Injures are adding up at Wimbledon and determining the outcomes of matches | Canada News Media
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Injures are adding up at Wimbledon and determining the outcomes of matches

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LONDON (AP) — There’s no single explanation, of course, for all of the injuries to players in the latter stages at Wimbledon this year. This much is certain: The timing could hardly be worse.

The man Novak Djokovic was supposed to face on Wednesday, Alex de Minaur, withdrew hours before their scheduled quarterfinal because he jarred his hip at the end of a victory two days earlier.

“I’m devastated,” de Minaur said. “The problem with me going out and playing is that one stretch, one slide, one anything, can make this injury (recovery) go from three to six weeks to four months. It’s too much to risk.”

Taylor Fritz’s fourth-round opponent, Alexander Zverev, slipped on an unworn patch of green grass in his previous match. That caused a bone bruise — and maybe worse — that Zverev complained left him on “one leg” in his loss to the American at what the two-time major finalist characterized as a wide open opportunity to grab a first Grand Slam title.

Danielle Collins’ last Wimbledon appearance before retirement ended with tape wrapped around her hamstring, the work of a trainer during the American’s fourth-round loss to 2021 French Open champion Barbora Krejcikova. Collins chalked it up to failing to “think about every little step that you take.”

“There’s been a ton of injuries on the grass. Left and right, it seems like people are going down. I am, I guess, frustrated that I feel like I was focusing on my tactics and kind of what I needed to do to play at a high level. Usually, I feel like, on other surfaces you’re not having to think so critically about your movement,” Collins said. “The one second I take my mind off of it, not think about every little thing I’m doing with my footwork, it ends up happening.”

The falls keep happening. The injuries are adding up.

“It’s unfortunate, obviously,” de Minaur said. “You never want to see this.”

He called his mishap “more of a freak injury,” related to the “excessive amount of force” used to slide on grass.

Madison Keys, the 2017 U.S. Open runner-up, was in tears when she stopped because of a hurt leg at 5-all in the third set of a Week 2 match against Jasmine Paolini, who reached Thursday’s semifinals.

Emma Raducanu, who won the U.S. Open three years ago, withdrew from mixed doubles — which was supposed to be Andy Murray’s last event at Wimbledon — because of a sore wrist, then needed a medical timeout later that day after falling in the third set of a singles loss.

No. 17 Anna Kalinskaya cited a bad wrist when she quit in her fourth-round match against 2022 champion Elena Rybakina. No. 10 Grigor Dimitrov retired from his fourth-round match against Daniil Medvedev with a leg problem.

“It’s normal for the second week at Wimbledon to be feeling niggling things on your muscles, because it’s tough — the grass, getting down low, coming into the net. It’s more on the muscles than the joints on the grass,” 2003 Wimbledon finalist Mark Philippoussis said. “So I’m sure lots of people will be feeling it now with little things here and there.”

Count Djokovic among those who think part of the issue is that all of the rain during the tournament — so much that the mixed doubles final was shifted from Thursday to Sunday, and play began a half-hour earlier than usual on most courts Wednesday — has made the grass more slick and the footing less sure.

So has shutting the retractable roofs at Centre Court and No. 1 Court, the only two arenas with that luxury during wet weather.

“Once you close the roof, you know that the grass is going to be more slippery. So there’s more chances that players will fall. Unfortunately, some of the falls have caused some of the players to withdraw,” Djokovic said.

“It’s part of this surface. You can’t really change that,” added the seven-time champion at the All England Club. “I mean, it’s grass. It’s a live surface, and it reacts to different conditions.”

The pattern began at grass tourneys that preceded Wimbledon.

Marketa Vondrousova retired from a match in Berlin after hurting her right leg there. When she showed up at Wimbledon, she became the first defending champion in 30 years to lose in the first round and acknowledged: “I was a bit scared because of my leg.”

The woman who beat her last week, Jessica Bouzas Maneiro, stopped at Wimbledon because of a back issue in the third round against Krejcikova.

Frances Tiafoe pulled out of the Queen’s Club tournament before Wimbledon after spraining a ligament in his right knee when he took a tumble. Tiafoe played at the All England Club with a black sleeve over his knee and made it to the third round before losing to defending champion Carlos Alcaraz.

Djokovic tore the meniscus in his right knee during a match at the French Open, had surgery and returned to competition less than a month later. Ironically, he thinks it’s possible that might have helped him stay upright this fortnight.

That’s because, years ago, Djokovic was one of the first players to regularly slide on grass the way they do on clay. He has cut down on those movements this time at Wimbledon, being extra careful to avoid risking falls.

“It’s probably part of my, I guess, different kind of movement on the court that I’ve been really experimenting with because of the cautiousness — because of the knee and everything that was happening prior to the tournament,” Djokovic explained. “The first couple rounds, I was still not maybe willing to go (for difficult) balls and slide and make splits.”

Other theories include: More and more baseline play on grass, and less serving-and-volleying, creates longer points and extra running, which translate into a greater likelihood of slips; less comfort on grass because players tend to grow up practicing and competing on clay or hard courts; and a brief grass portion of the schedule that doesn’t allow for accumulating a lot of experience on the turf.

Then there’s the general wear-and-tear of a season.

“Listen, tennis is a very physical sport at the moment. For sure, the rallies are longer. Matches. Scheduling. Finishing late,” 2006 Australian Open finalist Marcos Baghdatis said. “It’s very demanding on the body. … A lot of things are changing that (contribute) to players getting injured.”

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AP tennis:

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Canada’s Denis Shapovalov wins Belgrade Open for his second ATP Tour title

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BELGRADE, Serbia – Canada’s Denis Shapovalov is back in the winner’s circle.

The 25-year-old Shapovalov beat Serbia’s Hamad Medjedovic 6-4, 6-4 in the Belgrade Open final on Saturday.

It’s Shapovalov’s second ATP Tour title after winning the Stockholm Open in 2019. He is the first Canadian to win an ATP Tour-level title this season.

His last appearance in a tournament final was in Vienna in 2022.

Shapovalov missed the second half of last season due to injury and spent most of this year regaining his best level of play.

He came through qualifying in Belgrade and dropped just one set on his way to winning the trophy.

Shapovalov’s best results this season were at ATP 500 events in Washington and Basel, where he reached the quarterfinals.

Medjedovic was playing in his first-ever ATP Tour final.

The 21-year-old, who won the Next Gen ATP Finals presented by PIF title last year, ends 2024 holding a 9-8 tour-level record on the season.

This report by The Canadian Press was first published Nov. 9, 2024.

The Canadian Press. All rights reserved.



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Talks to resume in B.C. port dispute in bid to end multi-day lockout

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VANCOUVER – Contract negotiations resume today in Vancouver in a labour dispute that has paralyzed container cargo shipping at British Columbia’s ports since Monday.

The BC Maritime Employers Association and International Longshore and Warehouse Union Local 514 are scheduled to meet for the next three days in mediated talks to try to break a deadlock in negotiations.

The union, which represents more than 700 longshore supervisors at ports, including Vancouver, Prince Rupert and Nanaimo, has been without a contract since March last year.

The latest talks come after employers locked out workers in response to what it said was “strike activity” by union members.

The start of the lockout was then followed by several days of no engagement between the two parties, prompting federal Labour Minister Steven MacKinnon to speak with leaders on both sides, asking them to restart talks.

MacKinnon had said that the talks were “progressing at an insufficient pace, indicating a concerning absence of urgency from the parties involved” — a sentiment echoed by several business groups across Canada.

In a joint letter, more than 100 organizations, including the Canadian Chamber of Commerce, Business Council of Canada and associations representing industries from automotive and fertilizer to retail and mining, urged the government to do whatever it takes to end the work stoppage.

“While we acknowledge efforts to continue with mediation, parties have not been able to come to a negotiated agreement,” the letter says. “So, the federal government must take decisive action, using every tool at its disposal to resolve this dispute and limit the damage caused by this disruption.

“We simply cannot afford to once again put Canadian businesses at risk, which in turn puts Canadian livelihoods at risk.”

In the meantime, the union says it has filed a complaint to the Canada Industrial Relations Board against the employers, alleging the association threatened to pull existing conditions out of the last contract in direct contact with its members.

“The BCMEA is trying to undermine the union by attempting to turn members against its democratically elected leadership and bargaining committee — despite the fact that the BCMEA knows full well we received a 96 per cent mandate to take job action if needed,” union president Frank Morena said in a statement.

The employers have responded by calling the complaint “another meritless claim,” adding the final offer to the union that includes a 19.2 per cent wage increase over a four-year term remains on the table.

“The final offer has been on the table for over a week and represents a fair and balanced proposal for employees, and if accepted would end this dispute,” the employers’ statement says. “The offer does not require any concessions from the union.”

The union says the offer does not address the key issue of staffing requirement at the terminals as the port introduces more automation to cargo loading and unloading, which could potentially require fewer workers to operate than older systems.

The Port of Vancouver is the largest in Canada and has seen a number of labour disruptions, including two instances involving the rail and grain storage sectors earlier this year.

A 13-day strike by another group of workers at the port last year resulted in the disruption of a significant amount of shipping and trade.

This report by The Canadian Press was first published Nov. 9, 2024.

The Canadian Press. All rights reserved.



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The Royal Canadian Legion turns to Amazon for annual poppy campaign boost

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The Royal Canadian Legion says a new partnership with e-commerce giant Amazon is helping boost its veterans’ fund, and will hopefully expand its donor base in the digital world.

Since the Oct. 25 launch of its Amazon.ca storefront, the legion says it has received nearly 10,000 orders for poppies.

Online shoppers can order lapel poppies on Amazon in exchange for donations or buy items such as “We Remember” lawn signs, Remembrance Day pins and other accessories, with all proceeds going to the legion’s Poppy Trust Fund for Canadian veterans and their families.

Nujma Bond, the legion’s national spokesperson, said the organization sees this move as keeping up with modern purchasing habits.

“As the world around us evolves we have been looking at different ways to distribute poppies and to make it easier for people to access them,” she said in an interview.

“This is definitely a way to reach a wider number of Canadians of all ages. And certainly younger Canadians are much more active on the web, on social media in general, so we’re also engaging in that way.”

Al Plume, a member of a legion branch in Trenton, Ont., said the online store can also help with outreach to veterans who are far from home.

“For veterans that are overseas and are away, (or) can’t get to a store they can order them online, it’s Amazon.” Plume said.

Plume spent 35 years in the military with the Royal Engineers, and retired eight years ago. He said making sure veterans are looked after is his passion.

“I’ve seen the struggles that our veterans have had with Veterans Affairs … and that’s why I got involved, with making sure that the people get to them and help the veterans with their paperwork.”

But the message about the Amazon storefront didn’t appear to reach all of the legion’s locations, with volunteers at Branch 179 on Vancouver’s Commercial Drive saying they hadn’t heard about the online push.

Holly Paddon, the branch’s poppy campaign co-ordinator and bartender, said the Amazon partnership never came up in meetings with other legion volunteers and officials.

“I work at the legion, I work with the Vancouver poppy office and I go to the meetings for the Vancouver poppy campaign — which includes all the legions in Vancouver — and not once has this been mentioned,” she said.

Paddon said the initiative is a great idea, but she would like to have known more about it.

The legion also sells a larger collection of items at poppystore.ca.

This report by The Canadian Press was first published Nov. 9, 2024.

The Canadian Press. All rights reserved.



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