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Poor TV coverage of Paralympics

"everything involving the IOC is about money, period."

Watched the future of sledge hockey (no, I don’t know if Mike Mondin will continue in Canada’s head-coaching job after Saturday’s bronze medal game against Norway) while the Americans were dumping Canada, 3-0, in the semifinals.

The Americans’ driving force was  Declan Farmer, who, at all of 16, created all three American goals against the usually stout Canadian defence. Farmer scored twice, then set up the third U.S. goal, more offence than his team would need while limiting Canada to 11 shots on goal. It’s true, the Americans only had 10, but, especially during the first and third periods, their young squad was too fast for Canada.

I (and by now, you should) get that everything involving the IOC is about money, period. But, coverage of the paralympics is atrocious. Surely CBC could have left a couple of people in Sochi to at least update results, even if they had to do double duty as Crimean War reporters.

It took 12 hours before the fact Rossland’s Kimberley Joines had won a medal in slalom sit-ski was confirmed following a successful appeal of disqualification by a German athlete - Joines seemed originally in line for silver, but will bring home at least a  bronze - she has an event left at my deadline.

And, the sledge hockey game was an American broadcast streamed through cbc.ca. I did, however, see an almost-live broadcast of Joines last run on regular TV.

We need to either get off the pot on an Olympic Games for disabled athletes or (my choice) finally dump the IOC on behalf of providing more opportunity for all athletes at all levels at much less cost than this halfhearted effort requires.

• Too early for me to know Thursday’s result in Nelson, but I hope the Nitehawks took heed of the BCHL results. Alberni Valley, with local Craig Martin in a leading role, had a 3-1 lead on Victoria in their opening playoff round and are now out of the picture.

Beaver Valley and Nelson were so even during the season, and have been so even except for one game in this playoff round, that it behooves the Nitehawks to focus intensely on getting this round’s job done.

•This will be the last weekend of the 2013/14 winter. Hooray for Spring. With winter starting in early November this season, it seems a long time coming for Robins and green grass.