Congratulations Cindy!

Cindy Klassen, pride of Winnipeg, won the Lou Marsh Award as the Canadian Athlete of the Year today. Klassen, for those living under a rock last spring, won 5 medals at the Turin Olympic Games, the most ever at one games by a Canadian. Those 5 plus the 1 she won in Salt Lake City are the most medals won by any Canadian.

And Klassen's still young enough to be a major competitor in Vancouver in 2010, so she'll likely add to her lifetime total.

The Sports Reporters on TSN were talking about who would be chosen yesterday. The consensus was that Klassen would likely win, but that Steve Nash was who they would likely have voted for.

They favoured Nash, because his sports achievement - winning a 2nd NBA MVP award - was even more unlikely for a Canadian than winning a pile of Olympic medals. It was also suggested that competition for the NBA MVP is stiffer, and maybe loaded against someone who'd won the year before, than for speed skating, so the competitive situation of Nash's is greater.

A non-politically correct thing that they didn't mention but is consistent with the competition pool argument is that more men play sports, whatever sport it is, than women, so the men who rise to the top have climbed over more guys than gals the top women have climbed over. I'm not too hip on this line of argument.

A more interesing point the Sports Reps. made was that Nash and some other possible Lou Marsh winners, like Justin Moreau, the AL baseball MVP, and Joe Thornton, the NHL MVP, were under consideration because people voted for them as league MVPs, which is an indirect result of their acheivements, while Klassen's acheivements are the direct reason she was considered.

If Kobe won the NBA MVP (Q: what's the official name of the NBA MVP trophy?) or Derek Jeter won the AL MVP, then Nash and Moreau, respectively, are not big contenders for the LM award. And that could have happened even with the Canadians having the same stats as they did.

Of course, Klassen, Nash, et al. don't compete to win the Lou Marsh Award, or MVP awards, or anything like that. They play to win. In the case of Klassen, that's reflected in medals. Team sports players wins are reflected in championships, which sadly none of those MVPs won this year.

But you know they would trade their MVPs for a Championship, as I'm sure Klassen would trade the Lou Marsh for a gold medal.

Happily, she needn't make that choice.