GIRO HOST FAMILY GETS BIKE HELP
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WHY MEN SAY ‘LET ME ASK MY WIFE’
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STAY WITH YOUR CURRENT BOSS?
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Bob and Linda Cullen only see the funny side of Canadian politics. See Page A14
WEDNESDAY
JULY 25 2012 www.burnabynewsleader.com
Marmot found under hood Hitched ride to Lower Mainland from Merritt Wanda Chow
wchow@burnabynewsleader.com
GRANT GRANGER/NEWSLEADER
Javelin athlete Curtis Moss demonstrates a little of his form as he prepares to depart for the 2012 Summer Olympics in London. He arrives there on Friday.
Local thrower London bound Grant Granger
ggranger@burnabynewsleader.com
Curtis Moss has never been to London. That’s about to change in a spectacular way. He’ll arrive there this week after taking a circuitous route via many countries, coaches and schools, and spanning several years. In the end, though, it was a hometown Burnaby connection that got him there in time to throw the javelin for Canada at the 2012 Summer Olympics. In his days at Burnaby Central
secondary, Moss quarterbacked the Wildcats football team. It was a sport everyone assumed he would always play since he was the son of former CFL player Leroy Moss. If not that, then baseball, the game he loved the most. In Grade 10, though, he tried out for the track team, and that’s when he hooked up with Burnaby sports legend Don Steen, father of 1988 Olympic decathlete bronze medallist Dave Steen. “It was very exciting for me to work with Don and then the more I got to work with him the more I felt
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I was lucky,” says Moss. The elder Steen coached, guided and moulded Moss into becoming the 2005 provincial high school champion in the decathlon and the javelin, an event he set a record in, besting the previous mark by 4.3 metres. “We worked through to the point where I got him organized to go to SFU after graduation,” says Steen. “That didn’t work out too well for him because of the emphasis on middle distance running and lack of concern for field events.” Moss left Simon Fraser to seek
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help elsewhere. He’d heard about a coach at Southeastern Louisiana University who specialized in javelin, so he headed there. But then the coach left for another university and Moss couldn’t follow. So he enrolled at UBC where he played a couple of seasons at defensive back for the Thunderbirds football team as well as continuing his javelin training. “The throwing situation at UBC was not great for him,” says Steen. Please see RETURN TO OLD COACH, A3
Play today!
A marmot is recovering at the Wildlife Rescue Association of B.C. after being plucked from under the hood of an SUV Saturday morning in the Burnaby 8-Rinks parking lot. The marmot was a hitchhiker, having apparently hopped into the car of Henri Jover in Merritt, where he and his son Luke had gone on a fishing trip last week, says Luke’s mom, Mary Frances Hill. “On Friday before they left they heard a chirping and thought, ‘what the heck?’” Hill said. They heard the chirping every now and then as they made the five-hour drive back to Vancouver. Even back in the city, they could still hear it. “Then it stopped. I thought, ‘Oh my god, it’s either dead or gone,’” she said, noting it was parked near a park that they thought it could have wandered over to. The next day, Saturday morning, Jover and Hill took Luke to Burnaby 8-Rinks to watch him play hockey. Please see MARMOT, A4