoricic began his ski career as an Alpine athlete and switched later to Ski Cross. He was sixth in the overall standings in 2011 and he won two podium places in his career, one this season in Les Contamines, France, and one during 2010/11.
The Toronto Star, hometown newspaper for Zoricic, reported Saturday that “the Zoricic family was a fixture on the Ontario ski scene after coming to Canada from Sarajevo, Bosnia-Herzegovina, when Nik was just five. His father, Bebe Zoricic, is the FIS coach at the Craigleith Ski Club in the Blue Mountains ski area. ‘He lived with ski racing his whole life,’ said [Alpine Canada president Max] Gartner. ‘The whole heart and soul of the whole family was ski racing.’”
Fellow skiers were holding a candlelight memorial ceremony on the course late Saturday.
The organizers decided to cancel the entire event in Grindelwald, including both races from Saturday 10 March and the World Cup Final Sunday, noting that “the Organizing Committee, FIS and Swiss Ski express their deepest condolences to the family and friends of Nick Zoricic and the Canadian Ski Team.”
He is the second Canadian competitive skier to die in less than two months. Freestyle champion Sarah Burke died 19 February after a crash in Utah, USA.
Link to Canadian Ski Federation site, The Globe & Mail, Canada
GENEVA, SWITZERLAND – Sarah Burke, 29-year-old Canadian freestyle ski champion, died Thursday 19 January at the University of Utah hospital where she was taken following an accident during training near Salt Lake City a week earlier. Burke had won numerous gold medals in the past five years and CNN reports that she “is considered a pioneer of freestyle skiing and was a major force in getting the ski halfpipe event added to the 2014 Winter Olympics in Sochi”.
The accident occurred as she was doing a superpipe training run. In a fall after making her jump, she tore one of the main arteries that supply blood to the brainstem and the rupture sent her into cardiac arrest. She was without a pulse and spontaneous breathing while the CPR emergency team worked on her at the site and after being taken to the hospital she had surgery 11 January. The surgery was successful in repairing the artery, but she sustained irreversible brain damage in the minutes following the accident and this ultimately caused her death Thursday, according to the skier’s publicist.
In accordance with Burke’s wishes, reports CBC, her organs were donated to others.
Burke married another freestyle skier, Rory , in October 2010 in British Columbia, Canada.
Links to other sites: AP, CBC, CNN, Ski Channel, Vancouver Sun
News video, ABC
Wedding video, Sarah Burke and Rory Bushfield
He’s 17, Canadian, a heartthrob who has a concert in Tel Aviv Thursday 13 April, a practicing Christian who wants to see Israel’s holy places in peace, and a young man who may or may not have tried to line up a visit with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu: Justin Bieber‘s trip has hit a few bumps, it appears.
Israel’s notoriously aggressive paparazzi have “stalked” him, according to the Jerusalem Post and no one will admit to attempting to set up a meeting with the prime minister, neither Bieber’s team nor the government, but Israeli media report that Bieber wanted a non-political visit while Netanyahu thought it might be a good idea to bring along children from the south, which has been the target of missiles recently.
The good news for the children from the south is that 700 of them will make it to the concert, thanks to donated tickets. And Bieber’s spokesperson told JTA news agency late Wednesday that the ministerial meeting was called off due to logistics problems.
Links to other sites: Jerusalem Post, JTA news agency, Los Angeles Times, NPR
St Sulpice man, Canadian, dies under train in southern Italy, twin girls missing
International police alert for witnesses, information: +41 21 644 82 31 or the nearest police station
Lausanne, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) – Two six-year-old twin girls are missing and police in Switzerland have issued a missing persons bulletin for them after their father was found dead in the far south of Italy.
The body of Matthias, the father, a St Sulpice man in his forties, was discovered in Bari, Italy at 23:00 Thursday 3 February, after a train passed over him. Police there are trying to determine if his death was an accident or suicide. The man, who was Canadian, left Switzerland Sunday with his six-year-old twin daughters, at the end of a weekend with them. The girls’ parents were in the process of divorcing. The father had taken them over the Christmas holidays, without incidence.
Swiss police issued a Schengen system SIS international alert 30 January after the trio failed to return to St Sulpice. Police investigations showed the father passed by Annecy, France, near Geneva, then Marseilles 1 February. French and Italian police have been actively working with Swiss authorities, but there has been no news of the girls.
Description of the girls
Alessia: 115 cm, long blond hair, medically corrected glasses with bordeaux-coloured titanium frames, last seen wearing a red, white and pink striped tee-shirt, blue jeans, white jacket with beige lining and black boots.
Livia: 115 cm, long blond hair, last seen wearing a green tee-shirt, a purple ski jacket, bluejeans, Adidas white and pink sports shoes, medically corrected glasses with orange titanium frames.
Description of the father
Average weight, 180 cm tall, blond hair thinning at the front, wearing glasses. Was last seen wearing a smart sports outfit and driving an Audi A6 with Swiss license plates.
Geneva, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) – The Tribune de Geneve‘s Wednesday edition carries details of the life of a Canadian man who committed suicide under the windows of Geneva government offices Monday 1 November. The man, an intellectual who recently turned 60 according to the newspaper, had gradually become marginalized and had reached the end of a long battle with the Haute Ecole Internationale and the canton over his academic work. He had been without steady work for years but had refused to sign on for unemployment and in October he was evicted from his apartment in the Old Town.
He had come to Switzerland several years earlier after meeting a Geneva woman. The Montreal taxi driver, passionate about the Alps and about learning, according to the newspaper, undertook several years of research into the Palestinian Liberation Organization (PLO). His educational labours became the focal point of his fight for greater recognition for his work and his skills. Meanwhile, he had cut off links with his family and had gradually become isolated, his lawyer told the Tribune.
Core inflation figures and better-than-expected retail sales in February are behind a strong rise in the Canadian dollar, popularly known as the loonie, and it is now nearly at parity with the US dollar, reports the Globe & Mail in Canada.
Canadian freelance journalist Amanda Lindhout and Australian photojournalist Nigel Brennan were freed Wednesday 25 Novmber after 16 months in captivity in Somalia, where both say they were tortured physically and mentally. Lindhout described her ordeal by phone to the Globe & Mail, saying that in her mind she escaped to Vancouver. Both say their families paid ransoms to the groups who abducted them.
Links to other sites: Canadian TV video, Herald Sun, Australia
Afghan President Hamid Karzai claimed victory in Afghanistan’s presidential election as preliminary results released by the independent election commission (IEC) showed he had enough votes to avoid a run-off with his main challenger, Abdullah Abdullah. Karzai praised the Afghan people for their courage in the face of Taliban intimidation. But observers increasingly point to fraud on a scale that might put the results in doubt. The election complaints commission, headed by Canadian Grant Kippen, is charged with investigating cases of electoral fraud and has ordered a recount of ballots from some districts. Abdullah, in an interview with the BBC 8 September, said the IEC was anything but independent, and that the election was being stolen from the Afghan people. Afghanistan News, BBC, Toronto Globe & Mail
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At least one American overseas is admitting to being American again, after a bout of pretending she was Canadian because with Bush out and Obama in, “it’s cool to be American again.” Washington Post
Montreux, Vaud, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) - Leonard Cohen, one of the biggest names in songwriting for nearly 40 years, whose lyrics have been sung by innumerable major artists, left no doubts about his stature when he played in Montreux 8 July, Tuesday night.
This is a leg on his first concert tour in 15 years, and the crowds loved the quiet Canadian poet with the familiar voice, dressed in black.
Tonight’s big calling card in Montreux is another legend, Paul Simon.
Cohen, meanwhile, moves on to London for a 17 July concert.
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