Tuesday, April 14, 2009

Ford World Curling: Farewell























MONCTON – The Moncton Coliseum was full to the rafters Sunday night, and I was able to witness a rather amazing 50th anniversary men’s world championship final.

From my part, I'd like to thank gk for the opportunity to blog from this event. It was a blast!

Kudos for Moncton for the organization: everyone here ensured that the event is a success. Even the nightlife of a relatively small city offered plenty of entertainment throughout the week and I must tell you, those long nights are starting to show.

To quote the three-year-old daughter of a Finnish curling legend: “Mommy... Daddy smells like curling again!”

Thankfully, I’ve got no spouse nor kids waiting at home.

In addition to sleep deprivation and liver poisoning, I will go home with plenty of memories and new friends. After seeing a major curling event in Canada, I’m definitely tempted to come and check out another... perhaps next year’s Tim Hortons Brier in Halifax?

While I was disappointed for my brother Kalle (with me in the photo) and the Finnish team, I know they enjoyed themselves, from the moment they started their training camp in nearby Amherst, Nova Scotia to the final round of drink tokens in Sunday night’s Keith’s Patch.

And now that the week is over, it is also time to announce the winner of our “Hottest Player of Worlds 2009” vote.

Although I felt like an utter and complete bimbo for organizing it, the people in Moncton seemed to enjoy a bit of cheeky fun... and even the local media was happy to feature it to emphasize a different aspect of these big curling events.

When choosing my list of candidates, I consulted the media guys who were happy to help, once they had gotten the “I’m not gay, don’t ask me!” out of their system.

In addition to the voting possibility here at the blog – check out the first six candidates (and comments) here, and the final six candidates here – there was a paper vote available at the arena, and hundreds of ballots were cast.

For starters, all 12 nominated players received votes so there truly is an abundance of hot men in this game!

Also, three other gentlemen outside of our vote had caught the eye of the female spectators, and are nited for the record: Switzerland’s Markus Eggler, French front-ender Jan Ducroz and Scottish third Ewan MacDonald.

The result of the balloting went down to the wire. The difference between the winner and the player who came second was only two votes and our top two hotties hogged more than half of all the votes for themselves.

Ladies and gentlemen, here is your Top 5:

1. Thomas Ulsrud (Norway)
2. John Morris (Canada)
3. David Murdoch (Scotland)
4. Andreas Lang (Germany)
5. Tied: Thomas Dufour (France), Jan Hauser (Switzerand) and Jiri Snitil (Czech Republic).

Thank you Moncton... and farewell!

1 comment:

Bob Cowan said...

Gosh, something else that Canada didn't win last week!

Katja, well blogged. You are indeed a champion blogstress (like the term). Hope gk will let you loose on his blog again.

And you will be very welcome on Skip Cottage blog at any time!
(skipcottage.blogspot.com). Be a blogally!

Bob