Are you tired of the IIHF?

International Ice Hockey Federation public relations czar Szymon Szemberg says he’s tired of Sidney Crosby and various, twentysomething hockey players claiming they’re too tired to play at the World Hockey Championship.

Well, I’m tired, too. Tired of Europeans who govern the Great Canadian Game holding a world championship that clashes with the Stanley Cup playoffs and calling it a world championship. It really is the “annual European springtime invitational.”

I’m tired of the IIHF forgetting that the NHL, whose fans pay players like Crosby, compressed its schedule in 2009-2010 to accommodate the Vancouver Olympics. Surely the IIHF must’ve noticed an increase in its Swiss bank account after the most-watched hockey tournament of all-time.

I’m tired of the IIHF neglecting opportunities to develop the game outside North America and Europe. Dear IIHF: did you hear about the economic boom in China and the construction of ice rinks all over Asia in the past decade?

I’m tired of the IIHF spending little time or money to develop women’s hockey and sledge hockey.

Most of all, I’m tired of the IIHF running its affairs like a secret society with a rule-breaking ex-referee as its president.

Rene Fasel was outed by a Swiss newspaper last year for alleged kickbacks. A Deloitte probe paid for by the IIHF was never published. Finally, after the Olympics, the International Olympic Committee said “tsk-tsk” to Fasel for favouring a friend, but it didn’t send Fasel to the penalty box.

Tiresome, isn’t it?

Cool Britannia or Tool Britannia?

It didn’t take long on May 19 for someone in cyberspace (do they still call it that?) to compare the phallic, one-eyed London 2012 mascots Wenlock and Mandeville to penises (can we say that on radio?).

What would you rather have? A union jack-draped bulldog named Winston with bad human teeth, wearing a bowler hat and monocle while hoisting a mug of room-temperature beer with his paw?

The mascots will be $30 million souvenir sales drivers for the next Summer Olympics and Paralympics, which already have a cubist logo that someone likened to Lisa Simpson getting ahead, if you know what I mean.



Can’t wait to see what kind of torch they’ll come up with in the new, Cool Britannia. Certainly it can’t top Vancouver’s joint-shaped torch.

The design of the Olympics, as we learned in Vancouver, is something that can never please all the people, all the time.

The least-controversial and perhaps most-popular element VANOC delivered was the look of the Games itself. Directed by the late Leo Obstbaum, the multi-layered, wavy green and blue, mountains and sea textured collage is almost all gone. You can still see some of it on the northeast side of the Pacific Coliseum.

Of course, VANOC had a rocky start in 2005 with its Ilanaaq the Inukshuk logo inspired by the English Bay inukshuk left over from Expo 86. Original artist Alvin Kanak never got recognition. Many people pointed out that there is no Inuit tribe in British Columbia, so why use a symbol of the north? The answer was easy. The federal government wanted to tell the world Canada was flexing its muscles in the Arctic. Don't trespass on our frozen tundra, eh!




The man becomes mountain-themed Paralympic logo was perhaps more suitable, but it was for the lower-profile Paralympics.

Mascots Miga, Quatchi and Sumi were one-part First Nations mythology and one-part cute Japanimation. Orange-toqued sidekick Muk Muk -- based on a real Vancouver Island marmot -- was never given the life-sized treatment.

Cuddly miniature versions are available at bulk liquidation sales for a fraction of the price paid by tourists at Games-time. (Hey, I thought sales records were set?)



So, welcome to the world, Wenlock and Mandeville. Because you’re British, someone probably told you already to keep a stiff upper lip. I’ll just tell you this from personal experience: A reader called me a dick once and I laughed at him.

While you’re ridiculed at home, you’ll be replicated by the millions in Chinese toy factories for the next two years. Just hope your bosses at London 2012 do what Vancouver 2010 executives failed to do: show and tell people where those factories are and how the workers are treated.

Make transparency a legacy of London 2012.

Vancouver 2010 didn’t have the heart and mind to be so bold.