Weight of the Worlds

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This article was published 01/04/2011 (5502 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

REGINA — Jeff Stoughton will have the best team working for him, but the weight of history working against him, as he attempts over the next nine days to once again skip the best curling team in the world.

Stoughton will get his first look at the ice for the 2011 World Men’s Curling Championship during the practice session this afternoon at Regina’s 6,000-seat Brandt Centre and will then officially embark Saturday on his quest to do something only four other Manitoba-based curlers have — win two world men’s curling championships.

While Manitoba has sent 11 teams to the men’s worlds since that event was first contested in 1959, just five of those 11 teams won world titles. And only one team — the legendary 1970-71 foursome of Don Duguid, Rod Hunter, Jim Pettapiece and Bryan Wood — are able to call themselves two-time world curling champions.

In contrast to Manitoba’s 5-6 record at the men’s worlds, Canada as a whole has a 32-20 record in the 52 men’s worlds contested over the years. Saskatchewan is 5-1 when they have gone to the men’s worlds, while Alberta is 11-7.

Stoughton, meanwhile, is 1-1 in two previous trips to the worlds, winning it all when he went in 1996 (with current lead Steve Gould) but losing the 1999 world men’s final (without Gould) in an extra end to Scotland’s Hammy McMillan.

Saturday, you will read about how that loss to McMillan is the only regret the nine-time Manitoba champion can identify in a competitive curling career now in its third decade.

But today, we’ll look forward to the challenge facing Stoughton in Regina as he attempts to win Canada its 33rd world men’s curling championship.

 

THE FAVOURITE — Jeff Stoughton, Canada (3-2)

STOUGHTON — with third Jon Mead, second Reid Carruthers and lead Steve Gould — comes into Regina as the hottest team in the world. He has been beaten just twice since January, going 7-0 in Beausejour to win the Manitoba provincials and then 11-2 in London to win the Brier. Put it together and Stoughton is 18-2 in his last 20 games heading into the worlds and comes in off a record-setting performance in the Brier final last month in which his foursome shot 96 per cent in a win over Ontario’s Glenn Howard, the highest team percentage in Brier final history.

Compared to the Brier field, this will be a step down. But it won’t be without challenges. First, Stoughton has a modestly difficult early schedule and will need to catch onto the ice quickly as he takes on Switzerland, Denmark and Germany on opening weekend. And second, he will face the same challenge every Canadian men’s team faces at the Worlds — staying focused as they play the likes of such curling doormats as France, Czech Republic and South Korea.

 

The challenger — Thomas Ulsrud, Norway (3-1)

ULSRUD is clearly the next best team in this field and principal challenger to Stoughton. Lost amidst all the media attention garnered by the flamboyant pants his team wore at the 2010 Winter Olympics in Vancouver was the fact Ulsrud’s Oslo team finished second to gold-medal winner Kevin Martin of Canada. Ulsrud’s team — minus the skip, who had to stay home due to a family illness — then went on to also finish second to Canada’s Kevin Koe at the 2010 worlds.

Undeterred by those two bridesmaid performances, Ulsrud is back as the reigning European champion and will have all kinds of motivation in Regina to finally graduate from second-best team in the world with what would be his first world championship.

 

THE STALKER — Niklas Edin, Sweden (4-1)

JUST 25, Edin already has a European championship, won in 2009, to go along with the World Junior title he won in 2004 and the World University title he won in 2009.

He finished a capable fourth in Vancouver on the biggest stage he had yet seen and has been paying his dues on the North American cash circuit for the past couple winters. A product of the same curling program that produced the likes of such Swedish curling greats as Peja Lindholm, Anette Norberg and Elisabet Gustafson, Edin has all the makings of the next great Swedish champion.

 

THE PACK — Pete Fenson, U.S.; Tom Brewster, Scotland; Christoff Schwaller, Switzerland (5-1)

FENSON is the 2006 Olympic bronze medallist and the closest thing the Americans have to a competitive men’s team on the world stage. Brewster has been around forever — he won the 1995 world juniors — but is making his worlds debut in Regina. And Schwaller won a bronze medal at the 2002 Winter Olympics playing third for brother Andi Schwaller.

 

THE SLEEPER — Andy Kapp, Germany (6-1)

KAPP will be making his 13th appearance at the worlds and has yet to win. But he is a two-time European champion and has finished second at the worlds twice, most recently in 2007. Plus, he comes into Regina as nothing less than the winningest skip in the history of the men’s worlds, with 66 career victories.

It would be easy to discount Kapp as a retread from yesteryear. But that’s what they were also saying about Germany’s Andrea Schoepp, until she won her second world title last year — 22 years after she’d won her first.

 

THE LONG SHOTS — Dong Keun Lee, Korea; Luan Chen, China; Jiri Snitil, Czech Republic; Tommy Stjerne, Denmark; Thomas Dufour, France (40-1)

DUFOURS is the best of this bunch, having played in six previous Worlds and once posting a winning record of 6-5 at the 2008 worlds in Grand Forks, N.D. After that, it’s a steep drop off. Stjerne is 53 and will skip what is basically a seniors team; Chen is 23 and will skip what is basically a juniors team; Lee’s only other appearance at the worlds saw him go 1-8 in 2003 at Winnipeg Arena; and Snitil has a combined record of 5-17 in two previous appearances at the worlds in 2009 and 2009.

 

PREDICTION: Stoughton becomes a two-time world champion, defeating Norway’s Ulsrud in the final.

paul.wiecek@freepress.mb.ca