Sick Kids catches Olympic fever
It’s the 10th end, with the game on the line.
Eleven-year-old Christopher Sud of Newmarket has the hammer.
The kid may be inexperienced, but as he sharpens his glare down the ice his eyes glint like a seasoned veteran.
Taking hold of the game’s final stone, Christopher grips it tightly and pulls back before sliding the flat rock across the table, skipping it over his opponent’s guard and landing it squarely on the button — stealing the game and winning another gold medal at the first SickKids Olympics.
“He’s been stuck in his room for a week and now he’s playing the Olympics,” said Christopher’s mother, Alice Sud, explaining that her son had been kept in isolation until minutes before the activity’s “opening ceremonies.”
Christopher was one of dozens of athletes who took part in the games at the Hospital for Sick Children yesterday, celebrating Canada’s momentous hosting of the Winter Olympics and giving the hospital’s young patients a chance to feel like Olympians for a day.
“We want kids to remember that February 2010 was when the Olympics were in Canada, and not as a time when they were in the hospital,” said Caron Irwin, an entertainment coordinator at the hospital.
Irwin said hospital staff has been trying to “create a buzz” about the Winter Olympics over the last two weeks and yesterday’s activity was the “jewel” event.
Organizers adapted several Olympic sports for the patients to play in the hospital’s atrium.
They dropped ice cubes down a bobsled track, shot tennis balls at targets in a simulated hockey game and played plinko slalom.