Remembering the Queen's brushes with sports
Elizabeth II dropped the puck in Vancouver, loomed large in Winnipeg
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Queen Elizabeth II, who died yesterday at the age of 96, reigned over Great Britain and the Commonwealth for 70 years. Though she wasn't much of an athlete (that's not really in the job description for a monarch), Her Majesty had many notable brushes with the sports world during her seven decades on the throne — some involving Canadian athletes. Here are a few:
The Queen drops the puck
As part of her Golden Jubilee celebration in 2002 marking 50 years on the throne, Elizabeth II visited Canada and attended an NHL pre-season game between the Vancouver Canucks and San Jose Sharks on Oct. 6. Wayne Gretzky (probably the closest thing to Canadian royalty) walked her out on the red carpet to centre ice, where the Queen performed the ceremonial puck drop with Canucks captain Markus Naslund and Sharks captain Mike Ricci. She was also joined on the red carpet by Ed Jovanovski and Cassie Campbell, both wearing the Olympic hockey gold medals they'd won with Canada earlier that year in Salt Lake City. Gretzky and others autographed the puck, which now lives in the Royal Archives at Windsor Castle.
This was Elizabeth II's first time at an NHL game in more than a half century, and her first as Queen. In 1951, when she was still Princess Elizabeth, she attended a game in Montreal and a brief charity exhibition at Maple Leaf Gardens between Toronto and Chicago. Learn more about the Queen's Vancouver faceoff by watching this video:
WATCH | Examining the Queen's famous puck drop at a Canucks game in 2002:
Opposites attract
Brash Canadian swimming star Victor Davis and the stoic Queen didn't have much in common, but their paths crossed twice at the Commonwealth Games in the 1980s. The first time came at the '82 Games in Australia, where an enraged Davis kicked over a poolside chair after his relay team's apparent gold-medal victory was nullified by a false start. As legend has it, Davis did this right in front of the Queen (the nerve!), who was in the stands that day. By most accounts, though, the Queen had left the building before the tantrum.
Four years later in Scotland, Davis made amends for the slight (real or not) by reaching up to Elizabeth's first-row box to hand her a frisbee. Learn all about Davis' brushes with the Queen by watching this video by CBC Sports' Rob Pizzo:
WATCH | The unknown history of Victor Davis and the Queen:
A (royal) family affair in Montreal
Elizabeth II is the only person to have performed the official opening at two Olympic Games — in 1976 in Montreal and 2012 in London. After she proclaimed the Montreal Games open — in English and French — at The Big O, the Queen's daughter, Princess Anne, competed in equestrian. She did not win a medal, but Anne's daughter, Zara Tindall (the Queen's eldest granddaughter), was part of the British team that captured silver in eventing in 2012 on home soil.
The name's Elizabeth. Queen Elizabeth.
As Olympic opening ceremonies go, London's in 2012 was as good as it gets. The Danny Boyle-directed show featured a live performance by Paul McCartney, a fireworks show set to Pink Floyd, and a healthy dose of cheeky British humour.
The Queen got in on the fun by taping a segment in which James Bond (Daniel Craig) escorted her out of Buckingham Palace for a helicopter ride to Olympic Stadium. Bond and "the Queen" were then shown skydiving into the stadium before, in real life, the monarch herself entered the venue wearing the same outfit she had on in the video. A stunt double handled the parachuting part, of course, but the Queen's willingness to play her part set the tone for one of the most joyous Olympics in memory.
Queen of the arena
Back when the Jets played in the World Hockey Association, a giant portrait of Elizabeth II hung on the wall behind one of the nets at old Winnipeg Arena. In 1979, when the team joined the NHL and upper decks were added to the arena to increase capacity, a new picture of the Queen was commissioned to hang in the rafters, between the Canadian and American flags. The 5x7-metre portrait stayed up until 1999 (three years after the Jets moved to Atlanta) and is now owned by a local businessman who says he'll display it for public viewing in the wake of the Queen's death.
Don Cherry was a vocal fan of the big Queen portrait in Winnipeg, but not everyone agreed. Boorish NHL/WHA star Bobby Hull and some of his Jets teammates used to fire pucks at it, and his son Brett revealed in his autobiography that some of their kids did too. "I liked to line up pucks at centre ice and try to hit that god-awful, ugly portrait of Queen Elizabeth hanging on the arena wall," Brett wrote. (To be fair, it's not the most flattering portrait.) Brett says he never managed to get one on target, but the puck marks visible on the picture before it was restored showed that others did. Read more about the Winnipeg Arena's famous portrait of the Queen here.
In addition to those moments, the Queen also attended the 1978 Commonwealth Games in Edmonton and four Queen's Plate horse races in Toronto between 1959 and 2010. Soccer fans in her country will fondly remember when she awarded the World Cup trophy to England captain Bobby Moore after his team won on home soil in 1966 — still England's only World Cup title. Watch a montage of some of the Queen's appearances at sporting events here.
Out of respect for the Queen, all English Premier League matches for this weekend have been postponed, along with lower-division matches. Golf's European tour suspended its tournament in England, where rugby, cricket, horse racing, cycling and boxing events were called off too as Britain observes a period of mourning. Read more about the sports world's response to the Queen's death here.
