Stoughton raring to rock the Worlds in Regina next month

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This article was published 14/03/2011 (5679 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

LONDON — Winnipeg’s Jeff Stoughton will be considered an overwhelming favourite to win the World Men’s Curling Championship in Regina, April 2-10.

And he cannot wait to get started.

“We are really, really looking forward to rocking the crap out of Regina,” Stoughton said last night. “It’s the Worlds, man. We’ll put the Maple Leaf on our back and we are going to rock out in Regina. It’s just going to be awesome.”

Stoughton is 1-1 at previous Worlds, winning in 1996 and losing the final in an extra end in 1999.

Canada has won three of the last four worlds, missing only in 2009 when Edmonton’s Kevin Martin infamously “threw away” the 10th end of the world final against Scotland’s David Murdoch.

Murdoch did not qualify for this year’s worlds for Scotland, who are sending the much less accomplished Tom Brewster instead. But there are a number of other accomplished international teams who will be there, including Norway’s Thomas Ulsrud, the 2010 Olympic silver medallist; USA’s Pete Fenson, the 2006 Olympic bronze medallist; Sweden’s Niklas Edin, who was fourth in Vancouver; Switzerland’s Christof Schwaller, the 2002 Olympic bronze medallist; and Germany’s Andy Kapp, who has won more games at the Worlds — but no championships — than any other skip.

The rest of the 12-team field includes China’s Luan Chen, Denmark’s Tommy Stjerne, Korea’s Dong Keun Lee, France’s Tony Angiboust and Czech Republic’s Jiri Snitil, making his third appearance after going 5-17 in his first two events.

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Manitoba third Jon Mead was named a first-team all-star, while Stoughton was named to the second team at the Brier Awards Banquet Sunday morning.

The rest of the first team was made up of Ontario skip Glenn Howard and Alberta’s second Marc Kennedy and lead Ben Hebert.

The balance of the second-team consisted of the rest of Team Ontario: third Richard Hart, second Brent Laing and lead Craig Savill.

Conspicuous by his absence from either team was Manitoba second Reid Carruthers, who actually outshot Laing percentage-wise, but was overlooked by the voters of the Canadian Curling Reporters.

Mead was also named last night as the winner of the Hec Gervais Award, as the playoff MVP, while Stoughton picked up the award for Shot of the Week.

The winner of the Ross Harstone sportsmanship award went to B.C. skip Jim Cotter, the Scotty Harper Award for the best curling story of 2010 went to Sweep Magazine’s Jim Henderson, and the Paul McLean Award for outstanding contribution to curling by a member of the media went to CCA photographer Michael Burns Jr.

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There’s nothing like a Canadian men’s curling championship to put a curler’s retirement plans on hold.

“There’s so many things now on the table for the next couple years — how do I not keep playing?,” wondered Mead, who’d talked openly about packing it in after this season.

“I’ll make the decision in the best interest of me and my family, but how do you walk away from this? It’s unbelievable, just unbelievable.

“It was a weird week. I felt sick at times the last couple of days, just because of the anxiety of playing in the final. But I never felt the nerves — I just somehow knew I was going to play well.”

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Newfoundland’s Brad Gushue defeated Alberta’s Kevin Martin 10-5 in the controversial Brier bronze medal game Sunday afternoon.

With Martin going public before the game he had no interest in playing for bronze — a Brier first this year — and Gushue expressing a similar sentiment, but more diplomatically, there were concerns the game would degenerate into a debacle.

But in the end, the two teams played a crowd-pleasing eight ends, with Newfoundland handing out brooms and uniforms to fans during the game.

paul.wiecek@freepress.mb.ca