Merveilleux

EDMONTON – Heard TSN’s Cathy Gauthier talking about France’s Thomas Dufour (in the BalancePlus advertisement above, photographed by CurlingZone) in the afternoon game.

The French are playing great – merveilleux – by the way.

The usual shpiel about how much of a challenge it is for the French, as is for so many Europeans, to train properly on decent ice, against decent competition, blah blah blah.

The Curling News has heard this, as have many of you, for countless decades now. It’s getting tiring. And apart from a couple of really new developing nations – like Korea, Chinese Tapei etc. – it ain’t entirely true, either.

In Dufour’s case, his French ice may indeed be le stinko. But Dufour plays World Curling Tour Europe events, he plays nine games on Hans Wuthrich’s perfect ice at the European Championships, and he also spent two weeks in Montreal prior to Edmonton, prepping for the Worlds.

To her credit, Gauthier mentioned some of these real truths later in the broadcast.

But there’s one thing that she, nor any other Canadian commentator, will never say on air: Canadian ice – club ice, that is – ain’t so great, either. Much of it is... le stinko.