Meet the Elite Football League of India.

It’s India’s first professional American-style football league, funded by a long list of Indian and US investors, including former NFL player and coach Mike Ditka, and former Green Bay Packers linebacker Brandon O’Neil Chillar.

The league has a lot of work to do before the official kick-off in November. For one thing, most of the players and coaches have to learn the sport. Some had never even heard of American football before.

On the field, coach JJ Lawson tells the aspiring players that guards have to be big, strong, and fast. Lawson is a big man, who coached high school football in Louisiana for 15 years. Now he is here training Indian players and coaches.

Lawson said that to play high level football, you need great athletes and that requires a large population.

“India is such a large country that I just feel like it’s a great place for it,” Lawson said.

So far, about 400 players have been recruited from all over India. They come to Pune for boot camp.

They look more like high school players than their beefy NFL counterparts. But they all have an athletic background.

Rajeev Dev Goel, head coach of the Pune Blacktigers, helped with the recruiting.

“We went to boxing clubs, we went to wrestlers, we went to judo places,” Goel said. “We even went to volleyball and basketball because we need some tall boys to collect the ball as wide receivers.”

Goel learned about football when he lived in the US, and that’s true for some of the players as well. Sameer Tejani studied at Temple University in Philadelphia, and he became an avid fan there.

“I’ve always been passionate for sports. But I never really got an opportunity to play a sport or represent a city or a country or even a club,” Tejani said. “So I thought, let me just give it a shot with American football.”

Tejani helps run his family’s business; he’s taking a break now from that. But most of the players come from poor villages where few people have seen football.

For Dinesh, who plays for the Chennai Swarm, the chance to try a new sport wasn’t his only motivation.

He said he’s making enough to send home 12,000 rupees a month, about $230 dollars, and the money will help with his sister’s wedding.

Dinesh showed his family some football on YouTube, and he said that it scared them at first, but they’re excited now. He said he’s sure other Indians will want to watch football on TV.

That’s what Kevin Dieball, in Arizona, wants to hear. As one of the league’s investors, he said India’s booming economy means football has huge potential in here — even though cricket has been India’s sport of choice since the British Raj.

“I just think [football’s] more of a thrilling game and the physical aspect of it is really big,” Dieball said. “As the culture shifts towards that, I think that’s how we can be as successful, or more successful, than cricket in that country.”

Dieball and his fellow investors ultimately hope to sell the teams to companies and wealthy individuals in India. They’re banking on the players becoming superstars, like Bollywood actors and cricketers.

That could take some time. For now, Ashutosh Rathod, the quarterback for the Mumbai Gladiators, said when he puts on the uniform, he feels transformed.

“It feels really good because it’s new, and if somewhere history will be written, our names will be there,” Rathod said, “because we started it.”

The two Central African countries are co-hosting the Africa Cup of Nations.

It is Africa’s biggest and most important sports competition.

The tournament kicks off Saturday in Bata, Equitorial Guinea.

Anchor Marco Werman talks to the BBC’s Matthew Kenyon, who is in Bata and anxiously counting down the minutes.

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The text below is a phonetic transcript of a radio story broadcast by PRI’s THE WORLD. It has been created on deadline by a contractor for PRI. The transcript is included here to facilitate internet searches for audio content. Please report any transcribing errors to theworld@pri.org. This transcript may not be in its final form, and it may be updated. Please be aware that the authoritative record of material distributed by PRI’s THE WORLD is the program audio.

Marco Werman: Tourists interested in the region’s wildlife may be scarce, but those interested in soccer are flooding to Gabon and its tiny neighbor, Equatorial Guinea. The two Central African countries are co-hosting the Africa Cup of Nations. It’s Africa’s biggest and most important sports competition. The tournament kicks off tomorrow in Bata, Equatorial Guinea. The BBC’s Matthew Kenyon is in Bata and anxiously counting down the minutes. How excited are the locals on the eve of the Africa Cup of Nations there in Equatorial Guinea, Matthew?

Matthew Kenyon: Well Marco, they are pretty excited but it’s not the kind of fan fervor that you’ve seen at World Cups and other Africa Cup of Nations. Equatorial Guinea is, it seems, at any rate, to be quite a subdued kind of a place. I mean, there are flags, there are posters. But certainly, people are really excited to see their football team competing on the continental stage for the very first time.

Werman: Now, we’ll see how subdued the fans are tomorrow when Equatorial Guinea takes on Libya.

Kenyon: [Laughs].

Werman: Now, it’s 16 national teams from across Africa are competing, Libya among them. Given the overthrow of Muammar Gaddafi and the turmoil that Libya experienced, how did Libya make it to the Africa Cup of Nations when traditional powerhouses like Egypt and Nigeria didn’t?

Kenyon: It was a fabulous qualifying performance, as you say, played out over the turmoil that was going on in their country back home. They started the competition playing under the flag of Colonel Gaddafi’s government and, midway through, the national team switched allegiance and at least one squad member left the camp and went to fight on the frontline. Many others, of course, had family and friends caught up in everything that was going on. But, they did it partly because of their skill as footballers and partly because, I think, they really, really wanted to achieve this goal because of what it would mean to, what is in some ways now, a new country. Egypt obviously were affected by what was going on in their country at the same time, but there were sound footballing reasons why they didn’t make it here as well, and likewise for Nigeria and Cameroon.

Werman: That’s an extraordinary story about Libya. It sounds like they are kind of a symbol of home almost for Africa and maybe for the Africa Cup of Nations.

Kenyon: Yes. If people are looking for great stories here, then Libya’s qualification and their possible progress out of a group which also includes Senegal, who are incredibly strong…if they make it out of that group, then they will have done very well.

Werman: Now, the last edition of the Africa Cup of Nations was in Angola and, frankly, it was a mess. Some listeners will recall that the Togolese team was violently ambushed on a highway there. Is Equatorial Guinea along with co-host Gabon prepared to make this one right?

Kenyon: I think they are. I mean, the security is very strong. All the teams are surrounded by security when they travel around the country and they are cloistered away in hotels which are very carefully watched over because memories of what happened to Togo two years ago are still very strong amongst everyone involved. In terms of the organization, this area where I’m sitting now, only a few months ago was a literal building site. They’re still doing a few fine touches, but the infrastructure appears to work.

Werman: The BBC’s Matthew Kenyon in Equatorial Guinea. Equatorial Guinea and Gabon are co-hosting the 28th edition of the Africa Cup of Nations which runs through February 12. Great to speak with you, Matthew. Thanks.

Kenyon: That’s my pleasure.

Copyright ©2009 PRI’s THE WORLD. All rights reserved. No quotes from the materials contained herein may be used in any media without attribution to PRI’s THE WORLD. This transcript may not be reproduced, in whole or in part, without prior written permission. For further information, please email The World’s Permissions Coordinator at theworld@pri.org.

On a busy sidewalk on Sunday, Dutch artist Kaspar König was busy using chalk to outline the slow biking track. It consisted of three lanes together, each stretching about 36 feet. The lanes were about 2 feet wide.

The idea is very simple. You start at one end, and try to make it to the other end as slowly as possible. There are two basic rules: you cannot let your bike stray from its lane, and you cannot put your foot down.

König grabbed a microphone, and tried to sell the idea to passers-by.

“The best thing is when quality time means taking a long time,” König said. “The idea is that people can bring their bikes, just the way they are. It’s in a public space, so they don’t need an invitation.”

König oversees the races, and enforces the rules. He also often encourages the contestants, with cries of “slower, slower.”

König, who loves bicycles, got the idea for his slow biking competition during some time spent at an art school in Beijing. He remembers being asked to compete in a slow bike race, and he took the second place. His prize was a bucket of milk, which he shared with the winner, who had been given breakfast cereal as a prize.

You would be wrong to think that slow biking is easy. In Basel, competitor after competitor discovered that it is difficult to keep your concentration on the busy sidewalk. Oblivious cyclists whizzed right through the course, as do cell-phone walkers with roller boards.

Some slow biking competitors were fighting their own demons, too.

“My time was 45 seconds,” said Basel resident Matthias Buess. “But to be honest, I had a beer before I tried it. Without the beer, I think I could do it in a minute. Maybe.”

To make matters worse at one point, a drunk took the microphone from König and belted out a song while the competitors were on the course.

König said he doesn’t mind any of this because, for him, slow biking is as much street art (or “reality hacking,” as he calls it), as a competition. Usually, König even adds his own obstacles. He has been known to encourage interpretative dancers to waltz through the course during the competition. He also usually gets local musicians to play music.

No musicians turned up on this day, so König unleashed one of his own artistic creations on the contestants. He calls it a “Guitar Bike.” As the name implies, it is a standard bike frame with five strings and an electric pick-up strong between the seat and the handlebars. There are also pick-ups near the spokes and wheels.

The result is a noise that jangles many a contestant’s nerves.

König has done slow biking competitions now in a few European cities and in New Orleans as well.

“I want to slow down myself too,” he said. I’m part of this society. I speed up myself, in a lot of things. But if you can slow down once in a while, it’s a very strong inner power.”

Slow biking seems to be catching on elsewhere as well. “The idea that you have to ride fast and intense doesn’t always appeal to the mainstream crowd,” said Mikael Colville-Andersen, who lives in Copenhagen, Denmark and started a blog called The Slow Bicycle Movement.

“We’re encouraging people to slow down, take it easy, and enjoy the ride. Look up at the birds and trees, instead of staring down at your handlebars wiping sweat from your eyes.”

Truth be told, Kristina Wagner spent hours on Sunday afternoon in Basel staring at her handlebars, lost in concentration as she tried to improve (or is it worsen?) her time.

Wagner said that taking time out was worth it “because everything is busy in life, and it’s a very good idea to slow down.”

Her son, Max, took second prize.

But it was a teenager named Yuri who came through with some last-minute heroics. His winning time was one minute and nine seconds.

König said the record in the competitions he has run is nearly seven minutes.

Of course, before I could speak with Yuri, he was off, quickly, on his ten speed. In his hand he clutched his grand prize, a can of WD-40.

“Sport? I suppose it’s our great distraction, but it’s also the great sort of bonding of Australian society, and people and culture,” said Sean Gorman, an academic from Curtain University in Perth.

I went to an Australian Rules Football Game in Melbourne with Gorman to try to find out why Australians love sport so much. “It’s a hard question to answer, but… it goes straight to our identity and the way we do things here in Australia.”

And the way they do things, Gorman insisted, is more intense than any silly old American baseball game or Brazilian soccer match. “Without a shadow of a doubt. When you talk to people from overseas, they are gobsmacked at just how popular this game actually is,” said Gorman.

I was myself gobsmacked at how passionate Gorman and others were in making their argument. To prove his point, Gorman even went through the personal humiliation of trying to sing his team’s fight song. He supports the lowly Fremantle Dockers.

I also got to hear the fans of the Melbourne Demons sing their fight song, a rousing ballad sung to the tune of George M. Cohan’s patriotic American song “You’re a Grand Old Flag.” The Demons’ lyrics: “It’s the emblem of the team we love.” (By the way, when I told people at the game their fight song was an American knockoff, they looked at me in disbelief.)

There are many theories as to why Australians cherish sport so much. First there’s the climate and space theory.

“It’s much easier to engage in sport in Australia because it has good weather and it has lots of room,” said David Rowe, a professor of cultural research at the University of Western Sydney.

Makes sense. Then there’s the theory that sporting culture in Australia is different because it’s not dominated by one or two main sports.

“You’ve been to Britain I’m sure, you know, (they’re) football mad, Italy is football mad, South America is football mad. But, not sport mad,” said Rowe. “What distinguishes Australia is a broader commitment to sport.”

I’d buy that. Australians seem to like just about anything with a winner and a loser.

Then, there’s the theory that Australians are just trying to get their mother’s attention.

“The British take notice of us because we bash ‘em up at Cricket,” said John Coates, the president of the Australian Olympic Committee.

Coates did issue a correction. “Or, we used to (bash ‘em up at cricket).”

And lastly, there’s the chip on the shoulder theory, as explained by Clive Allcock, an Australian psychiatrist who also writes about horse racing.

“Americans have got the rightful position of being one of the big nations in the world. And our competitiveness says we’d like to be up there, but obviously, we’re not so big, we haven’t got such a strong business culture. We can do well in sport. Being a smaller country, we can take on the world in sport and succeed, and succeed beyond sometimes our wildest expectations.”

Olympic Glory

In the unofficial medal table, Australia finished in 4th place at the Summer Olympics of 2000 and 2004. In those Games, the Aussies took home about half the medals that the Americans did. Not too shabby for a country with only 1/14th the population. Australia’s incredible success was no accident.

“Between 1980 and 2000, we imported 200 coaches, largely from Eastern Europe and Asia, in diving, in gymnastics, in rowing, in canoeing, in archery,” explained John Coates, the AOC president.

In just eight years, Australia more than doubled its medal haul. But then, the wheels fell off the bus. At the Beijing Summer Games in 2008, Australia dropped to sixth place. Newspapers depicted a country gripped by an identity crisis.

“The Brits beat us,” said Coates.

I offered: “It wasn’t like it was a disaster.”

He countered: “It was.”

Coates said that won’t happen in London next year. He said finishing outside of the top five is “not good enough.”

Coates told me the old Olympic ideal of just participating is “not the Australian ethos. We are very much about winning.”

At What Cost?

This determination to win at all costs is starting to be questioned among ordinary Australians. Taxpayers are paying an awful lot of money to train their athletes to win all those medals.

“Various people have tried to come up with calculations of the cost per gold medal,” said David Rowe at the University of Western Sydney. “One (calculation) I saw was $48 million per Australian, per medal, something of that nature.”

That’s at the very high end of spending, per capita, compared with other countries. Rowe didn’t think that’s an appropriate use of taxpayer dollars. He said that money could be better spent on community ball fields and local resources. That was also the conclusion of a well-publicized national report in Australia, referred to as “The Crawford Report.”

I met with Australian water polo Olympians Rebecca Rippon and Alicia McCormack and asked them if money should be spent on community sport or elite athletes? The two women said both are necessary.

“If you don’t put (money) into grass roots, then you’re not going to support those athletes enough as a grassroots athlete to come up and be an elite athlete in a high-performance sport,” said McCormack.

Rippon added, “If you want to people to aspire to do things, and there’s nothing for them at the end, then it’s really hard for them to continue and wonder why they’re putting in the work.”

Regardless, both women don’t buy the idea that they’re coddled elite athletes. The women get some money to train, but funding “really doesn’t even add up to your rent,” said McCormack.

And being an Olympic athlete requires long, long, long hours of training, with little glory and glamour for most Olympians.

“The only people that really know that you’re an Olympian are either people that you’ve grown up with, or if you come from a small community, people from there may know, or people within the water polo community. It’s not like I’d be walking down the street, and someone would say, ‘Ahh, there’s an Olympian,’” said McCormack.

But once the Olympics are on TV, McCormack and Rippon know they become role models. And the two women said that matters.

But investing in role models and national sporting prestige is no longer resulting in widespread public participation. People aren’t getting off their couches. Australia has an alarming obesity problem among its young people.

Still, for the time being, that hasn’t put a dent in funding elite sports. Last year, the Australian government boosted the budget for training top athletes by more than 20 percent.

So, Australians remain as obsessed as ever about sports: just watching them, not playing.

Senegal’s wrestlers, though, are allowed to fight each other with their bare fists.

It’s one of the only countries in the world where that is legal.

Professional wrestlers are superstars in Senegal, pulling in fees of hundreds of thousands of dollars for a single fight. And for many poor young men, wrestling offers the only chance to earn a good living.

In the dying sun of a Dakar afternoon, two hundred young hopefuls, dressed in cotton shorts stand punching at the air.

There is just a single trainer.

Many of the boys can not read or write. Either they left school at an early age, or they simply did not have the chance of getting an education.

It may not look like much, but this wrestling school, in the heart of one of the city’s poorest suburbs is training some of the country’s highest-paid sportsmen.

The school’s top wrestler, Balla Gaye Deux, will earn 75 million francs in his next fight, around $160,000.

In a country where the average annual income is just over a thousand dollars, and around half the population is unemployed, wrestling has become a way out of poverty and unemployment for thousands of young Senegalese men.

Mor Seck, 23, is a professional wrestler. For him, wrestling is a serious job.

“I became a wrestler to support my family. We train all day long, from 6 in the morning until 6 at night. I get up at 5.30 in the morning, get ready, then at 6 o’clock I am at the beach to train. At 10 I go to the gym, then at 5pm we come here to the school to practise wrestling. Really, it’s very hard,” Seck said. “I’ve given my whole life to wrestling, I don’t know anything else. I’ve concentrated my whole life, all my energy, to become a champion. My dream is to be a champion, one day.”

Wrestling is big business in Senegal. Unlike in much of Africa, soccer fails to pull in the crowds here. So, thousands of fans flock to the stadiums on the weekends to cheer on their favourite wrestlers.
Sponsors like Orange, the French telecom company, pour money into the game to get their brands seen on national and international TV.

Thierno Ka is from the National Wrestling Board.
“Yes, it is the number one sport these days in terms of audience, but in terms of money invested in it, the government does not help us,” he said. “We have no subsidy, we are finding ways out of sponsorship but we don’t have money from the government. We don’t have a national arena, we are squatting football pitches and people are starting complaining, moaning, and saying this is not a place for wrestling. But if we don’t organise it in those football places, we will never have any place to do it.”

The majority of professional wrestlers leave school or their low-paid jobs as carpenters and metal-workers to enter training. Before they start to win their fights, they have to rely on their families to support them.

The hard work and discipline needed to keep going is fuelled only by one thing: the dream of making it to the top, and that one day they will be able to support their families in return.

But it’s not just hard work which makes a successful wrestler. There is also the “marabout.”

“To be a wrestler, first of all you need a weapon, so that you’re protected,” said one-time Olympic boxing champion Balla Gaye. “The marabout gives you that, it’s a weapon for us Africans.”

Gaye is now the head of this wrestling school. He has a number of Islamic spiritual doctors – or marabouts – that he consults to ensure his wrestlers’ success.

They give the wrestlers special potions to drink and bathe in before the fights; heals them when they’re injured, and gives them talismans containing Koranic scripts to protect them from their opponent’s own marabout’s powers.

“Even if you train hard, you’ll go and see a marabout as well,” Gaye said. “It’s the marabout who makes a wrestler a champion.

Whether it’s the marabouts, the money, or the superstar status, bare-fist wrestling has overtaken football as Senegal’s most popular sport.

Senegalese men and women are proud to support an African game, and they love a performance.

When the matches are underway, the two fighters paw each other patiently, waiting for a moment to strike.

Once they have their opponent in a headlock, the fighters punch each other in the face, hoping to weaken their adversary before throwing him to the ground.

All around, dancers dressed in traditional clothes and sabar drummers bang out a deafening beat. The atmosphere is electric.

• Aboriginal Canadians divided over Vancouver Olympics

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This text below is a phonetic transcript of a radio story broadcast by PRI’s THE WORLD. It has been created on deadline by a contractor for PRI. The transcript is included here to facilitate internet searches for audio content. Please report any transcribing errors to theworld@pri.org. This transcript may not be in its final form, and it may be updated. Please be aware that the authoritative record of material distributed by PRI’s THE WORLD is the program audio.

MARCO WERMAN:  The Vancouver Olympics were the first to officially involve native, or indigenous, groups.  Four of Canada’s first nations co-hosted the games.  For them it’s now time to ask that pesky question facing all Olympic hosts:  was it worth it?  Here’s more from The World’s Andrea Crossan.

ANDREA CROSSAN:  It was hard to miss the indigenous influence on these Olympics.  The opening ceremonies highlighted Canada’s native ancestry.  And then there was the Aboriginal Pavilion in Vancouver.  Those are Inuit throat singers performing to a standing-room only crowd.  The Pavilion is one of several places where visitors to the Olympics and Paralympics can learn more about Canadian native culture.  The coalition of aboriginal groups co-hosting the Games is called the Four Host Nations.  Tewanee Joseph is the CEO.  He says that the Games are a perfect opportunity to show the world that there’s more to native communities than poverty and social ills.

TEWANEE JOSEPH:  For all too long what you see in this country is despair, distraught, anger, frustration and our young people, what we wanted to do is share with them and celebrate something that’s good because we are good people.  We’re proud people.  And when you look at the images that we put forward in these Games, we want to change the way people view us.  We want to break the stereotypes of the dime-store Indian.  I think it’s a turning point in this country where people need to see what’s good about our culture.

CROSSAN: Visitors to the Games saw symbols of native culture everywhere.  The Vancouver Olympic logo is an Inuit symbol, it’s called an inukshuk.  It’s a stone formation that’s been used for centuries by the Inuit as a guide marker through arctic terrain.  And Olympic medals featured a native design as well.  But some aboriginal leaders say that the organizers just exploited native culture.

GRAND CHIEF STEWART PHILLIP:  Canada, and particularly Vancouver, played the indigenous card and they did so very successfully.

CROSSAN: That’s Grand Chief Stewart Phillip.  He’s the President of the Union of British Columbia Indian Chiefs.  His group represents 80 native communities.  Phillip refused to participate or support the Games.  He admits there may be some gain for Canadian indigenous communities like the cultural centers that are part of the Olympic legacy plan.  But he doesn’t think there will be much else to show for it.

PHILLIP:  The Olympics is very much like the proverbial circus that comes to town and everybody takes time out, goes down and enjoys the rides and glitter and glamour and then it’s gone.  What’s left in its place is the empty lot and the litter and a few memories of the good times that people had when it was in town.

CROSSAN: Chief Phillip says what Olympic visitors didn’t see is the harsh reality of life for many indigenous Canadians.  Well it’s universal throughout this country that first nation’s communities are economically depressed.  There’s massive unemployment.  Health conditions in first nations’ communities is in a state of crisis.  The housing conditions are absolutely atrocious.  The conditions that exist today that will exist tomorrow and next week and next year are really nothing to celebrate.

GAIL SPARROW:  That’s Musquem land; we own that golf course, so it’s a public golf course.  Its 18 holes.

CROSSAN: Gail Sparrow is the former Chief of the Musquem tribe, one of the Four Host Nations.  Those four are the only native communities that will directly benefit from the Olympics.  Each Host Nation gets “legacy money”, lump sum payment of round 18 million dollars.  Sparrow says the Musquem are going to use that money to build a gymnasium.  But she wishes organizers had done more to encourage tourists to visit her community.

SPARROW: Come to our world, listen to our song, see our dancing, look at our carvers and our weavers and our knitters instead of seeing it through a window down in the commercial area downtown Vancouver.

CROSSAN: Sparrow’s community hasn’t had many Olympic visitors.  The Musquem Nation isn’t the neediest of native communities.  Sparrow admits her tribe is fairly well off.  But it still has many of the problems that affect poor reservations.

SPARROW: We may look like we’re better off with our housing, we may be better off with our buildings, but inside those homes, the people aren’t.  That’s where it’s hidden.  I go visit some of those people that say Gail I don’t have any more milk for my baby.

CROSSAN: Given that reality, some argue that there wasn’t enough financial gain for the tribes and that the Games were just a marketing of Indian culture.  But Four Host Nations CEO Tewanee Joseph still sees the Vancouver Olympics as a plus for Canada’s native communities.

JOSEPH: People will leave and want to learn more about our people.  And that’s a turning point, I think, in this country where we’ve been in the shadows on the outside looking in.  Now we’re at the forefront and we’re full partners in the Games and I think Canada will change because of it, because of the new relationships and the openness.  The world will view our people very differently.  I think our people will view the world differently.

CROSSAN: For The World, I’m Andrea Crossan, Vancouver.

Copyright ©2009 PRI’s THE WORLD. All rights reserved. No quotes from the materials contained herein may be used in any media without attribution to PRI’s THE WORLD. This transcript may not be reproduced, in whole or in part, without prior written permission. For further information, please email The World’s Permissions Coordinator at theworld@pri.org.

• BBC coverage of the Vancouver Olympics
• Vancouver 2010 homepage

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This text below is a phonetic transcript of a radio story broadcast by PRI’s THE WORLD. It has been created on deadline by a contractor for PRI. The transcript is included here to facilitate internet searches for audio content. Please report any transcribing errors to theworld@pri.org. This transcript may not be in its final form, and it may be updated. Please be aware that the authoritative record of material distributed by PRI’s THE WORLD is the program audio.

MARCO WERMAN: The Winter Olympics in Vancouver officially start tonight.  But the games got off to a terrible start even before the opening ceremony got underway.  There was a fatal accident at the Whistler Sliding Center.  An athlete training for the luge competition was killed.  His name is Nodar Kumaritashvili and he was 21 years old.  The World’s Katy Clark has been following Olympic preparations today.  Katy, certainly not the kind of news anybody wanted as the Olympics get underway.  What happened exactly?

KATY CLARK: Well Kumaritashvili who was part of the Georgian delegation lost control of his sled near the finish line.  He went over the track wall and struck an unpadded steel pole.   They tried to revive him on site then rushed him to a hospital where he was reported to have died and I.O.C. President Jacques Rogas said today issuing a statement saying that the death clearly casts a shadow over these games.

MARCO: Now apparently other athletes have expressed concerns about the safety of the Whistler Sliding Center, that’s where the luge and other similar competitions are due to take place.  Yesterday in fact an Australian woman luger almost lost control in training at that track and said to what extent are we little lemmings that they just throw down the track?  Katy, just how dangerous is this track?

KATY: The track at Whistler has a reputation as one of the fastest and most dangerous in the world.  In recent weeks several teams have raised concerns about it.  And these guys aren’t afraid of the speed so they’re not being wimps about all of this stuff.  And there have been claims that the athletes haven’t had enough time to train on this track and that can also increase the risk of injuries.

MARCO: Awful news indeed.  Presumably the games will go on but let’s move onto some other stuff here in Vancouver before the crash the big worry was the weather.  What’s the forecast now?  What else are people talking about that?

KATY: Oh rain in the forecast through next week so fans, spectators and athletes who are not competing advised to bring their umbrellas along with them.  I mean not that unusual for that area but when you’re hosting the Winter Olympics and you have to truck in snow it’s a little bit strange.  The Canadians are also doing their best to give visitors a big Canadian welcome and they’re aiming to take advantage of being hometown favorites by shooting for a record number of medals.

MARCO: Katie what else are we, should we be looking for on the eve of these Winter Games?

KATY: Well there’s going to be a bunch of African athletes competing, which is very interesting.  Not medalling likely though, and look for Iran’s first female athlete at these games.  She’s an alpine skier.  Pakistan is also making its alpine skiing debut in Vancouver.

MARCO: We’ll leave it there, The World’s Katy Clark.  Thanks very much.

KATY: You’re very welcome.

Copyright ©2009 PRI’s THE WORLD. All rights reserved. No quotes from the materials contained herein may be used in any media without attribution to PRI’s THE WORLD. This transcript may not be reproduced, in whole or in part, without prior written permission. For further information, please email The World’s Permissions Coordinator at theworld@pri.org.

• BBC coverage of the Vancouver Olympics
• Winter Olympics photo gallery
• Vancouver 2010 homepage
• On The World: The Numbers Behind the Olympics

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MARCO WERMAN: Mild winters are not unusual for Vancouver, British Columbia.  This one has been especially wet too but starting today organizers of the 2010 Winter Olympic Games in Vancouver will have something other than the weather to talk about.  It’s time for the athletes to do their thing.  Spectators should still keep their umbrellas handy though.  The World’s Katy Clark previews the games, which officially open tonight.

KATY CLARK: The ten day forecast for Vancouver calls for rain and temperatures reaching the low 50s.  Still the Canadian hosts aim to make this the best winter games ever.

JOHN FURLONG: If you want to make a difference smile, even if you’re not having a good day and it breaks the world.

KATY: That’s Chief Executive of the Vancouver Organizing Committee John Furlong instructing volunteers to smile at everybody and to give visitors a warm happy Canadian hug.   Meantime Canada’s hoping to scoop up a record number of medals.  Canada’s always strong in hockey.  The country is also expected to be a metal contender in the Winter Games’ newest addition, skicross.

MALE: It’s the all important web section, very critical to have your time just right in here Todd…

KATY: Skicross features four skiers racing down a course simultaneously.  They encounter jumps, banks and whatever else the designers dreamt up.  Skicross is making its Olympic debut after winning over fans at the X Games.  Another sport Canada is hoping to dominate is curling.  But Canada will have some competition this year from China.  China set its sights on winning a curling medal several years ago and hired a Canadian coach to turn them into contenders.  A lot of attention in Vancouver will also be on the African athletes competing.  Seven African nations will be represented.  None is expected to win any medals, but that’s not worry skier [PH] Qwame Ncruma Acheampong of Ghana.  The Snow Leopard as he’s known hopes to inspire young boys and girls in Ghana to believe that nothing’s impossible, not even a skier from a country with virtually no snow.

QWAME ACHEAMPONG: I am a guinea pig and an experiment.  If I can make my experiment work, then is approaching easier for the youngsters,

KATY: Pakistan is also making it’s alpine skiing debut in Vancouver and Iran will send it’s first ever female to the Winter Games.  Of course it can’t be an Olympics without a doping scandal.  Russia was recently warned to get its anti-doping program together after several of its athletes tested positive for banned substances.  Officials are keeping a close eye on Russia, which hosts the next Winter Games in Sochi in 2014.  Lest we forget women’s figure skating this year’s biggest rivalry is between a South Korean and a Japanese skater.  And in case you’re wondering about the mascots for the Vancouver games…

[MASCOT CLIP]

KATY: Sumi is an animal spirit who wears the hat of an orca whale, flies with the wings of a mighty thunderbird and runs on the legs of a bear.  Quachi is a young Sasquatch and Miga is part killer whale and part bear.  All three draw on native legends of the Pacific Northwest and they’re pretty darn cute.  Just the type of little guys who can help sell a lot of Olympic merchandise.  For The World this is Katy Clark.

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Photo: Handout/Getty Images

Now, a little physics for you. According to chaos theory, the wings a butterfly flapping over the Amazon can trigger a tornado in Texas. By the same token, a car accident involving the world’s wealthiest and best-known golfer can trigger a massive uptick in global sales of an obscure book. That’s Tiger Woods’ SUV at right, photographed in the aftermath of the crash near his Florida home. The book on the floor of the car is the nearly out-of-print Get a Grip on Physics, written by British professor John Gribbin, who is currently a Visiting Fellow in Astronomy at the University of Sussex. Anchor Marco Werman speaks with Professor Gribbin about the book.

• Get a Grip on Physics on Amazon
• John Gribbin’s homepage
• Article on sales of the book in The Guardian newspaper

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MARCO WERMAN:  Now, a little physics for you.  According to Chaos Theory, the wings of a butterfly flapping over the Amazon can end up triggering a tornado in Texas.  By the same token, Tiger Woods’ SUV accident in Florida can trigger worldwide sales of an obscure book.  Let me explain.  The book is called, “Get a Grip on Physics,” and news crews caught a glimpse of it in Tiger Woods’ car.  The author is British professor, John Gribbin.  He’s a Visiting Fellow in Astronomy at the University of Sussex in Southern England.  And he’s with us now, taking a break from marking exam papers.  So professor, a bit of schadenfreude perhaps, over Tiger Woods’ having this fender-bender?  You must be pleased.

JOHN GRIBBIN:  Ah, yes.  I’m delighted to have had some publicity.  It’s always good to get attention.  I just wish it had been a current book that was actually in the shops and available.  This one was completely sold-out within a day or two of the accident.

WERMAN:  Oh my gosh!  So does that mean it’s out of print?

GRIBBIN:  It is, yeah.  I’ve just done …  Before I came on to talk to you, I had a look on Amazon, and it says, “This book is now unavailable, and we don’t know if it will ever be available again.”  So there you go.  But it’s still good to have a bit of attention, and a bit of fun out of it.

WERMAN:  Ha, ha.  Were you surprised to see the copy of your book in Tiger Woods’ car?

GRIBBIN:  Initially, very surprised.  I mean, you think, “What’s a golfer doing reading a book on physics;” and then, of course, “Why shouldn’t he?”  And to some extent, he is my target audience.  I write books not for scientists, but for people who are interested in Science, but haven’t got a science background.  And I guess he’s probably, like many of us, heard stories about what’s happening in Geneva with the Large Hadron Collider experiments, and thought he’d like to find out a bit more about the physics behind it all, and that’s just what my book is for.

WERMAN:  So why do you think that Tiger Woods had it in his possession to learn about the Hadron Collider in Switzerland as opposed to [OVERLAPPING] maybe …

GRIBBIN:  I think that [OVERLAPPING] …

WERMAN:  … giving him some help with his golf stroke?

GRIBBIN:  Yeah, I think so.  I think we’ve had a lot fun with puns about grits and stuff, and drivers and the laws of physics; Newton’s laws of light; golf balls, and what happens when you hit a car window with a golf club.  But I suspect that the truth is, that it was genuinely an interest in physics, and also a good …  Of course, we’re assuming it’s his book.  It may be his wife’s book, that she had left in the back of the car.

WERMAN:  You’re something of a master at writing popular science books, but also a talented biographer.  I understand you’ve written a biography of Buddy Holly?  How did that come about?

GRIBBIN:  Ah yes.  Well I’ve been a long-time fan of Buddy Holly—I mean, since I was a teenager.  And with his anniversary [INAUDIBLE] the right word of his death coming up earlier this year, I just was having lunch with my publisher, and I said just casually, “You know, of course, I like writing science books, but what I’d really like is to write about Buddy Holly,” and he went, “Hummm …, better get back to you on that.”  And next day he got back to me said, “How quickly can you do it?”  So I did it.  Now, that’s very-much a labor of love.  I really enjoyed doing that one.

WERMAN:  And John Gribbin, do you like golf?

GRIBBIN:  No.  I’ve never played it seriously.  I sometimes sort-of hacked around with my son—he’s quite keen—but it’s not a game that appeals to me at all.  So, it’s a total mystery why my book should appeal to him.

WERMAN:  Ha, ha.  Maybe you could get up at least enough to write a quick biography of Tiger Woods, perhaps?

GRIBBIN:  It’s always a possibility.  I suspect someone else may be on the case already, but I’ll bear that in mind.

WERMAN:  Well, to riff on the unforgettable words of Buddy Holly, “Well alright, we’ll leave it there.”  Thanks a lot.  John Gribbin, scientist and author, speaking to us from Sussex, England.

GRIBBIN:  It’s a pleasure.  Thank you.

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Watch the Snow Leopard in action:

• Ghana Ski Team

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MARCO WERMAN: This is The World. I’m Marco Werman. Every time the Olympic Games roll around there’s usually one or two competitors who are just a bit surprising – fish out of water. Take the famous Jamaican bobsled team who took part in the 1988 winter Olympics in Calgary. Well the next winter games get underway 101 days from now in Vancouver and there will be another unusual participant but he won’t be there just to make up the numbers as The World’s Alex Gallafent reports.

ALEX GALLAFENT: Kwame Nkrumah-Acheampong is a slalom skier. He happens to be from Ghana. Not a lot of snow there. But he happens to love throwing himself down snow-covered mountains at high speed.

KWAME NKRUMAH-ACHEAMPONG: Unless you’ve been at the top of a giant slalom or super [PH] G course looking down and looking at the slick slope, all the gates, and everybody looking in your face, waiting to see what you can do, it’s really hard to understand why people go into ski races when they know they can break their legs, their necks, their back. It’s just a wonderful sport.

GALLAFENT: And Acheampong is good at it. He’s just qualified to represent Ghana at next year’s Olympics – the country’s first representative at the winter games. Oh and he only started skiing six years ago.

ACHEAMPONG: I got a job at the indoor ski center, picked up a pair of snowblades and had a go.

GALLAFENT: That indoor ski center was in the UK, the country where Kwame Nkrumah-Acheampong lives today. He’d left Ghana to pursue a master’s degree in tourism management but school was expensive. He had to get a job. Working as a receptionist at a sport’s center seemed a good fit. Free indoor skiing was a bonus.

ACHEAMPONG: I just did it for the fun of doing it. [INDISCERNIBLE] every staff member who worked there. So I just had a go. And it’s kind of snowballed and I find myself heading to Vancouver.

EDDIE EDWARDS: I just think he should go there and enjoy every minute of it.

GALLAFENT: That’s Eddie Edwards also in the UK. Over two decades ago he captured the world’s attention at the Calgary games. Eddie Edwards was known as the Eagle. In regular life Edwards worked as a plasterer. He still does in fact. But at the Olympics his quixotic mission was to excel at the ski jump. He didn’t. Eddie the Eagle Edwards was depending on your perspective a hero of amateurs everywhere of simply the worst ski jumper ever to appear at the Olympics.

EDWARDS: There were those who thought this is great and that was exemplifying the whole Olympic spirit. And there were those who felt I wasn’t an athlete and shouldn’t have been there.

GALLAFENT: Eddie Edwards expects Kwame Nkrumah Acheampong will get the same kinds of reaction in Vancouver.

EDWARDS: I think he knows and everybody else knows that I don’t think he’s going to win a medal or go even close. But he should go out there and enjoy the whole experience of being in the Olympics and do the best he can. That’s all everybody can expect of him and just enjoy it really.

GALLAFENT: But hold on says the Ghanaian skier who has a nickname of his own – the snow leopard.

ACHEAMPONG: I think Eddie the Eagle let the whole fun side of what he was doing take over you know what he was trying to achieve and instead of being looked upon as a professional sports person he became a joke.

GALLAFENT: Ouch. The snow leopard isn’t messing around here. When he has the funding he trains in the Italian Alps and he’s far from the worst Olympic level skier around. Still Kwame Nkrumah Acheampong is realistic about his Olympic chances.

ACHEAMPONG: I can’t win the races I go into. [INDISCERNIBLE] tough. So skiing is a sport which just has an endless challenge for me. And I don’t want to look at the final table of athletes and see myself at the bottom. I’d want at least five other athletes to be behind me.

GALLAFENT: You wouldn’t bet against him. For The World I’m Alex Gallafent.

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• Toko Kyudojo
• More on zen archery

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JEB SHARP: During the London Olympics, venues usually associated with one sport will be used for others.  For example, a famous cricket stadium will play host to Olympic archery.  It’ll be a peaceful place for a competitive sport.  Here’s the reverse.  That’s New York City, a noisy place to find a very peaceful pursuit, as The World’s Alex Gallafent discovers.

ALEX GALLAFENT:  The first clue comes in the elevator.  Ten of us are squished together inside, all headed six floors up, but only I seem to feel any discomfort.  Everyone else is calm, motionless, like they know some essential, secret truth.  Must be imagining it.  Anyway — this is the Shambhala Center in New York, a place for meditation and, this evening, archery practice.  Now not competitive archery, with colorful target rings and gold medals, but kyudo, Japanese Zen archery, the way of the bow.  Evening practice begins with ten minutes silence.  Zen archery is meditation in action.  Hitting the target isn’t the point.  Archery is simply the physical form that the meditation takes.  After years of practice, the archer learns to kind of remove himself from the act of shooting the arrow, thereby achieving, well, Zen.  It’s hard to get a handle on that kind of thing.  But in Japan, Zen archery is very much part of the culture.  Many schools offer after-school kyudo clubs, for instance.  In the west, it’s almost a secret.  There are only about 15 small kyudo groups here in the US.  One of the first Western attempts to describe kyudo came in 1953, in a book called “Zen in the Art of Archery.”  The author, a German philosophy professor named Eugen Herrigel, studied archery in Japan for six years.  Afterwards he wrote:

READER:  ”I gradually came to realize that only the truly detached can understand what is meant by ‘detachment.’”

GALLAFENT: In other words, he could talk about Zen and he could see other people practicing Zen archery.  But if really wanted to figure it out, he had to experience kyudo himself.  That’s a lesson a handful of Americans have taken on board.

CHARLES POTTER: This is a kyudo ibah, which means a practice place.

GALLAFENT: That’s Charles Potter.  He’s in his 50s.  He sports a silver ponytail and wears a Japanese archer’s tunic.  He’s been coming here for years.

POTTER:  And we are students of Kanjuro Shibata Sensei, who is the 20^th generation bow maker to the emperor of Japan.

GALLAFENT: No such luminaries here this evening, and the setting is not exactly imperial, just a room with white walls and a wooden floor.  A series of puffy cubes, the targets, are lined up along one wall, and opposite, only a few feet away– remember, accuracy’s not the point– there’s an array of bows, in three sizes.  None of them is kid-sized.

LEON: This is the smallest they have.

GALLAFENT: That’s Leon.  He’s eight, and this is his fifth time trying to work out the mysteries of Zen archery.

LEON: I did two times this year and one time the year before, and then once when I was at rites of passage.

GALLAFENT: What’s rites of passage?

LEON:  <laughs>

GALLAFENT: Leon confirms the feeling I had in the elevator, that these archers hold the secret and I’m not in on it.  Indeed, Japanese archery comes with the clichéd cautions, things like, “it takes a decade just how to learn to hold the bow.”  Charles Potter says there are stories of those who have struggled for ten years only to be told:

POTTER:  “Another ten.”

GALLAFENT: But it turns out that’s not the way of this ibah.  Everyone’s welcome, so long as they’ve completed a short introductory course.  That’s what one of the new students here in New York tonight, Jeff, in his late 20s, has come to do.

JEFF:  I actually was a competitive archer as a young person. I stopped when I was about 18, but prior to that, it was sort of part of my life in a big way.

GALLAFENT: So this will be a shift, non competitive archery.

JEFF:  Yes, it’s a very big shift, but I think that part of my movement away from it was that I was sort of overwhelmed by the competition. It got to the point where it just wasn’t meaningful for me.  And this is actually the first time that I’m ever really doing, so I’m very intrigued to see how this goes.

GALLAFENT: The experienced archers take their bows and fetch their arrows.  They line up opposite the targets, form the correct body shape, ready the bow, raise the bow, spread the arms, draw the bow full.  And then, release.  For The World, I’m Alex Gallafent in New York.

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Is there a sporting man, woman (or animal) who you think hasn’t gotten the recognition they deserve? Leave a comment below.

• More information on the book
• Listen to Tim Harris on BBC Radio 4′s ‘Today’ program

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MARCO WERMAN: I’m Marco Werman.  This is the World.  You know, part of the appeal of organized sports is its constancy, the rules, the techniques for winning.  They’re the same year after year, generation after generation.  Well, you might think they are but it’s just not true. You can read all about it in a new book by Tim Harris.  It’s called “Players, Two Hundred Fifty Men, Women and Animals who Created Modern Sport.”  Tim Harris is in London and Tim, help us out here.  What are the Ripley’s Believe it or Not facts that we can take to our next dinner party and just completely gob smack our guests with about men, women and animals who created modern sports?

TIM HARRIS:  Oh gosh, I suppose it depends what kind of sports you like, really.

WERMAN:  Well, let’s start with the men who or a man who created modern sport that we’ve never heard of.

HARRIS:  Well, I’ve got a chap who changed the way that we jump on horses.  Is that any good for you?

WERMAN:  That’s a great story.  Who’s he?

HARRIS:  This is an Italian lieutenant called Federico Caprilli and I don’t know if you’ve ever seen ancient pictures of people jumping over things on horses, but they’re always leaning back but Caprilli was the first man to realize if you want to jump over something, you’ve actually got to lean forward because there was this notion that you had to lean back on a horse to save its front legs and Caprilli sensed this was completely mad and was the first guy to sort of use photography to study real horses and discovered that they always land on their front legs and that if you lean forward, you get a much better center balance so for this insight, he was banished from his riding school where he taught and he was exiled to the south of Italy, until someone actually tried this and discovered it did work beautifully and in fact, it worked so beautifully that you could even ride around with no reigns on and so he was elevated to be the head of the Italian Cavalry.

WERMAN:  Wow, so he was …

HARRIS:  Which is a nice story.

WERMAN:  He was kind of a radical.

HARRIS:  He was a radical.  He was a genuine sporting radical, someone who realized that everyone was doing something absolutely wrong that they accepted as being right for hundreds of years.

WERMAN:  Remind us of his name again.

HARRIS:  Federico Caprilli.

WERMAN:  Federico Caprilli.  That’s not like the Caprilli Lean or anything like that? It didn’t get a name out of it?

HARRIS:  No, he didn’t.  I mean remarkably few things people lend their name to.  I mean we have a few.  We have the [SOUNDS LIKE] Fursbree flop and in soccer we have the [SOUNDS LIKE] Croif turn but …

WERMAN:  Johan Croif, the great Dutch player.

HARRIS:  The great Dutch player, Johan Croif.

WERMAN:  How about women?

HARRIS:  Well I quite fancy Annette Kellerman who’s sort of a contemporary of Federico Caprilli and is forgotten as a sports woman for the very good reason that she never really was a sports woman.  She was a professional.  She wasn’t allowed to compete in a lot of events but basically she was a pioneering swimmer.  She pioneered women’s [SOUNDS LIKE] kruel.  She was one of the first women to wear a semi-sensible bathing suit.

WERMAN:  And where is she from?

HARRIS:  She was originally from Australia.  She was a great swimmer but her family ran out of money and she started doing exhibitions at the Melbourne Aquarium and as a consequence, she sort of gave birth to synchronized swimming.

WERMAN:  And remind us of her name, too.

HARRIS:  Annette Kellerman.

WERMAN:  Annette Kellerman.

HARRIS:  Annette Kellerman.

WERMAN:  Alright if we go to animals who have created modern sport, they had a real role in this crazy sport in Afghanistan called [SOUNDS LIKE] Bhuzkashi which is a precursor to polo and was actually played with not a ball but a carcass of a goat.  I’m sure your animals did something probably a little more dignified in creating sport.

HARRIS:  The one I particularly like is an unnamed Scottish terrier who was very important in British football.  The story goes that there was a chap who was planning to build a big athletic stadium in London, the first ever big athletic stadium and he had a partner. This guy’s name was [SOUNDS LIKE] Gosmier.

WERMAN:  And what year is this about?

HARRIS:  This is 1904 and this was the first big stadium ever planned for London and had this great plan which was going to have a big combined athletics and soccer stadium.  He was going to invite in the local side,  Phylum, and he was also going to bring in the London Athletic Club and this was all looking pretty good until Phylum said that they didn’t want to come and what happened was the dog bit his potential partner, the London Athletic Club, which could have broken the whole thing up but in fact, the guy reacted so well that Gosmier decided this was someone he could really do business with and they went ahead and this stadium is now Stanford Bridge, which is the home of Chelsea, who are the you know, most successful football team at the moment in the country and do you know, if it hadn’t have been for this little doggy, they would probably have turned it into a coal yard so there would have bee no Chelsea.

WERMAN:  Some people would say that no Chelsea would actually be a good thing.

HARRIS:  Some people would say no Chelsea would be a good thing.  In fact, it was pointed out at the time that the site is so far into Phylum that it was about as close to Timbuktu as it was to Chelsea.  That’s an exaggeration but I mean it is, they toyed with the name of calling it London FC and Kensington but Chelsea just sounded classy.

WERMAN:  Why do you think we need to know about obscure people who have created and led to the games that we know today, Tim?

HARRIS:  Well, I guess it’s interesting to think about how sports have evolved and also we take a lot for granted in sport.  We take it for granted, for example, that American football lasts for sixty minutes but it didn’t use to.  It used to be ninety.  All these things are for a reason.  We tend to take them for granted but it’s interesting.

WERMAN:  Tim Harris is the author of “Players.”  Thanks very much for speaking to us.

HARRIS: Not at all.

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MARCO WERMAN: The border between Maine and New Brunswick, Canada is normally a very sleepy place, but in recent months a low intensity war of words has broken out in the region.  As Murray Carpenter reports, the International Dispute Center is on a small and once-plentiful fish.

MURRAY CARPENTER: All looks well on the shore of Passamaquoddy Bay near St. Andrew’s, New Brunswick.  Gulls chatter, seals dive and lobster boats bob. But at the office of the Atlantic Salmon Federation, biologist Fred Whoriskey says looks are deceiving.  He says the bay’s ecological balance is of whack, due to a dearth of alewives, half-pound herring that are born in the river above the bay.

FRED WHORISKEY: Neat little fish, these river herring. They’re extremely productive. They come down to the ocean as small fish. As they’re heading on their way out they are feeding all sorts of larger fish that are present in the river system.

CARPENTER: The annual alewife migration used to provide food for hordes of other local species, including gulls, eagles, osprey, otters, cod, salmon, and lobster.  And Whoriskey says in this region, alewives and the ecosystem they support are a shared resource.

WHORISKEY: The St. Croix River is the border between Canada and the USA.  So we have an active stake in this one, and Passamaquoddy Bay that comes down here, to a large extent the fisheries there depended on what would comes down out of the St. Croix.  And when you eliminate that, you are having an impact on Canadian fisheries.

CARPENTER: Alewives have been in mysterious decline in their range along the Atlantic coast farther south. But the decline here is no mystery.  Maine has locked the fish out of the St. Croix River on purpose.  A little more than twenty years ago, two million alewives a year navigated fish ways like this one in Milltown, New Brunswick.  Improvements to the fish ways in the early 1980s had allowed alewives better passage around paper mill dams on the St. Croix, and by 1987 the river’s alewife runs were by far the largest in the region.  But the return of the alewives didn’t sit well with Maine fishing guides who work miles upstream, in a chain of border lakes.

LANCE WHEATON: My name is Lance Wheaton, I’m a sporting camp owner and a guide at East Grand Lake, Spednik Lake, St. Croix River Chain.

CARPENTER: The St. Croix lakes were long ago stocked with prized small mouth bass.  Right around the time the alewives returned in the 1980s, the bass population crashed.  The guides blamed the alewives, and they convinced Maine lawmakers to close the St. Croix fish ways.  As a result, the runs currently average only 7,000 fish.  Conservationists argue that the native alewives weren’t responsible for the decline of the non-native bass. The Maine Department of Marine Resources agreed, based on several studies. But Wheaton doesn’t trust the science.

WHEATON: So a problem that took 20 years to create, and that biologist knew all the answers in a couple of months? Kiss me again. You know, kiss me again.

CARPENTER: Last spring, the Atlantic Salmon Federation and 50 other organizations from both sides of the border appealed on behalf of the alewife to the International Joint Commission, a bi-national agency charged with resolving water disputes on the US-Canada border. In July, the IJC responded by urging Maine’s governor to reopen the river.  Lance Wheaton wants none of it.

WHEATON: If the IJC makes this commitment to open the river, will the IJC be responsible for what happens?  The minute the guide can’t work and the sporting camp can’t keep full, and the little store can’t make a profit anymore, are they going to pay the little store?  Are they going to pay the guide?  Are they going to pay the sporting camp?

CARPENTER: Wheaton believes that restoring the alewife run would destroy the inland bass fishing economy.  But the alewives support an economy as well, downstream in the marine environment that Maine and New Brunswick share.  And Maine governor John Baldacci has asked the IJC to call a meeting of all stakeholders to forge a compromise that would bring the fish back to at least some parts of the border river.  Baldacci says that with the IJC now involved, it’s clear that inaction is no longer an option.

JOHN BALDACCI: Our hope is that the IJC convenes the meeting, we all participate, we come out with a consensus. I think the underlying sense is that if we’re not able to do that, then I think the IJC will then go ahead and move on its own.

CARPENTER: That would mean issuing a ruling that would be binding on both sides under the 100 year-old US-Canada Boundary Waters Treaty.  Back at the Atlantic Salmon Federation in New Brunswick, Fred Whoriskey says if it comes to that, it’s clear how the commission should rule.

WHORISKEY: You have an international accord between Canada and the United States.  We have an International Joint Commission that is supposedly managing that through a consensus between Canada and the USA, and this decision on the part of Maine has violated that agreement.

CARPENTER: Whoriskey says he hopes that one way or another, the issue is resolved by May.  That’s when the few remaining St. Croix River alewives will return and try once more to swim upstream along the US-Canada border.  For the World, I’m Murray Carpenter, Chamcook, New Brunswick.

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