Let’s catch up on curling news. There was a lot of talk about the ice issues at the Men’s World Championships in Las Vegas. And indeed, the ice was bad. Unfortunately, it was worse towards the end of the event and the ice issues were in full display for the gold medal game. Others can […]
The men’s worlds starts on Saturday in Vegas, and like the women, the field isn’t what it could be. Most notably, top-ranked Team Mouat won’t be in Vegas despite the fact that they wanted to be the Scottish representative. Seventh-ranked Team De Cruz is not here on account of losing to Team Schwaller in the […]
This is a really quick outline of the women’s worlds which starts in Prince George on Saturday. What with being an Olympic year, the field is a little watered down. The U.S., Scotland, and Japan are not sending their best teams. Theoretically, Canada wouldn’t be sending its best team either, but with Jennifer Jones pulling […]
The Brier starts on Friday, so let’s talk about it. This Brier is unusual is that Canada’s Olympic representative is playing in it. This has not happened before, and for good reason. Once you’ve played the Olympics, the goal of the last four years of your curling life, it’s going to be hard to get […]
The Olympics are over and I have some random disjointed thoughts. The events themselves had the character we were expecting. The women’s event could have gone a number of different ways and a team with four losses ended up beating another team with four losses in the gold medal game. On the other hand, the […]
I’m a fan of alternates being used at some point. Not for any strategic advantage, but just because I like seeing as many people as possible get an opportunity to throw a stone at the Olympics. It isn’t always possible for alternates to make it into a game. Some teams are grinding through the event […]
Yesterday, we previewed the men’s field in Beijing. Now let’s talk about the women’s event, which begins on Wednesday and closes with the gold medal game on the 20th. The thing you need to know is that the women’s event is much more wide open than the men. There are four teams on the men’s […]
Four-person Olympic curling starts Wednesday and concludes with the gold medal game on the 19th. The event consists of ten teams who play round robin where the top four enter a single-elimination playoff for the global marbles. I’ve used my ratings to simulate the event one million times. And that gives us some fun and […]
(I’m really proud of that title.) With the shadow of the Olympics looming, the Scotties don’t quite capture the full attention of the curling world. But it’s a fact that both the Beijing games and the Scotties will have two of the top four teams in the world competing. The Scotties start Friday in Thunder […]
What makes curling great is that 60 year olds can compete with 20 year olds and women can compete with men. But that also means that once you’ve made it as a competitive curler, you can be there for a long time if you’re motivated to do so. And that’s apparent when you see just […]