Dunking Phenom "Jus Fly" Darlington Launches His High Jumping Career

You might remember a recent article here on Double Double Thoughts about Justin “Jus Fly” Darlington.

He’s a 20-year-old slam dunking phenom from Ajax, Ontario whom veteran track coach Daniel St-Hilaire is hoping to transform into a high jumping champion.

Well, he’s off to a good start.

In his first outdoor meet this past weekend in St-Laurent, Que., Darlington surprised St-Hilaire by jumping 2.10 metres to qualify for the national championships next month at Varsity Stadium in Toronto. He currently ranks fourth in Canada this season.

“I’m pretty excited,” said St-Hilaire. “He’s ahead of my expectations.”

St-Hilaire had projected that Darlington could jump between 2.10 and 2.20 metres in his first season in the event.

Watch "Jus Fly" Darlington’s winning jump below:

Does the Vancouver 2010 torch look like a joint?

All hail – or inhale – the 2010 Olympic Torch.

Or, as it's jokingly known around Vancouver, the Olympic Toke.

Composed of stainless steel, aluminum and sheet moulding, the torch was designed to evoke snow, ice, skiing and skating, but to many, the metre-long white torch looks suspiciously like a marijuana joint, especially when lit.

The observation has become so common in this city that it's hard to know who was the first to say, "Hey, doesn't that look like ..."

But the torch's resemblance to British Columbia's biggest cash crop was evident right away to Jodie Emery, editor of Cannabis Culture magazine.

"A lot of people come to Vancouver because it's marijuana-friendly, so I think people who already enjoy a joint themselves will feel a little more kinship to the Olympics," said Emery, who ran as a Green party candidate in the provincial election this month.

"I'm sure the organizers didn't intend for it to look like a joint, but that's what a lot of people are seeing."

The association between toking and the Olympics didn't begin with the torch, of course.

At the 1998 Games in Nagano, Japan, Whistler skier Ross Rebagliati won, then lost, the gold medal in snowboarding after testing positive for marijuana. The medal was returned after Rebagliati explained he had inhaled second-hand smoke. More recently, Olympic swimming sensation Michael Phelps was photographed in February smoking pot from a bong.

Industrial designer Mark Busse said he doesn't see a joint so much as a tweezer or scalpel.

"Sure, it may look a little bit like a joint, but I can tell you that what they were going for was ergonomics, sleekness, modernity," he said.

Suzanne Reeves, the Vancouver organizing committee's director of communications for the Olympic torch relay, said she has taken the torch across the country and people's faces light up when they get the chance to hold it.

At Nathan Phillips Square a couple of weeks ago, Reeves said she had the torch in a bag when a cyclist went by and did a double-take when he saw what she had.

Reeves said what she sees when she looks at the torch is the edge of snow and an unfurling flag.

"It's quite magical. Most people's reactions are emotional," she said.

The torch will be carried by 12,000 people over 45,000 kilometres as it makes its journey across Canada.

Because the torch will travel through the winter months, it had to meet some tough technical requirements, including being able to withstand high winds, cold temperatures and different altitudes.

The torch officially is meant to resemble the lines left behind by skiers and skaters on snow and ice.

Any double – or doobie – entendres, officials say, are purely unintentional.

Parliament suggests athletes wear seal skin

Not likely to happen, but motion passes unanimously to use Games to promote seal hunt.

Canada's Olympic athletes will be wearing seal skin on their 2010 uniforms to protest an international ban on the product – that is, if the country's parliamentarians have their way.

The federal Parliament voted Wednesday to use the Vancouver Games to protest a European Union ban on seal products.

Parliamentarians from all parties agreed unanimously to a motion from the Bloc Quebecois that says the Games should be used to promote products from the seal hunt.

The motion suggests one possibility: that Canada's Olympic uniform include at least one seal product, likely skin.

Fisheries Minister Gail Shea applauded the idea, while wondering whether it might be too late.

"I would imagine the Olympic clothing is all designed and probably made by now," Shea said.

"But I think it's a good symbolic suggestion – to add something to the outfit of our athletes. I think it would be a good statement for the Canadian sealing industry, and Canada's support of it."

Parliamentary motions are non-binding on either the government or the Canadian Olympic Committee, but are an expression of the will of Canada's elected politicians.

The European Parliament voted massively in favour of a seal ban, which could have a dramatic impact on Canadian hunters and exporters.

Prime Minister Stephen Harper has said he does not want the ban to scuttle separate talks on Canada-EU free trade.

But Canadian lawyers are already considering a legal challenge, while the EU council of ministers considers whether to implement the ban.

Bloc Quebecois Leader Gilles Duceppe said the Canadian government was outmanoeuvred on the public-relations front and that it should have been more aggressive defending the seal hunt.

Duceppe singled out one country that had no business lecturing Canada on animal rights: Spain, where fights with bulls in front of cheering spectators is a national sport.

"I find it completely abnormal to see protests (against the seal hunt) in Spain – the country that holds the bullfights," Duceppe said.

"We need a campaign. Our adversaries conducted one heck of a campaign, and Canada did not conduct a major one on the promotional level. ...

"The Olympics aren't a trivial thing. We could use this event to shed light on this, but we need to use other events, too."

Duceppe shot back at one questioner who asked whether Olympic athletes might bristle at the idea of being forced to wear animal pelts to make a political statement.

"I don't know what my shoes are made of – but if they're not made out of plastic, they're not made out of straw, they come from an animal."

Is this the sort of nonsense our elected officials spend there time on while our economy is in shambles, people are losing there homes, people are out of work, and more losing there jobs left and right every day? GET TO WORK!!!!

From Youtube...To the olympics

Slam-dunk phenom being courted for high jump

Justin Darlington – a.k.a. "Jus Fly" – is used to making great leaps on the basketball court.

The question is whether the 20-year-old slam-dunking wizard from Ajax, Ontario can make an even greater leap – becoming Canada's superstar high jumper.

Daniel St-Hilaire, an extremely passionate, if not a quirky, veteran coach from Montreal, is convinced he can.

St-Hilaire's scouting methods aren't exactly conventional. It started on the Internet when he punched "slam dunk basketball" into Google. Among other things, he came across hundreds of videos of the 6-foot-4 Darlington in action.



"He was like a lost jewel," said St-Hilaire, who once coached Canadian sprint star Bruny Surin.

What he saw left him awestruck: A kid who could do a cartwheel on the court and dunk in one fluid motion. But, even more impressive, Darlington could get his head above the rim when he took flight.



"My mouth opened for five minutes and my eyes went big and I just froze," said St-Hilaire. "I kept playing the video and going in slow motion and freezing it where his head went above the rim. I thought `I never saw a guy jump that high.'

"And I said to myself `Wow, I wonder if this guy can do high jump.' I became a headhunter. I was like `Where could I meet that guy?'"

It turned out St-Hilaire didn't have to go all that far. He located Darlington on Facebook and found out he was from Ajax. They met for two hours at Pearson International Airport when St-Hilaire was flying home from a track meet in Saskatoon in February.



It turns out that a man cannot live off dunking alone. Darlington has travelled throughout Europe and is currently traveling in Shanghai with Team Flight Brothers, a sort of Harlem Globetrotters of the dunking world, but there isn't a huge amount of money to be made.

"He had no incentive, no target," said St-Hilaire. "I said `Here's your target – 2012 (London Olympics). Jump for Canada, make it big and your life will change. Because now you're recognized as one of the best dunkers, but who cares, nobody knows you.'"

At the end of their airport meeting, St-Hilaire said Darlington had only one question for him: "When do we start, coach?"

The education of Darlington as a high jumper has begun, partly under St-Hilaire in Montreal and also here in Toronto under Gary Lubin, who developed Brampton's Mark Boswell, a two-time world championship medallist. They plan to share the coaching duties.

This has all been a whirlwind for Darlington.

"I wasn't even thinking about the Olympics a year ago," he told The Gazette in Montreal recently. "I was hoping that maybe they would make dunking an Olympic sport."

Darlington is planning to enrol at McGill University for September – his mom, Ann-Marie, wants him to put emphasis on his studies – and train in Montreal under St-Hilaire. His regimen will include two dunking workouts per week so he can maintain that skill.

It's a talent he discovered only two years ago. He never really stood out playing basketball at J. Clark Richardson Collegiate in Ajax, but entered a dunk contest in his last year and wowed everyone with his high-flying skills. Things have taken off since then.



"It sort of snuck up on us," said Ann-Marie Darlington, who was a high jumper in high school. "He was trying to match what the others could do in the gym and he realized he was above most of the guys. It was amazing."

Adds St-Hilaire: "He's a born leaper. The legs are like a mutation."

Darlington has a wide array of videos on You Tube under his nickname "Jus Fly," including some with more than 200,000 views and comments like "That last dunk was absolutely sick!"

Former world hurdles champion Perdita Felicien agrees it will be a neat story if Darlington can pull it off, but adds it won't be easy in such a technical event.

"You can have the raw goods, but to have the discipline to study the event and the sport and to be great that way – that's kind of different," Felicien said. "That's probably the hardest part of it."

St-Hilaire said the key will be teaching Darlington the right technique so that he can develop into a true high jumper and not just a leaper.

St-Hilaire notes Darlington has already jumped 2.01 metres after six technical workouts – equal to the height achieved by the sixth-place finisher at last year's Olympic trials in Windsor (the world record is 2.45 metres.) The coach believes he can get up to 2.10 or 2.20 metres this summer.

St-Hilaire already has a golden glint in his eyes as he thinks toward the 2012 London Olympics. He points to Donald Thomas of the Bahamas, who won at the 2007 world championships, less than two years after switching to track from basketball.

"I feel Justin has more potential," said St-Hilaire.

Deputy manager in charge of 2010 Vancouver Olympic Village resigns

The deputy city manager overseeing construction of the Olympic Athletes Village for the Vancouver 2010 Winter Games has resigned.

Jody Andrew's resignation is effective immediately, and there is no word on who will replace him, a source at Vancouver city hall told CBC News on Thursday night.

City manager Penny Ballem sent a note Thursday night to city councillors informing them of the news, media reports said.

Andrew's resignation comes as the athletes village faces major financial woes. Cost overruns have pushed the project's price to $875 million.

Fortress Investment Group, which was to lend the $750 million budgeted for the development, stopped advancing cash to builder Millennium Development Corp. in September, and the city has since been covering construction costs with a $100-million bailout loan approved during an in-camera council meeting on Oct. 14.

Negotiations with Fortress to reopen the loan are ongoing, but the city will have to find the money to complete the village by this fall if the negotiations fall through.

Andrew is the third senior city official to depart city hall since Gregor Robertson became the new mayor in November's civic elections.

In December, Robertson hired Ballem, a former deputy minister of health for B.C.'s Liberal government, as city manager, replacing Judy Rogers, who had held the job since 1999.

Estelle Lo resigned as the city's chief financial officer days after the municipal elections. She reportedly left because of concerns about the controversial $100-million bailout.

The B.C. legislature will reconvene for a special sitting at noon Saturday to deal with the issue of financing the completion of the athletes village.

Robertson has asked the provincial government to amend the city's charter, giving it authority to borrow the $458 million required to finish the project after Fortress stopped funding it.