Wayne Gretzky

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This is your life, Wayne Gretzky.

The 48-year-old was sitting with his wife and one of their young sons in a small theater at the Paley Center in Beverly Hills. Both of the boys looked fidgety.

On screen was the U.S. premier of "Kings Ransom," a documentary scheduled to air on ESPN next week as part of a series celebrating the network's 30th anniversary. Future releases include a look at the relationship between the NFL's Raiders and gangster rap culture, directed by Ice Cube. But few chapters in the history of sport could rival Gretzky's NHL trade from Edmonton to Los Angeles in 1988, which was happening in slow motion replay right before the legend's eyes. He laughed, he cried ... or at least he seemed to sniffle when he started to speak after the film.

"If I had to do it all over again, I would tell Peter [Pocklington] again, 'trade me,'" reflected the Great One during his candid talk.

Right now, somebody in Canada is punching their computer screen.

The hockey enforcer inside some Oilers fans might prefer to come after Pocklington, who owned the team during the famous transaction. Or perhaps they want a piece of Bruce McNall, who owned the Kings and essentially bought Gretzky for a European-soccer-style transfer fee of $15 million (U.S.). Both of them, each still friends with their former player, were at the screening and spoke to the crowd.

"It really brought a tear to my eye," admitted Pocklington. "It's been a very emotional evening for me because it was twenty years of my life."

There was a third possible culprit in the room. But it turns out Mrs. Gretzky may not have deserved that Canadian chorus of "Damnit, Janet."

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Ice hockey star Wayne Gretzky was all smiles after his marriage to actress Janet Jones in 1988, less than a month before being traded from Edmonton to Los Angeles. AP photo.
Janet Jones had found success as an actress in Hollywood before her July 1988 wedding to hockey royalty. When Gretzky landed in LaLaLand less than a month later, it was easy to suspect her influence. Newspaper headlines compared her to Yoko Ono.

But Gretzky knew he was shipping out of Edmonton well before the trade, which he helped orchestrate after he realized that a new real estate agent was unavoidable. "I only want to go to two places," he told Pocklington. "LA or Detroit," the latter being just a three-hour drive from his hometown of Brantford, Ontario.

His dad pushed for Detroit. Surprisingly, so did his wife. "It's a hockey city," she reminded her husband. It's technically called Hockeytown, but they'll probably forgive her considering she tried to give the city its biggest bailout this side of Washington, D.C.

In many ways it came down to money, which McNall collected -- literally. A trader in rare coins, he amassed a fortune before adding the Kings, then Gretzky, to his collection. With Edmonton unable to afford the star's market value, they knew he would be gone when his contract expired the following summer. They never entirely lost Gretzky, they just lost him for the one year.

The Oilers sent two additional players to Los Angeles. In exchange, they got $15 million, two players, and three future first-round draft picks. It's probably sacrilegious to suggest this north of the border, but they may have missed a chance to win the Stanley Cup with Gretzky in 1988-89 -- only to make up for it with one in 1989-90.

The greatest player of all time would never hoist the trophy again.

"When I was in Edmonton, Peter [Pocklington] always made me feel like a million dollars," said Gretzky, now worth quite a bit more than that. "He was always my best friend. He was always a shoulder I could lean on. When I got traded, I was probably more mad at Peter than I was at anybody in the world. Now that I got into the management side of things and into coaching, I understood where he came from ... hopefully one day people will understand that he really thought he was doing the best thing for the City of Edmonton and for the Edmonton Oilers."

Gretzky may publicly defend the trade now, but he also understood the move twenty one years ago. Just before his teary announcement in Canada, the owners gave him one final chance to back out.

Soon after, the Kings held their own news conference, thinly veiled as the unveiling of their new uniforms.

"The players looked like bananas on ice," deadpanned McNall.

Nobody was fooled. Gretzky didn't just model the new black-and-silver look when he came out, he spruced up the entire Fabulous Forum -- by filling it with bodies.

Peter Berg, who directed "Kings Ransom," had been a Kings fan before Gretzky arrived and remembered paying $5 for a ticket, then moving down to the glass before the second period. Suddenly, those seats were filled by the likes of President Ronald Reagan.

"I was punching Michael J. Fox to get into the locker room," Berg laughed. "John Candy was throwing Kevin Costner around. It was crazy."

The documentary, lasting about 50 minutes, is very well done. It can be difficult to tell a story when everybody knows the ending. Berg captured a range of emotions from anger (burning and lynching of Gretzky and Pocklington effigies) to glee (look for a blissfully smug still shot of McNall) using vintage footage and some snazzy cinematography.

Gretzky's place in hockey's history books may already be unassailable, but there could be more chapters to write. Last month he gave up a job as head coach of the troubled Phoenix Coyotes, of which he is also part owner.

"I think that one of the most asinine things facing the NHL is the thought of an NHL without Wayne Gretzky coaching a team or somehow being involved," lamented one of the panelists. The entire audience clapped, including the Great One -- who still lives in the LA area.

Kings play-by-play man Bob Miller followed by announcing that General Manager "Dean Lombardi has made an overture to Wayne: 'You come back with the Kings, you can help us.'" Lombardi has acknowledged as much publicly. Few know what that could really entail. Miller, speaking afterward as an observer, pointed out the obvious; It would probably be on Gretzky's terms, though the team would want him doing "more than shaking hands and kissing babies."

stephanie rice swimmer images

What we say the in the heat of the moment always carries the seed of the truth about our sentiments.

Sometimes we come across too strongly or use profane language when we speak extemporaneously and emotionally without taking time to calculate the effect of our words, but one thing is for certain - at those times we tell the truth!

This is why it is ridiculous for Australia's triple Olympic gold medalist Stephanie Rice to expect that her tearful public apologies for making a really gross homophobic comment on Twitter will be believed or accepted.

Rugby is a big deal in Australia and after her team, the Aussie side, squeaked out a narrow victory over arch rival South Africa, Rice joyously tweeted "Suck on that faggots!"

Wow! Not cool at all.

Stephanie had enough time to think about what she was doing and still decided that the best insult she could throw at the opposing side, South Africa, was to call them faggots (which is an insulting term for gay males). Furthermore, she belittled them by telling them to fellate the score/their defeat in their losing effort, i.e. suck on it.

Its not like she blurted these words out, not that that would excuse her anyway, but she wrote them and pressed "send" giving her plenty of time to consider what she was doing.

Now she is tearfully apologizing everywhere and making all kinds of lame excuses for her disgusting behavior.

I am not buying any of it. She made the statement because she is low class and that is how she sees the world. I would much prefer if she would just admit her homophobia rather than further insult people by asking us to believe that she didn't mean to do it.

The fact is she quickly deleted the statement after she had sent it out but it was too late. Jaguar has already dropped her and cancelled her contract and I am sure she will lose other lucrative deals - as she well should.

Why would any respectable company want to be represented by a star athlete who speaks like Rice did? She is a racist, plain and simple. She should not be hired by any firm unless that firm's goal is to insult their homosexual customers and the rest of us who refuse to tolerate hate speech directed at any group or minority.

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Martina Hingis Bio & Pics

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Martina Hingis (born September 30, 1980) is a professional tennis player from Switzerland. Born in Kosice, Czechoslovakia (now Slovakia), Hingis lived for a time in Florida but has now returned to Switzerland. She was named after Martina Navratilova, another tennis player of Czechoslovakian origin.

Biography

At one time ranked #1 in the world for women's singles, she has not played since October 2002 because of chronic foot injuries, and in February 2003 stated that she could not foresee a return to tennis. In her statments, she said that due to her injuries she could not play to a level where she would again be competitive with the best, and was not interested in coping with the pain in her feet to compete at a lesser level.

Like many professional tennis players, Hingis started playing at a very young age. By 5 years of age, she started entering tournaments. In 1996, Hingis partnered with Helena Sukova in the Ladies Doubles event and made history by becoming the youngest person ever to win one of the Wimbledon championships.

In singles play, Martina Hingis won both the Wimbledon championships and the US Open in 1997 and the Australian Open in 1997, 1998and 1999.

In 1998 she won the all four of the Grand Slam in tennis tournaments in doubles.

Martina, sometimes referred to as the "Swiss Miss", was as widely admired for her attractive playing style as her success. Lacking the outright power of even Monica Seles, let alone the current heavy-hitters like Serena Williams, Hingis made up for it with her fluent, precise groundstrokes, skill at the net (enabling her to become an outstanding doubles player), and outstanding shot selection.

Martina was also popular with the tennis-watching public for her usually bright, bubbly demeanour in public. Combined with a not unattractive appearance she was almost a marketer's dream. Her doubles appearances with Anna Kournikova attracted large amount of attention, mainly for this reason.

Martina Hingis speaks 4 languages: Czech, German (in particular Swiss German), English, and some French.

According to a May 2003 article, Hingis is now spending her time studying English, making personal appearances for various sponsors, playing tennis recreationally, and indulging in her love of horseriding. She has been widely reported as dating Sergio Garcia, a high-profile professional golfer.

Marion Jones Biography & Latest Images

(born October 12, 1975, Los Angeles, California, U.S.) American athlete, who, at the 2000 Olympic Games, became the first woman to win five track-and-field medals at a single Olympics. In 2007, however, she admitted to using banned substances and subsequently returned the medals.

Jones early displayed talent on the track, and her family moved several times during her adolescence so that she could compete on prominent junior-high and high-school teams. By the time she was 12, Jones had begun competing internationally. She was also an accomplished high-school basketball player, winning California's Division I Player of the Year award in 1993. She attended the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill on a basketball scholarship, and in 1994 she helped the women's basketball team win the national title. Jones decided to sit out the 1995–96 basketball season in order to focus on track and on the 1996 Olympics in Atlanta, Georgia. A series of foot injuries, however, prevented her from trying out for the U.S. Olympic team. She then returned to basketball, and in 1997 she was named the Most Valuable Player of the Atlantic Coast Conference Tournament.

After graduating in 1997, Jones concentrated on track. At the 2000 Olympics in Sydney, Australia, she won gold medals in the 100 metres (10.75 sec) and the 200 metres (21.84 sec) and as a member of the 4 400-metre relay team (3 min 22.62 sec); she also claimed bronze medals in the long jump and the 4 100-metre relay. At the 2001 world championships, Jones won gold medals in the 200 metres and the 4 100-metre relay, and she went undefeated during the 2002 season. She took much of 2003 off because of the birth of her son. She returned to athletics in 2004 but was not up to her previous form. At the Olympic Games in Athens that year, she managed only a fifth-place finish in the long jump.

Through much of her career, Jones was suspected of using steroids. In 2003 a federal investigation into illegal steroid distribution by the Bay Area Laboratory Co-operative (BALCO) led to allegations by BALCO founder Victor Conte and Jones's ex-husband, C.J. Hunter, that the sprinter used banned substances. Jones, who had never failed a drug test at that time, denied the allegations. In 2006 she tested positive for a banned substance but was later cleared by a follow-up test. The following year, however, she pleaded guilty to lying to federal investigators about her drug use and admitted to having taken steroids. In November 2007 track and field's international governing body—the International Association of Athletics Federations—annulled all of Jones's results since September 2000, including her Olympic titles. The International Olympic Committee officially stripped Jones of her five medals from the Sydney Games the following month. In January 2008 she was sentenced to six months in prison for providing false statements to federal investigators about her steroid use and for her involvement in a check-fraud scheme.

In an attempt to revive her long-dormant basketball career, Jones signed with the Tulsa Shock of the Women's National Basketball Association in 2010

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marion jones olympics

Marion Jones, the former Thousand Oaks High track star whose personal life has presented as many hurdles as her professional accomplishments, is pregant and about to remarry. Again on both counts.
Obadele Thompson, the 2000 Olympic bronze medalist winner in the 100 meters, announced his engagement to an expectant Jones and said the marriage will take place in private ceremony on Saturday in North Carolina with close friends and family in attendance.
Jones travelled to Barbados in February 2006 to train with Thompson but there was no indication that the two were romantically linked, according to new information posted on Jones' Wikipedia.com bio.
The three-time gold-medal winning sprinter who has battled performance enhancing drug charges, married shot putter C.J. Hunter in 1998. He ended up resigning as track coach at the University of North Carolina (because he was dating Tar Heels star Jones at the time) and ended up banned from the 2000 Olympics when he tested positive for nandrolone. They divorced a year later.
In 2003, Jones gave birth to a son, Tim Jr., named after his father Tim Montgomery, who broke the 100 meter world record in 2002. Montgomery was eventually banned from the sport after admitting to the use of performance enhancing drugs.
Now comes Thompson, a UTEP grad who scored the first-ever Olympic medal for his country.

maria sharapova photos, reviews

Russian tennis star Maria Sharapova climbed up 2 spots in the Women Tennis Association's rankings to 16th place on Monday.

Former World No. 1 Sharapova, 23, who recently made an impressive comeback after shoulder injury, lost her quarter-final 6-2 7-5 to Hungarian Greta Arn at the WTA Tour tournament in Auckland last week.

The rankings, topped by Denmark's Caroline Wozniacki with 8035 points, also include Russia's tennis players Vera Zvonavera, ranked second with 6785 points, and Elena Dementieva (4335), who holds ninth place.

Belgium's Kim Clijsters comes third in the ranking with 6635 points while U.S. sisters Serena Williams (5355) and Venus Williams (4985) took fourth and fifth places, respectively.

In 2005, Sharapova was the first Russian to hold the top spot in the WTA rankings.

In August 2010, Forbes magazine named Sharapova the world's highest-paid female athlete.

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Maria started hitting tennis balls at the age of four. At the age of six, Maria Sharapova participated in a exhibition in Moscow that featured Martina Navratilova. So, at the age of nine, she began training at Nick Bollettieri's Tennis Academy located in Bradenton, Florida, USA. Therefore, during those two years, she was separated from her mother for two year due to visa restrictions and finances. Maria occasionally travels with her father and works with tennis coach managers Michael Baroch and Robert Lansdorp. During her leisure time off court, Maria's interest includes modeling in fashion, singing, jazz dancing and movies (Pearl Harbor (2001)). Maria enjoys reading books of her interest in the "Sherlock Holmes" and "Pippi Longstocking" collection series. Basically, Maria's favorite dessert is 'anything'. Maria favors Russian music and food, but except for Italian bread.