Sports | Fotoeins Fotografie

Posts from the ‘Sports’ category

Allgäu winter: Fellhorn in the German-Austrian Alps

Above: A group of skiers gather before their run near the Fellhorn summit.

As a product of the Canadian southwest, I’ve maintained a fascination with mountains. I don’t necessarily need to climb the mountains, but I’ve always been curious about the names of mountains, the reasons for their names, and the people who named them. I’m not always going to get answers, but if there’s a lift to take me to a view, I’m always game.

With an easy bus from Oberstdorf in the southwest corner of Germany, I’m headed 10 km south to Faistenoy for the gondola up to the summit of Fellhorn (2038 metres) among the Allgäu Alps. There’s a lot of snow up top with a depth of about 1.5 metres; skiing and snowboarding conditions look good in the Skigebiet Fellhorn-Kanzelwand (Fellhorn-Kanzelwand Ski Area). But what do I know? I don’t ski or snowboard, but the winter-afternoon light is decent on the smooth snowy landscape. I’m drawn to the information displays to learn more about Fellhorn and the mountains I’m seeing in the near 360-degree panorama. In the distance the flat-topped Hoher Ifen mountain looks like a multiple-layer cream-filled cake. I arrive quickly at a couple of conclusions: one, it’s fun to stand on a border between two countries at altitude, even if an international frontier is set somewhat arbitrarily; and two, I promise to return in the summertime to do a loop: return to Fellhorn, hike along the relatively flat ridge-line west, take the Kanzelwandbahn gondola down into Austria’s Kleinwalsertal, have a sip and nosh in one of the alpine towns, and return to Germany’s Oberstdorf on a local bus.

( Click here for images and more )

Vancouver: summer cricket at Stanley Park

Above/featured: Grouse Mountain looms over a cricket match at Upper Brockton, with the bowler delivering from the mountain end to the pavilion end.

It’s not typical 21st-century sport in North America, but it is Canada’s first summer sport. Many of cricket’s practitioners in Vancouver’s picturesque Stanley Park have roots from India and Pakistan; among them the shouts of “shabash” are heard often during play.

In childhood, I was enamored with baseball. With its similar origins, I discovered cricket with time spent in Australia, New Zealand, the Bahamas, and South Africa. The natural connection is the former British Empire. I began with T20, the shortest format of the game; with curiosity and time, my hunger encompassed the 50-over one-day format (ODI). It’s my start with the short white-ball format that I’ve developed an appreciation for the long format of the game with red-ball Test cricket.

But is the cricket ground at Vancouver’s Stanley Park “the most beautiful cricket ground in the world”? (With Table Mountain as the backdrop, some might proclaim Newlands Cricket Ground in Cape Town, South Africa as the most beautiful/scenic.)

( Click here for images and more )

NHL Black Hockey History Tour, black hockey, black hockey history, Jimi Hendrix Park, Northwest African American Museum, Seattle, Washington, USA, fotoeins.com

Black hockey history, NHL mobile museum in Seattle (2018)

When a city receives an expansion team, that immediately drives anticipation for a new pro sports presence and interest for an expected intraregional rivalry. It’s a perfect time for the professional sports league to come into town and speak to the city’s audience.

The new NHL Seattle Kraken ice hockey team will begin play in the 2021-2022 season, and regional bragging rights will begin immediately with an immediate regional rivalry with the Vancouver Canucks, not unlike the decades-old soccer rivalry between the Seattle Sounders and the Vancouver Whitecaps (which I first witnessed in the 1970s in the old original NASL).

But the following questions remain timely: For whom is ice hockey? What is the relationship between the sport and people of colour? What is the history of black people in professional hockey? I hope the following sheds a little bit of light on black hockey history.

NHL Black Hockey History Mobile Museum

In early 2020, a travelling museum exhibition highlighted how black Canadians, black Americans, and their respective communities have made important contributions to the winter sport of ice hockey at both amateur and professional levels.⁣ Presented in conjunction with the American Legacy Network, the NHL Black Hockey History mobile museum made its way throughout North America, stopping in 14 cities: Washington, DC; Detroit, MI; St. Louis, MO; Pittsburgh, PA; Ottawa, ON; Toronto, ON; Newark, NJ; Nashville, TN; Anaheim, CA; Los Angeles, CA; San Jose, CA; Portland, OR; Seattle, WA; and Tempe, AZ.

In a continuation of activities associated with Black History Month, Kim Davis, NHL executive vice president, wrote about what Black History Month meant to her, and what players of colour past and present have meant to the game of hockey (28 Feb 2020).

The mobile museum dropped anchor for its 4-day visit in Seattle in early March, with the first stop at Jimi Hendrix Park next to the city’s Northwest African American Museum.

( Click here for images and more )

ABQ: world’s largest hot-air balloon festival (2018)

What colourful and interesting sights of light and balloons you might see, whether it’s your first or the umpteenth time at the Albuquerque International Balloon Fiesta. Every year beginning the first weekend in October, hundreds of thousands of visitors descend upon central New Mexico to see several hundred hot-air balloons ascend into the skies over the Duke City.

To kick off our time in the American Southwest, we drove into Albuquerque for our first time in the city and to attend our first Balloon Fiesta. We purchased in advance tickets to day 1’s morning session with park-and-ride, day 2’s evening session with park-and-ride, and day 3’s morning session without park-and-ride.

For opening day, clear skies and crisp conditions waited for us as we struggled mightily out of bed, but headed out into the dark of the early morning with great anticipation. Even with massive crowds and some traffic chaos, the long wait was worth the sight of seeing the balloons as oval dots on the horizon and as shapely giants up close.

I have to mention the breakfast chile relleno burritos which everybody recommended we seek and try on the festival grounds. How about a version consisting of a New Mexico green chile stuffed with cheese and batter fried, enveloped in a scrambled egg and cheese mixture, all wrapped in a soft corn tortilla and lightly grilled to provide a little bit of outside crunch and crisp? That’s a big resounding yes to breakfast burritos and big balloons.

( Click here for images and more )

Munich: Memorials to the 1972 Olympics Massacre

Above/featured: Munich’s Olympic Park: Olympic Tower and the tent roof structure.

In my hockey-mad nation of birth, September 1972 is defined by the epic hockey Summit Series between Canada and the Soviet Union; the games and individual stories are stuff of legends. But high on my mind since childhood have been the tragic events that same month in Munich: the worst terrorist act in modern Olympics history.

The 20th Summer Olympics were under way in Munich, Germany, and “Die heiteren Spiele” (The serene Games) as they were called were the first summer games held in post-war Germany since the 1936 Berlin Olympics. Both Munich and Germany wanted to show a different peaceful and prosperous side to the world with the generation born after the Second World War.

However, the 1972 Games will also carry the stain of the “Munich Massacre” on 5-6 September. By crisis’ end, the 17 dead included eleven members of the Israeli Olympic team, one German police officer, and five Palestinian kidnappers. Many questions remained about pre-Game preparations and warnings about a possible attack, security measures, crisis management, and the failed attempt to liberate the hostages. Complete details of events remain murky even after 40 years. The disaster would damage the reputations of city, state, and country as well as international relations for years to come.

( Click here for images and more )