MO' SPEED
Yaletown Olympic bobsledder Justin Kripps rarely fails to entertain.
The Hawaiian-born athlete seeks speed on icy chutes and bolsters his online presence-a vital aspect of an athlete's self-promotion in the search for sponsorship-with cheeky, casual language and lazy grammar that the rest of us throw around. Like this one: "Final bobsleigh push camp today at the ice house, I feel bad for the ice, its about the get torn the f up!" This is how he spends his off-days, like many 24-yearolds who crush on Entourage character Sloan: "Stepping into some battlefield3 online multiplayer. Guess this days a write off..."
Kripps debuted in 2006 and raced at the 2010 Winter Games as a breakman with Pierre Lueders' and the Canada No. 1 crew. The former Simon Fraser student now pilots his own two-and four-man sleds.
Last month at the America's Cup, Kripps and his teammate earned three gold medals and one bronze. (In the photo seen here, the boys outfitted their "Mo' Sled" with a Movember moustache for panache but mostly for prostate cancer awareness.) At the 10country summit, held in Park City, Utah, Kripps and Jesse Lumsden broke a nineyear start record on the way to the top of the podium. Their start time: 4.77 seconds.
"We were hoping to make top three, but since we had new equipment and a team who had never competed together before it was a bit of an unknown," said Kripps. "Yes, we are happy. That means Jesse and I pushed faster than all the top guys who have ever been here: Olympians, world champions. It's a pretty good start to the season."
He's setting his sights on Sochi for the 2014 Winter Olympics. Follow him on Twitter at @justinkripps.
REBECCA MO'
As a teenager, Rebecca Marino took Venus Williams to a first set tiebreaker at the U.S. Open and now for the second consecutive year, the one-time Magee student was named Tennis Canada's most outstanding female player of the year.
The six-foot righthander who trains fulltime in Montreal reached her first World Tennis Association final this year, advanced to the third round at the French Open and ranked as high as No. 38 in July. She finished the year ranked No. 64, a major jump from her No. 101 finish last season and will compete for the second time at the Australian Open.
"It was a really big year for me with a lot of firsts and a huge learning curve," she said. "I'm currently working really hard on my offseason, training and am really looking forward to starting the 2012 season and hopefully building on my success from this past year." [email protected]
Twitter: @MHStewart
