Feeling nostalgic about the snuggly and warm red mittens everyone seemed to be sporting during the 2010 Winter Olympics in Vancouver? Well, you’re in luck because the Canadian Olympic Foundation, in partnership with the Hudson’s Bay Company, launched today (September 28) a new version of the mittens.

Net proceeds from each $10 pair sold will go to the Canadian Olympic Team. The mittens were all the rage during the Winter Games, with over 3.5 million pairs sold. Even Oprah Winfrey gave them away to her Chicago studio audience.

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Opening nights at the Toronto International Film Festival tend to the self-serious -- cinematic images of Canadian war heroism and Inuit ethnic pride come rushing back, all efforts to cleanse them from our memory rendered futile.  But Thursday night, for the start of its 35th edition, the festival  took a break from its usual earnestness to let down its hair -- or was it a hockey mullet?

To give you a sense of the campiness at the opening-night ceremony/premiere screening of "Score: a Hockey Musical": After the end credits rolled, a guitarist, an array of drummers and a slew of backup singers came out to play a live rendition of a song whose main lyric is "Hockey's the greatest game in the land.

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Attention Olympic hopefuls: If you want to minimize your risk of injury, you’re better off competing in a Summer Games sport than a Winter Games event. That’s the conclusion of a new study that analyzed 287 injury reports from the 2010 Winter Games in Vancouver, Canada. Altogether, 11.2% of the athletes experienced at least one injury during the 17-day event. That compares with 9.6% during the 2008 Summer Games in Beijing. In Vancouver, 23% of injuries were severe enough that athletes had to skip training sessions or pull out of competition.

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According to research found in the esteemed British Journal of Sports Medicine, at least one in 10 athletes sustained an injury during the 2010 Winter Olympic Games in Vancouver, Canada. Aside, one in 14 fell ill during the games. These relatively high numbers are more than likely to still be an underestimate, authors of the study suggest. This numerical content was based on reports from each of the head international physicians for each of the national Olympic teams represented.

Holistically, 82 doctors responsible for 2567 athletes took part in the study. A total reported 287 injuries and 185 illnesses or 11% per 1000 game participants were hurt and 7% fell ill.

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Snowboardcross was the most hazardous sport at the Winter Olympics in Vancouver, with 73 per cent of female athletes sustaining injuries during the rough-and-tumble races, according to a medical study.

The report, published in the British Journal of Sports Medicine, found that at least 11 per cent of all athletes at the games in February sustained injuries – including 20 concussions.

The study reported a total of 287 injuries among the 2,567 athletes, including the “catastrophic injury” that caused the death of Georgian luger Nodar Kumaritashvili in a training crash a few hours before the opening ceremony on Feb. 12.

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WITH just two days to go before Singapore's first ever global sporting event - the 2010 Youth Olympic Games (YOG) - begins, the information and communication technology (ICT) systems that monitor the Games will be as closely watched as the athletes.

In fact, most athletes will play hard but still lose, but none of the ICT systems can lose at any time during the 13 days of the Games, from Aug 14-26. 'This IT project is the most complex ICT project for a sporting event ever undertaken in Singapore,' says Patrick Adiba, Atos Origin's CEO for major events.

'It includes 2,000 computers, 250 computer servers, and 1,200 network devices spread across 35 competition and non-competition venues.' Managing a highly complex endeavour such as the Olympic Games is in fact an Atos Origin speciality.

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A problem in his lower back that "restricts his ability to generate power to his stride" has force double world record-holder Usain Bolt to pull the plug on his 2010 season with two European meets to go. A release from Bolt's agent Ricky Simms of Pace Sports Management yesterday said an "assessment from his medical team...found a problem in his lower back.

He has a tightness that restricts his ability to generate power in his stride and continuing to race in this condition could risk injury to his hamstrings or calf muscles". Bolt, who missed part of the season with an Achilles tendon problem was examined by world-renowned specialist Dr Hans Müller-Wohlfahrt in Munich, Germany, on Monday when the decision was taken to shut him down for the remainder of the season.

The release said further, "With a view to his future career we believe further treatment to loosen his back followed by a period of rest will be in his best interest." Bolt, who will turn 24 later this month and who holds the world records in the 100m- 9.58 seconds and the 200m- 19.19 seconds, both set last year at the IAAF World Championships in Berlin, Germany, will miss the IAAF Diamond League meetings — Weltklasse Zurich and Memorial van Damme, Brussels.

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People even call me Christine, know me as Christine’s sister, and most don’t even know my name, it’s annoying,” Victoria said on the eve of the inaugural Youth Olympic Games in Singapore, where she will be one of 39 British athletes competing in 16 sports.

“We are completely different people, she is more reserved and quiet, I am loud and messy, she is like a kind of mum to me, kind of bossy.” But Victoria, at 17, acknowledges that big sister and former world champion Christine is an inspiration, even though “I don’t think I realise what she has done is quite big, because she is just my sister”.

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Pickering, who retired in 2005, says that there will be some "erratic" results in the Hungarian capital compared to the 19 medals won by Britain's athletes - but only because the focus for some will be on October's Commonwealth Games in Delhi.

Pickering, who retired in 2005, said: "Over the past few Commonwealth Games when it has clashed with the Europeans, the Commonwealths have always been the priority. "It does give a little bit of a dilemma for the athletes heading into  Budapest  and whether or not whether or not they could potentially peak at both.

"But I am sure they will be inspired by what happened in Barcelona." Pickering became Britain's first to win a world title when she won gold in the 200m freestyle at the 1993 Short Course World Championships. The former Commonwealth champion, who will be commentating in the Hungarian capital, admits that each event will hard to assess due to individuals on different training patterns.

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Another magnificent triumph, another beaming smile and another coat of varnish on the golden girl image; here was an athlete now really beginning to radiate a bit of an aura both on and off the track. Who did she remind us of? Hearing her bubbly and disarmingly modest reflections on a victory at the European Championships which confirmed her pre-eminence as the world’s finest all-round female athlete here in Barcelona, Ennis’s predecessor irresistibly came to mind.

Yes, she could be as good for her sport as the great Carolina Kluft. Ennis could not help breaking into a laugh when the comparison was made. After all, Kluft was a force of nature, the charismatic Swede who won nine consecutive gold medals in major championships before turning her back on multi-events.

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