Reading Passage 1

Ice Hockey’s Stanley Cup

Lord Stanley’s famous Cup has become the symbol of professional hockey, and its ultimate prize.

In global sport, there are a number of trophies presented to the winning individual, team or country, and each trophy or cup is the symbol of supremacy for the winner.  Some of the more famous trophies are the World Cup for football, held every four years, which was inaugurated in 1930 in Uruguay, and won for the first time by the host nation.  Rugby union also holds a quadrennial World Cup, and the trophy is called the Webb-Ellis Trophy, which has been held aloft by New Zealand, Australia and South Africa each twice, and by England once.  The symbol of supremacy in American football, called ‘gridiron’, is the Vince Lombardi Trophy, named after the legendary coach of the Green Bay Packers, while the Ryder Cup is given to one of two golfing teams, the United States or the European team, that emerges victorious in their biennial competition.  Individually, the Green Jacket is awarded to the winner of the Masters Golf tournament while the Claret Jug is presented to the British Open Golf champion.  Another famous variation on a trophy is the Yellow Jersey, taken by the winner of each stage in the famous Tour de France cycle race, and to the overall victor.  Horse racing has its famous Melbourne Cup and tennis the Davis Cup, while sailing has the America’s Cup and the Admiral’s Cup.  The list is endless, with each sport having its competitors striving relentlessly to emerge the champion, and to lay claim to the sporting prize, the trophy, the cup or the winning apparel.  The storied history of the Stanley Cup, the oldest professional North American sports trophy, presented to the winner of the National Hockey League’s ice hockey champions, is long, and fabled.

Frederick Arthur Stanley, Lord Stanley of Preston, Earl of Derby, was born in London, England, in 1841, and established a career as a Conservative Party politician.  In 1888, he was nominated by Queen Victoria as the Governor-General of Canada, a position he served until 1893.  In his first year on arriving in Canada, Lord Stanley, an avid sports fan, attended the Montreal Winter Carnival which featured an ice hockey match between the Montreal Victorias and the Montreal Amateur Athletic Association, won by the Victorias in a close contest, 2-1.  It was reported that Lord Stanley was impressed with the skill of the players and thoroughly enjoyed the game.  Three of his sons went on to play for the Ottawa Rebels team and Lord Stanley took a particular interest in promoting the sport of ice hockey.  One way that he felt that more interest could be generated would be if there was a trophy that could be competed for by all teams in Canada.  In 1892, Lord Stanley advised the Amateur Athletic Association that because there was not an organized championship, and with a bid to standardize the rules of ice hockey, he would donate a trophy which would be competed for across the Dominion of the then-young Canada, and his proposal was accepted by the sports foundations throughout the country.

In 1893, Lord Stanley purchased a silver punch bowl, approximately 18 cms high and 25 cms wide, for ten guineas, which was equal to $50.00, and had the words “From Stanley of Preston” engraved on the side.  He set a series of rules for the competition of his Cup, the main one being that the winning team would hold the Cup for one year, and then return it to be competed for again in an annual nation-wide series of competitions.  In the early years, the Cup was mainly contested by teams in the eastern part of Canada, with the Montreal Amateur Athletic Association being the first champions in 1893.  In 1915, an understanding was reached between the National Hockey Association in the east of Canada and the Pacific Coast Hockey Association in the west whereby the respective winners of these leagues would meet to compete for the Cup.  Over the years, the face of hockey changed in Canada, with more teams being added, and professionalism making its mark.  The National Hockey League, or NHL, became the predominant sporting organization for professional hockey, and in 1926 the Stanley Cup became the symbol of the championship of the NHL season, and to this day the Cup is competed for by the 30 teams from Canada and the United States in the NHL.  One feature of the Stanley Cup is that it has grown in size, with new silver rings being added, as the names of the players on the winning team are engraved onto the trophy.

Perhaps unique among major sporting trophies, the Stanley Cup has a long and sometimes infamous history, including being lost, thrown in a river, stolen, and being used as a popcorn holder.  In 1907, a photographer was given the Cup as he was documenting the winning team’s victorious season, and while the Cup was at his home, his mother, unsure of what to make of it, filled it with soil and turned it into a flower-pot.  Another story is recounted of the winner of the Kentucky Derby, a famous American horse race, named ‘Go For Gin’, who ate oats from the Cup.  Or, in recent times, when the Cup spent the night at the bottom of one of the winning team’s player’s swimming pool, because tradition dictates that each player from the winning team gets to personally keep the Cup for one day, provided it is looked after and returned in pristine condition, a rule often not always adhered to.  Which is why the NHL has now hired security guards to administer and look after the Stanley Cup.

Lord Stanley of Preston would surely now look upon his famous trophy with a sense of both wonderment and bewilderment.  The Stanley Cup is fought for and prized by both players and fans alike, and the ultimate reward in professional hockey is to be a player on the winning team skating around the arena with the Stanley Cup held high for the fans, and players themselves, to see and cherish.

Reading Passage 1

You should spend about 20 minutes on Questions 1 – 13 which are based on Reading Passage 1.

Reading Passage 2

The Olympics: Faster, Higher, Stronger

But Will It Always Be That Way?

A: Since humankind began engaging in sporting competitions in an attempt to move faster, jump higher or to out-muscle one’s opponent, maybe even before the Greeks began recording results, the desire to be the best, to establish records, has driven the athlete.  With each record, then, the target was set for the succession of athletes to follow to do their utmost to better the result, to establish their own mark.  One record, indeed, often called a barrier, was the so-called ‘Four-Minute Mile’, when experts declared that the limits of endurance and ability meant that the four-minute mile would never be broken, and, indeed, the record had basically stood at four minutes ten seconds since the turn of the twentieth century.  However, in 1954, in Oxford, England, Roger Bannister ran a mile in three minutes 59.4 seconds, breaking four minutes and beating the record that had stood for nearly a decade, and which, amazingly, was broken again only six weeks later.

B

The motto of the Olympic Games is ‘Faster, Higher, Stronger’, but the question has long absorbed experts – sports scientists, doctors, journalists and researchers alike – as to what the limits to human athleticism are.  The question is more often analyzed in terms of ‘are we at the limits of human athletic supremacy?’ and ‘if not, how soon will we be?’  From there, the question then becomes one of considering that if human endurance and ability have been reached, what next?  Is it then a case of realising that it is not possible to push the boundaries, but of endeavouring to be the best in a particular competition?  One researcher who believes we are now at this point is Geoffroy Berthelot, from Paris’ Institute for Biomedical Research and Sports Epidemiology, who, in 2008, stated that according to the statistical model developed at the institute’s ‘human species’ set-up, physiological frontiers will be reached within the next generation.

C

Other researchers agree.  Dr. Mark Denny, from Stanford University in the United States, believes that the 100-metre race is practically at the limit of human capability.  Dr. Denny has calculated the progress of the lowering of times for 100 years and, in conjunction with the maximum speed capable by humans under their own power, believes the record is just about now in place and we will not see another huge drop in time as we did in 2009, when the Jamaican sprinter Usain Bolt carved 0.11 seconds off his own existing record, which, in sprint terms, is a dramatic reduction.  France’s Geoffroy Berthelot also points out that 23 out of 36 track-and-field events have not seen new records set since the early 1990s, and of the other thirteen events, only small movements have been recorded in new records.

D

Some sports and events, however, have seen, and continue to see, records tumbling and dramatic new times and figures being recorded.  An analysis of these events, though, shows that other factors are at play, mostly centring around technology.  Pole vaulting has witnessed many new records as the original bamboo poles were replaced by, first, aluminium, and then fibre-glass.  The Barcelona Games in 1992 saw the introduction of the first ‘super-bike’, designed by engineers at the Lotus car company, which had a single-unit wheel structure instead of spokes, which, it was claimed, reduced air resistance, and the records backed it up.  And then there are the controversial changes.  The Beijing Olympics in 2008 had the new full-body swimsuits made of polyurethane, which compressed the muscles, thus reducing friction in the water, resulting in 25 new world records for those who wore the suits, which was the biggest jump in new times since Montreal’s 1976 Games, which, not surprisingly saw the then-largest increase in new records owing to swimmers being allowed to use goggles for the first time.

E

Interestingly, some researchers are not convinced that limits have been, or are about to be, reached.  The common consensus among them is that athletes, and their trainers, are now turning to the one field not yet fully exploited in achieving the best athletic performance: science.  Peter Weyand, of Southern Methodist University in the U.S., is looking at how athletes can pull out even more from their muscles with different exercise routines designed to maximise muscle performance, using mathematical formulas to track peak force and how and when it can be achieved.  As well, Dr. Weyand is looking intently at the foot-to-ground ratio in running, seeing how different training methods may allow the most gain to be achieved in track events.  Other areas researchers are investigating are in the oxygen and blood fields, ways to increase oxygen-carrying red blood cells to enhance and sustain muscle performance, and the relatively new field of gene therapy in the sporting context.

F

To the dismay of the sporting community, one area which always raises its head any time there is competition is the question of performance-enhancing drugs.  Many sports, from cycling, weight-lifting and swimming to running and track, indeed, any aerobic-based sport, are beset with the problem of drugs.  And there is the realisation that anti-doping regulations are abused, crippled with double-standards, ignored by some athletes and trainers, and, in some cases, the use of sports drugs is even condoned by national sports Federations, albeit on the quiet.  Some have even gone so far as to suggest that certain forms of drugs, heavily regulated, should be accepted, thus allowing for better monitoring and care for the athlete.  One researcher who is looking at this area is Scotland’s Andy Miah, a bioethicist, who has put forward the suggestion of a ‘World Pro-Doping Agency’, which would be tasked with ‘investing in safer forms of performance enhancement’.

G

One thing is certain.  Athletes, their trainers, the various sports Federations, and, indeed, the public, will all be wanting to see a continued reduction in times, lengthening of distances, increases in weights and heights and more records.  Will it be science, or technology, or human determination which sees the athlete, the competitor, continue to cause records to fall?  Or will the day come when we are all watching the 100-metre dash being contested by genetically-modified sprinters, with enhanced lung power, super-muscles, and the 9-second barrier being broken?

Reading Passage 2

You should spend about 20 minutes on Questions 14 – 26 which are based on Reading Passage 2.

Reading Passage 3

The Life and Work of Edgar Allan Poe

 Edgar Allan Poe, one of the first prominent American authors, is perhaps best known today for his contribution to the short story form as well as his most famous poem, The Raven. Born in Boston, Massachusetts, on January 19, 1809, Poe was the second child of two professional actors. In the second year of his life, 1811, the young Poe, his older brother Henry and younger sister Rosalie, found themselves orphaned following the death of their mother from tuberculosis, the family having been abandoned by Poe’s father a year earlier.

In 1811, Poe was adopted by the Allan family of Richmond, Virginia. Mainly as a result of financial pressures, Poe’s relationship with Frances and John Allan, his foster parents, was often tense. After completing secondary school, Poe attended the University of Virginia in 1826 at the age of seventeen. Despite excelling academically, notably in French and Latin, Poe quit university before completing his first year, after falling out with John Allan over the cost of his education and debts that he had accrued. In 1827 Poe moved to Boston and enlisted in the United States Army using a false name, publishing an anonymous collection of poetry entitled Tamerlane and Other Poems in the same year.

After two years of military service, during which time Poe rose to the rank of Sergeant Major, he was granted a discharge to enter the United States Military Academy at West Point as a cadet and further his education. During this time Poe clashed again with his foster father regarding financial support for his studies, and it is said that the young writer deliberately broke rules and neglected his duties while at West Point so that he would be dismissed. In 1831, Poe was court-martialed for disobedience, afterwards moving to New York City for a brief period. He had resolved to devote himself to his writing on a fulltime basis, publishing more poetry but having all of the short stories that he submitted to magazines rejected.

Towards the end of 1831, Poe left New York City and moved into the house of his aunt, Maria Clemm, in Baltimore, Maryland. He stayed in Baltimore for the best part of four years, writing and selling a number of both poems and short stories during this period. However, the young writer still struggled financially, in no small part as a result of the lack of international copyright laws at the time, meaning that the editors of literary magazines preferred to reprint British works rather than publish those of new American authors. One of the short stories that Poe wrote while living under his Aunt’s roof, The Manuscript Found in a Bottle, won a magazine contest, helping him to secure a position as editor of the Southern Literary Messenger in 1835.

As editor of the Southern Literary Messenger in Richmond, Virginia, Poe was instrumental in lifting the publication’s readership, raising circulation from fewer than 1000 to 3500 copies. During this time, Poe established his reputation as a literary critic and began to focus on writing prose, rather than poetry. He quit the paper in 1836, however, citing the low salary and lack of editorial control as the primary reasons. In the same year, Poe married a woman many years his junior, before returning to New York in 1837. Over the following decade, the writer held a number of editorial positions with various leading literary journals of the day in both New York and Philadelphia, including the Broadway Journal, Burton’s Gentleman’s Magazine and Graham’s Magazine.

The year 1839 saw the publication of Poe’s first volume of short stories, Tales of the Grotesque and Arabesque, although he received no payment for the work, and supplemented his income from editing jobs by giving lectures and public readings. Continuing to write in different forms throughout this period of his life and career, in 1841 the author published what is generally considered to be the first story in the genre of detective fiction, entitled The Murders in the Rue Morgue. The following year, Poe quit his editing job with Graham’s Magazine, planning to start his own publication, Stylus. Unfortunately, this venture was not successful. Poe attained further literary recognition in 1843, however, winning first prize in a competition for his story The Gold Bug, a tale heavily influenced by his interest in cryptography.

In spite of winning one hundred dollars in prize money for The Gold Bug, Poe was still struggling to support his family financially. However, in 1845 the publication of his poem The Raven, arguably the author’s single most widely recognized work, won him lasting fame. Poe became an almost overnight literary sensation in his home country, and The Raven played a significant role in securing his international reputation as a writer. The poem explores a number of the gothic themes common to Poe’s writing, including those of love, beauty, death and loss. While he was now a household name in the country of his birth, Poe continued to have difficulty in making ends meet, and was overcome by grief and sorrow following the death of his wife, Virginia, from tuberculosis in 1847.

After the loss of his wife, it is said that Poe’s behaviour became more erratic, and that his lifelong battle with depression worsened. He left the Bronx, in New York, where he and Virginia had been living and stayed in Rhode Island for a brief period, before returning to Richmond. The precise details surrounding Poe’s death and his final days are a matter of considerable debate. It has been reported that the author left Richmond by train on September 27, 1849, supposedly with the intention of travelling to Philadelphia for an editing job. However, for reasons unknown, Poe ended up in Baltimore, where he was found in the street on October 3, semiconscious and in a state of delirium.  He was taken to the Washington Medical College and died four days later, on October 7, 1849.

While he was alive, Edgar Allan Poe was most widely recognized in the country of his birth as a literary critic and editor. At the same time, he was known as both a fiction writer and poet, and one of the first nineteenth century American authors to attain greater popularity in Europe than in the United States. Today, Poe is one of America’s most enduring writers, as well as being among the first to become a major figure in world literature. He is considered to be the originator of gothic fiction, as well as being a contributor to the development of science fiction and the modern short story form. The works of Edgar Allan Poe have inspired and influenced a host of other notable artists, writers and film directors, the likes of Salvador Dali, Charles Baudelaire and Alfred Hitchcock, to name but a few.

Reading Passage 3

You should spend about 20 minutes on Questions 27 – 40 which are based on Reading Passage 3.