Culture

Alex Ovechkin Skates Into Canada’s Ukrainian Enclave as a Scorned Star

Published

3 years ago

March 11, 2022

Alex Ovechkin Skates Into Canada’s Ukrainian Enclave as a Scorned Star

The hockey star Alex Ovechkin, middle amongst Russian skilled athletes within the public’s anger over the warfare in Ukraine, performed earlier than essentially the most unsympathetic crowd but.

Ovechkin, President Vladimir V. Putin’s high-profile supporter, and his Washington Capitals teammates confronted the Oilers on Wednesday night time in Edmonton, Alberta, residence to one in every of Canada’s largest concentrations of the Ukrainian diaspora.

Andriy Tovstiuk of Edmonton works with the Ukrainian Canadian Congress organizing fund-raising, rallies, demonstrations and humanitarian reduction efforts in Alberta for Ukraine. He was at Wednesday’s sport at Rogers Place.

“I feel we’re going to be loud, we’re going to be fired up,” stated Tovstiuk, whose group is working with each the Oilers and the Calgary Flames to lift cash for Ukraine by means of its 50-50 attracts, which steadily hit greater than $1 million. “However we’re all actually desirous to concentrate on supporting Ukraine and actually getting behind every part that’s occurring proper now.

“It’s an emotional time for everyone, and we actually encourage all people to make use of this as a rallying level for Ukraine.”

Ovechkin is one in every of Russia’s most well-known athletes, and his friendship with Putin, who has a singular ardour for ice hockey, is extensively identified. The friendship was unwavering after Putin invaded and annexed Crimea from Ukraine in 2014, with Ovechkin beginning a web based social motion in 2017 to assist Putin profitable the 2018 Russian election.

Edmonton is residence to 160,000 folks of Ukrainian descent, and there are 370,000 in Alberta, in accordance with the 2016 Canadian census. There are roughly 1.4 million folks of Ukrainian background residing in Canada, greater than wherever exterior Ukraine and Russia.

Officers from the Capitals, who’ve 4 Russian gamers on their roster together with Ovechkin, had mentioned safety measures at Rogers Place with their Oilers counterparts. The Oilers didn’t reply to requests for remark. The Capitals declined to talk on the report.

Tim Shipton, an government vice chairman of Oilers Leisure Group, issued an announcement on Monday: “The Edmonton Oilers stand in solidarity alongside the folks of Ukraine. As we noticed throughout Saturday’s residence sport, Oilers followers had been very respectful in displaying their assist for Ukraine.”

On Wednesday night time, Viter, a Ukrainian people choir, carried out the Canadian anthem in English and Ukrainian. Oilers gamers continued to sport Ukrainian flag stickers on their helmets. Followers carrying the blue and yellow colours of the Ukrainian flag dotted the stands and hung flags all through the world. Each time Ovechkin touched the puck, he was loudly booed. He didn’t rating, and Edmonton received, 4-3, in extra time on a aim from the star middle Connor McDavid.

On Tuesday, forward of their first sport of the season in Alberta, the Capitals issued an announcement saying they “be part of the Nationwide Hockey League in condemning the Russian invasion of Ukraine and the lack of harmless life.” The assertion continued: “We urge and hope for a peaceable decision as shortly as attainable. The Capitals additionally stand in full assist of our Russian gamers and their households abroad. We notice they’re being put in a tough scenario and stand by to supply our help to them and their households.”

Since Russia invaded Ukraine on Feb. 24, Ovechkin, who is likely one of the N.H.L.’s greatest stars — two targets in a 5-4 victory on Tuesday in opposition to the Flames tied him for third on the profession targets checklist with Jaromir Jagr at 766 — has been jeered and booed throughout street video games. His picture was even scorned in Columbus, Ohio, on Saturday when he appeared in a tribute video for the previous Blue Jackets star Rick Nash.

Ovechkin held a information convention on Feb. 25 meant to distance himself from Putin and assist for the Russian invasion. “I’m not in politics. Like, I’m an athlete,” he stated. He added, with out mentioning Putin, “Please, no extra warfare.”

As an alternative of calming his detractors, Ovechkin discovered himself underneath criticism from supporters of the warfare in his residence nation and opponents of it in the remainder of the world. This resulted in a extreme backlash on Ovechkin’s social media accounts from Russian supporters, and he was suggested to not change his Instagram profile image as a result of it might not go over properly in Russia.

That’s the reason Ovechkin’s profile image, displaying him with Putin, on his verified Instagram account, which has 1.6 million followers, remained as of Wednesday afternoon. There was a plan to alter the image to a logo for world peace after the information convention, however since Ovechkin’s spouse, two kids and fogeys are presently in Russia, it was determined the picture of him and Putin would keep.

Thus far, Ovechkin and Flames defenseman Nikita Zadorov are the one Russian gamers to publicly point out the warfare. Zadorov posted a Ukrainian flag emoji and the phrases “No warfare” and “STOP IT!!!” on Instagram the day after the invasion.

Based on the participant agent Dan Milstein, who represents dozens of Russian and Belarusian gamers with N.H.L. contracts, his shoppers and their households are dealing with a barrage of abuse and profanity on platforms like Instagram and Twitter.

“I’ve had wives of my gamers receiving very disturbing messages,” Milstein stated. “The feedback underneath kids’s photos are Nazi child, get again to Russia, we don’t want you right here, go residence, amongst different issues.”

Milstein, who’s a local of the Ukrainian capital, Kyiv, was the one particular person related with the N.H.L. who would agree to talk on the report for this text, with others citing worry of repercussions for associates or shoppers who’ve relations in Russia.

An N.H.L. spokesman didn’t reply to requests for remark from Commissioner Gary Bettman. However the league is working with police companies in a few of its 32 crew cities to offer additional patrols across the arenas and houses of gamers.

Milstein stated his Russian shoppers on N.H.L. rosters need nothing to do with the warfare in Ukraine however worry the implications of talking out.

“After all, they’re apprehensive not solely about their households but in addition they’re extraordinarily apprehensive about what is going on in Russia,” he stated. “My shoppers don’t need the warfare, my shoppers need world peace. My shoppers are involved for all of the folks in Ukraine and Russia, all people.”

The hockey tools maker CCM stated final week it might cease utilizing Ovechkin and different Russian gamers in international advertising campaigns.

Russian and Belarusian gamers and groups have been barred from all worldwide competitions by the Worldwide Ice Hockey Federation. In addition they face requires sanctions from followers, some governments and even the Hockey Corridor of Famer Wayne Gretzky.

Gretzky, 61, and nonetheless one of the influential folks in hockey, known as for Russia to be barred from the rescheduled 2022 males’s world junior match shortly earlier than the I.I.H.F. barred the nation. He later defined on the Toronto radio station Sportsnet 590 that he was pondering of the massive numbers of individuals of Ukrainian descent who stay in Canada, particularly Edmonton, the place the match can be performed in August.

“I simply couldn’t relate to how we had been going to welcome a rustic that’s at warfare, to a metropolis that has tons of Ukrainian relations which are nonetheless residing in Ukraine,” stated Gretzky, who received 4 Stanley Cup championships with Edmonton. “And I received some pushback from those that stated, ‘Why punish the Russian youngsters?’

“It’s not about punishing the Russian youngsters. What in regards to the Ukrainian youngsters which are being killed each day? The Ukrainian youngsters which are 12 or 14 years outdated, going to warfare. I don’t need anyone to be punished. I simply suppose it makes widespread sense that we shouldn’t compete in opposition to this nation proper now, whereas they’re at warfare in opposition to an harmless nation.”

Final week, the N.H.L. condemned the Russian invasion in an official assertion and stated it was instantly suspending enterprise relationships in Russia. The league suspended ties with the Kontinental Hockey League, which is basically based mostly in Russia, this week. N.H.L. groups had been informed to cease communications with Ok.H.L. groups and brokers based mostly in Russia.

The N.H.L. assertion additionally made clear the league’s place on Russian gamers, saying they “play within the N.H.L. on behalf of their N.H.L. golf equipment, and never on behalf of Russia.”

Milstein and different participant brokers stated barring Russian N.H.L. gamers made no sense and would play into the fingers of Putin, who continues the Russian authorities custom of utilizing elite athletes as propaganda.

The participant brokers additionally criticized the Canadian Hockey League, the umbrella group that oversees the three main junior leagues. The C.H.L. not too long ago introduced it canceled this 12 months’s Russia-Canada collection. It’s also contemplating a ban on Russian and Belarusian prospects from its import draft, which distributes teenage gamers from international locations exterior North America to C.H.L. groups. Doing so, Milstein stated, would primarily assist Russia, which has reluctance over athletes enjoying elsewhere.

Whereas some observers vital of Ovechkin, just like the Corridor of Fame goaltender Dominik Hasek, would love him barred for his assist of Putin, others suppose suspending him and different Russians wouldn’t assist the scenario.

Slava Malamud, a instructor in Baltimore who was a journalist for a few years in Russia, has a powerful following on social media as a staunch critic of Ovechkin. Whereas Malamud stated he wouldn’t have an issue with Ovechkin’s being barred from the N.H.L. due to his assist for Putin, he didn’t suppose punishing all Russian gamers can be honest.

“We’re not punishing Russians for being Russian,” he stated. “You possibly can’t assist the place you’re born. However gamers who’ve explicitly supported Putin, initially Ovechkin, have this on their conscience. He’s stained by this. He did it very willingly.”

Culture

Book Review: ‘How to Sleep at Night,’ by Elizabeth Harris

Published

4 hours ago

January 7, 2025

Press Room

HOW TO SLEEP AT NIGHT, by Elizabeth Harris

The witty opening of Elizabeth Harris’s “How to Sleep at Night” finds Ethan Keller confessing “something terrible” to his husband, Gabe: He wants to run for Congress. Ethan is a Republican, but Gabe is a Democrat, and Ethan says he won’t run if Gabe says no. Wanting to support his husband’s dreams and fearing the resentment a refusal could bring, Gabe agrees.

While Gabe and Ethan’s political rift is the crux of the book, Harris cools the stakes to a conflict between center-left and center-right. Gabe may be a Democrat, but he’s scornful of people he considers too far to the left, calling them “nuts”; in fact, he has tried to bond with Ethan by “poking fun at a clownish devotion to 16-letter acronyms and an eagerness to be offended by everything.”

Ethan explains his beliefs to their 5-year-old daughter privately by saying that Republicans believe change should happen carefully and people should make the decisions about their own lives.

He uses more provocative “woke mob” rhetoric in public, but Harris, a New York Times staff writer who covers book publishing, presents that as a performance that may or may not represent his convictions. Neither husband identifies with what he considers the extremes of his party, although both know their very existence as a gay married couple with a child has political significance.

More important than their divergent beliefs is Gabe and Ethan’s shared attitude about those beliefs, which is that they can be set aside when they don’t affect you directly. Gabe, a high school history teacher, can grit his teeth about Ethan’s growing notoriety until a couple of his students, both gay and one undocumented, start to trust him less in favor of a teacher he can’t stand. And what provokes Gabe’s discomfort most of all is the way people talk on the internet about him and his marriage.

Ethan treats his politics primarily as a vehicle for ambition; Gabe treats his as self-definition. The story seems headed for a confrontation between the two about how people should be treated and how the abstract idea of “politics” intersects with that question — but the confrontation never arrives. Over and over, when they approach the disagreements that seem too serious to ignore, they walk away, go to bed or change the subject.

This forestalling of what feel like inevitable and even necessary fractures can be frustrating and repetitive. But perhaps that’s the point: To make a relationship like this work, you will, over and over, have the same fight that goes nowhere.

The other strand of the novel follows Ethan’s sister, Kate, a print reporter, who reconnects with an old love: Nicole, a stay-at-home mom who’s grown bored with her wealthy, conservative husband. Kate is discombobulated by Nicole’s return and challenged by the thorny ethics of having her newspaper cover her brother’s campaign.

Kate and Nicole’s relationship is much more focused on the personal and less on the public, and it’s a thoughtful tale of people reconnecting in middle age with both the benefit and the baggage of long experience. And again, Kate’s story suggests that these are people for whom personal loyalty is primary. Everything else is negotiable.

Harris’s lively writing and the fast-moving narrative accompany what’s ultimately a bleak view of comfort in difficult times: The way to sleep at night, these characters find, is to secure your own future and make peace in your relationships, and then to think about what’s happening to the rest of the world as little as possible. As Kate muses at one point: “What’s Gabe supposed to do? Does he blow up a pretty excellent daily life for something that feels abstract? I don’t think most people would.”

You can sleep at night, in other words, through just about anything — if you don’t have to sleep alone.

HOW TO SLEEP AT NIGHT | By Elizabeth Harris | Morrow | 304 pp. | $28.99

Culture

Ilona Maher sprinkles her stardust on England – U.S. rugby icon’s new team has had to find a bigger home stadium

Published

12 hours ago

January 7, 2025

Press Room

Ilona Maher sprinkles her stardust on England – U.S. rugby icon’s new team has had to find a bigger home stadium

Asked if she felt tired after spending over an hour posing for pictures with hundreds of fans, Ilona Maher channels Taylor Swift with her answer.

“I do get tired a lot but, as Taylor Swift said, ‘I get tired a lot but I don’t get tired of it’.”

The ‘it’ the 28-year-old rugby union player from Burlington, Vermont is referring to is the fanfare which follows her every move.

Fresh from making her 20-minute debut for Bristol Bears, the English team she has joined on a three-month contract, Maher had to tackle a queue of photo-seekers more than 250 yards long — taking up three sides of the pitch. Some had travelled across the Atlantic from Washington, D.C. to see a player who now transcends her sport. A 2024 Olympic bronze medallist who last year also featured on the cover of Sports Illustrated’s swimsuit edition and was named on Forbes’ 30 Under 30 list, Maher’s fame continues to snowball.

There weren’t any expectations placed on Maher to spend time with what seemed like every fan who attended her Bristol debut, but she did. “I saw the line of people staying out there and I was like, ‘I’m going to try to take as many photos as I can’,” she told reporters.

With eight million-plus followers across Instagram and TikTok combined, Maher is the most-followed rugby player in the world. She took followers behind the scenes at the previous Olympics in Japan in 2021, when fans were barred from attending due to ongoing pandemic-related regulations and has a sense of humour that would not go amiss in some Saturday Night Live sketches. Mix that with a back catalogue of empowering, body-confident video messages, and she has a global audience of supporters, many of whom are young women and girls.

Maher came on as a second-half replacement for Bristol Bears on Sunday (Dan Mullan/Getty Images)

Over 9,000 were in attendance for Maher’s debut in Bristol, a city in the west of England, just over 100 miles from London, known, among other things, for being the birthplace of street artist Banksy. And just as when one of the anonymous political activist’s latest works pops up to huge publicity, Maher demands the same level of excitement in whatever she does.

Within 72 hours of her move to England being announced, Sunday’s game against local rivals Gloucester-Hartpury was moved from Shaftesbury Park (the 2,000-capacity venue where the team usually play) to Ashton Gate, the 27,000-seater stadium which is home to Bristol City’s men’s and women’s soccer teams, as well as the Bears’ men’s rugby side.

At that point, there was no guarantee Maher, whose every move is being followed by documentary filmmakers from Hello Sunshine (a production company founded by actor Reese Witherspoon that focuses on telling women’s stories), would even feature in the match after she was named as a replacement on the team sheet 48 hours before kick-off. Yet, the team’s attendance record of 4,101, set in 2022, was smashed. For a standalone game in Premiership Women’s Rugby (PWR), there has been no bigger crowd.

Rose Kooper-Johnson is a fellow New Englander, from Rhode Island, and has been living in the UK for the past six years. The 29-year-old works at the Bristol-based University of the West of England in student communications and had never watched rugby live before Sunday.

“Hearing she was coming to Bristol was really exciting,” Kooper-Johnson tells The Athletic. “She has been on Dancing with the Stars (Maher finished as runner-up in that show in November) and she’s just so cool and inspiring. If she can be a catalyst for getting more people into women’s sports, then that’s amazing. She has that ability to bring people together.”

Maher takes a selfie with fans after making her debut for Bristol Bears (Dan Mullan/Getty Images)

Maher’s arrival in England was always going to be impactful.

Having helped the United States’ rugby union sevens women’s team dramatically win Olympic bronze on the game’s final play in Paris last summer, she has timed her move to the sport’s 15-a-side format, where the matches last over four times longer (80 minutes to 14), feature twice as many players on the pitch and games are generally more attritional, to perfection. This is a World Cup year and Maher is eyeing a place on the USA roster. The tournament kicks off with host nation England taking on the Americans on August 22.

Friends Lucy Parkinson, Elvira Berninger, Abby Bevan and Maria East had travelled 130 miles from Bournemouth on the English south coast for Sunday’s have-to-be-there moment. Rugby union team-mates for Ellingham & Ringwood RFC, they usually only attend international women’s fixtures.

“We love all the other players but she (Maher) was the instigator. We were 50/50, like, ‘Do we come just because of the Ilona Maher effect? Yeah, let’s enjoy the hype’,” Bevan tells The Athletic, while East added that the attention on Maher “can only be a good thing for rugby”.

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Chloe and Luke Glover are season-ticket holders for the Bears’ men’s team, so are regulars at Ashton Gate, but the couple had never watched a women’s game before being drawn in by ‘Maher fever’. “She has brought quite a lot of attention to it so we thought we would come and see what it is all about,” Luke says.

Queuing up near food trucks selling churros and barbecued pulled pork are Cathy and her 16-year-old daughter Jasmine, who herself plays rugby union. “She (Maher) has had a big impact on a lot of young girls starting and getting into the sport in general. It has been a big topic, Ilona joining,” Jasmine says. “There are a lot more people looking for teams to join around Bristol, and with her joining a lot more people have even just come here… It was a lot harder to get tickets this time.”

Dings Crusaders under-14s girls’ team did not need to worry about getting tickets, as many of their players were employed to retrieve any loose balls during Sunday’s match. Nellie MacDonald, 12, plays for Dings and feels Maher had made “a massive change to everything already”, and her mum, Sam, agrees, saying, “The amount of people that are here, you can already see it is bigger than before.”

Maher speaks with TNT Sports presenter Jenny Drummond after the match (Dan Mullan/Getty Images)

The game was shown live on TNT Sports in the UK, and the league shared a pre-match social media post detailing its kick-off time in various time zones.

Whenever Maher’s face was beamed onto the stadium’s big screen, huge cheers erupted from the thousands gathered in the Dolman Stand and South Stand. The decibels rose when her name was read out before kick-off and, again, when she came on as a replacement during the second half.

Playing on the wing and wearing knee pads and her now-iconic matte red lipstick, Maher burst into a nerve-calming tackle within seconds. The American likes to run with ball in hand, but Gloucester-Hartpury turned up the heat and gave the home side little room to manoeuvre in a match the visitors won 40-17, scoring six tries in total.

Though Maher failed to get a touch of the ball during her time in the game, her introduction lifted the crowd and the team — Bristol scored their third and final try four minutes after she was introduced.

Finally, an hour and 11 minutes after first beginning her lap of fan selfies following the final whistle, Maher sat down for her own post-match press conference.

“I just try to be as equal as possible, because they’re going to do so much for me as maybe I’m doing for them,” Maher said. “They bought a seat and that seat is going to lead to hopefully some more seats. Fans are the revenue we need to bring in to make this league bigger. So it’s almost, I feel, like my duty. They’re doing so much so I want to do more for them.

“Some people came from America. I had some people say they came to this game from Washington, D.C. to watch… I put those (social media) videos out there for them. I want them to feel confident and love themselves and play the sport and understand what the body is capable of. It’s always just really cool that they’re out there and they stay out there.”

Maher, humble yet radiating confidence, takes ownership of the empire she has created, something she has achieved without necessarily being the best player in women’s rugby.

“It’s cool to be the face of a sport that isn’t thought of as a women’s sport,” she said. “It’s a men’s sport. So to be the face of it and also the impact I’m having is felt across both men’s and women’s (rugby), I’ve had some of the best men’s players in the world be like, ‘Keep doing what you’re doing’ because I think everyone sees value in it. And if one rises, we all rise.

“I’m really proud of what I’ve done and the impact I’ve had on social media, not just in a rugby sense, in a body-positivity sense, the way people are treating themselves. So I’m proud. I think my family is 10-times prouder,” Maher added, with her sister, Olivia, who has moved to England with her, smiling from the back of the room. “And I love what I’m doing.”

Millions of people do.

(Top photo: Dan Mullan/Getty Images)

Culture

Test Your Knowledge of International Detective Fiction

Published

20 hours ago

January 7, 2025

Press Room

Test Your Knowledge of International Detective Fiction

A strong sense of place can deeply influence a story, and in some cases, the setting can even feel like a character itself. This week’s literary geography quiz highlights international detective characters cracking cases in their home cities. To play, just make your selection in the multiple-choice list and the correct answer will be revealed. Links to the books will be listed at the end of the quiz if you’d like to do further reading.