The 8-ender for Dec. 22

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 22/12/2008 (6358 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Instead, Norberg thrashed Jones 41-14 and Norway’s Thomas Ulsrud needed just eight points against Martin to seal the deal for Team World a few hours later.

 

The Continental Cup was originally designed as a showcase for singles and mixed curling, in hopes the International Olympic Committee would add a couple more medals for curling.

But six years later the event is floundering, with no title sponsor and generally anemic crowds, and the World Curling Federation was saying openly last week that the Camrose event could very likely be the last Continental Cup ever.

Although there is now a new world mixed doubles event — the Canadian representatives in 2009 will be Winnipeg’s Sean Grassie and Alison Nimik — those new Olympic medals for curling seem as far away today as they were six years ago.

 

Assiniboine Memorial will play host next April to a new provincial curling club championship, with the men’s and women’s  winners slated to represent Manitoba at a new national club curling championship.

Eight men’s teams and eight women’s teams, winners of new regional club playdowns, will compete at Assiniboine-Memorial April 24-26, with the two winners advancing to the national Dominion Club Championship in Etobicoke in November 2009.

The new event, sponsored by the Dominion Insurance Co., is designed to fill the void between recreational curlers and elite competitive teams.

 

The worst curling event I ever covered was the gong show that was the 2005 women’s worlds in Paisley, Scotland.

Part of the reason that event was so bad — and there were plenty of reasons — was because humidity from an adjoining swimming pool wreaked havoc with the ice.

So here’s hoping organizers in Vancouver have taken that into account with the new Olympic curling venue, which shares a building with — you guessed it — a swimming pool.

During a media tour of the new $40-million Vancouver Olympic Centre last week, organizers touted the new curling venue as a model of eco-friendly building, noting that they can take the heat out of the water that is used to make ice and transfer it to heat the adjoining swimming pool.

That’s the plan, anyway.

 

Winnipegger Cam Barker got to show off his Winnipeg roots last week when the Chicago Blackhawks went curling.

Barker and the Hawks spent an off-day in Calgary on Wednesday doing some curling as a team-building exercise — and Barker got the highest marks from teammates for his abilities in the roaring game, according to the Chicago Tribune.

"I curled a bit in high school — in gym, you curl," Barker told the Trib. "It was fun to get everyone together like that. It was the first kind of team thing we’ve done like that. Not a lot of guys had curled and there were a couple of wipeouts, so it was funny to see."

Fellow Manitoban Jonathan Toews, however, was singled out for having some of the worst curling skills on the Hawks.

 

What’s in a name? Well, when it comes to curling, it’s spawned a bit of a debate on the Internet.

The folks at word-detective.com are challenging Wikipedia’s assertion that curling got its name from the Scottish word "curr", which describes a low, rumbling sound akin to the sound a rock makes sliding down the ice.

The word-detective folks say there’s no scholarly reference for that origin and assert that the real origin of the name curling couldn’t be simpler: "(It’s) simply a reference to the curve of the stone’s course across the ice."

 

There will be three Manitoba teams competing at the Canada Cup in Yorkton from March 18 to 22.

Winnipeg’s Mike McEwen and Kerry Burtnyk both qualified from the men’s side, McEwen with a semifinal performance at a Canada Cup qualifier last week, and Burtnyk by virtue of his standing on the Canadian Team Ranking System. Jennifer Jones is the lone Manitoba entry on the women’s side, qualifying as the winner of last year’s national Scotties Tournament of Hearts.

 

Howard speaks out

 

Russ Howard, the 2006 Olympic gold medallist, is worried about the future of curling. Howard thinks the Olympics might be partly to blame for the growing gap between the elite teams and everyone else.

"I worry about it a little bit, to be honest," Howard told the Edmonton Journal. "The Olympics is going to make it grow, there’s no question about it, but it’s not the be-all end-all.

"Because what’s happened in Canada, for sure, is that the top teams, like Kevin (Martin) and Randy (Ferbey), my brother and those type of guys, they’re almost professional curlers.

"And thank God, because whoever wins our Olympic spot will be a great team to represent our country. But… there’s going to be a real divide (in curling ranks). I’m worried about that second echelon. We have to be careful that we don’t ostracize the young kids coming up. How do they make that quantum leap to beating Randy Ferbey?"