Howard in Toronto

Here’s Glenn Howard showing his stuff at Toronto’s Leaside Curling Club last night.

Howard and teammates Richard Hart and Brent Laing visited Leaside and then the Cricket club to promote next month’s Grey Power World Cup of Curling at Mississauga’s Hershey Centre, located just west of the Toronto airport.

At each club the lads met with members, signed autographs and participated in an interactive on-ice clinic.

Team Howard begins the World Cup with a Wednesday night (Oct. 21) matchup against Germany’s Andy Kapp, in a repeat of the 2007 Ford World Men’s Championship final.

Also in action on that opening draw is Kevin Martin, who faces Sweden’s Olympic hopeful Niklas Edin; 2006 Olympic gold medallist Brad Gushue, who takes on 2006 Olympic bronze medallist John Shuster of the United States; Four-time world champ Randy Ferbey, who battles the Chinese men’s Olympic team; and Edmonton’s Kevin Koe, who takes on Thomas Dufour of France.

Tickets can be purchased via Ticketmaster or the Hershey Centre box office.

Toronto media seem to awakening, briefly, from their NHL hockey pre-season slumber. Both the Globe and Mail and Toronto Sun published advance stories about the World Cup today.

[LATEST: and another Howard-oriented piece from the Globe’s James Christie was released tonight]

The Howards are jetting to the left coast tonight, for the start of Thursday’s World Curling Tour stop in Vernon, B.C. Four of the Olympic women’s teams confirmed for Vancouver are also competing in the women’s division.

[The Curling News photo by Anil Mungal]

Gushue's golf tan

Moments ago, Brad Gushue’s foursome rolled to a 6-2 victory over David Sik of the Czech Republic to move to 3-0 at the Baden Masters 2009 in Switzerland.

An afternoon clash with Sweden’s Niklas Edin takes place at 1:30pm local time.

The Gushues also placed second overall in the shootout, earning them a $400 bonus... and a whoop-whoop. Ralph Stoeckli’s Swiss squad won the shootout, and $500.

The skipper looks tanned and healthy, doncha think?

[Photo by Urs Raeber]

Curling Zombies on the road

Remember those loveable Curling Zombies?

They took to the streets, which is what zombies do.

They hung out at The Beer Store, which was something new.

They infatuated the Rogers TV folks during last February’s Ontario Tankard.

And believe it or not, they are still groaning their way around the country.

Fresh off this past Saturday’s screening at the CFC’s Worldwide Short Film Festival in Toronto, our favourite undead curlers are off to St. John’s in Newfoundland. Deadspiel will make its Eastern Canadian premier at the Nickel Independent Film Festival (June 23-27) with a show date of Thursday June 25, part of the 10:00pm Late Night Horror Show.

The film is also appearing at this week’s Detroit Windsor Film Fest, on Friday, June 26, and then in west-end Toronto at the Mississauga Independent Film Festival in early July.

Another showing will take place at Montreal’s famed Fantasia Festival next month.

We’ve got a recent feature from Independent Scene right here, and a brief trailer teaser was also recently released, which you can see here.

For more on the film, consult the Deadspiel website.


Other stuff...

• Some news from Norway. First, the country has produced its first DVD on curling, a 29-minute how-to which features Pal Trulsen and Thomas Ulsrud. Second, coach Thoralf Hognestad is stepping down from the Norwegian wheelchair curling team, which he guided to two world championships in 2007 and 2008 ...

• Sweden has confirmed Team Anette Norberg as their women’s Olympic rep for Vancouver 2010. Meanwhile, young hopeful Niklas Edin is still in limbo, but feels his men’s team will get the nod sometime during or after December. You can see the formal announcements here ...

• According to the Vernon Morning Star, the B.C. town will host a Capital One Grand Slam of Curling men’s event in December of 2010 ...

• Saskatchewan curling legends Sam Richardson and Jan Betker both make appearances in this short (1:23) video promoting Saskatchewan curling, part of the federal government’s Travel Canada promotion ...

• For those of you who are suspicious of clicking on game links that we provide here – and we don’t necessarily blame you for your caution – the developers of the infamous “Brown Cow Curing” videogame (a web-based freebie) have posted some video of their effort ...

• And finally, 2008 world champion Jennifer Jones teamed with new Edmonton Oliers hockey coach Pat Quinn for a recent appearance in Thunder Bay, Ontario ...

China, Sweden take Universiade gold

by Paul Webster

HARBIN, China – Hats off to the Chinese women, skipped by Bingyu Wang, who pulled off the win in the gold medal game here in Harbin, China. They are the 2009 World University Games champions and met the expectations of their top ranked status!

Likewise to the Swedish men’s team, led by Niklas “I’m Not Scottish” Edin. Great team all week, and a great finish.

For the match details, head to this great WCF page.

I want to acknowledge the unbelievable accomplishment of the Canadian women’s team, skipped by Hollie Nicol, who earned the silver. To take the top seeding into the playoffs (with an undefeated record), win the semifinal and then take the world number two team to the 10th end in a world championship is remarkable, and something these five ladies and coach John Nicol should be extremely proud of.

I know the result is perhaps not the storybook ending they were dreaming about, however in the years to come it will be pretty cool for them to know that they competed toe-to-toe against the world’s best.

The game had its share of big shots and big misses and Canada seemed to want to recreate their comeback in the semifinal, but the Chinese simply kept pressing and eventually out-shot their opponents.

I want to congratulate this team and their coaches for the amount of work they have put into this team, and this tournament.

The ice conditions were fantastic, again, and now we thank the icemakers : Scott Henderson of Scotland and Doug Wright of Canada. After a chat with Doug during the final it was amazing to hear some of the difficulties they experienced during this championship that we simply didn’t realize – everything from a dripping roof to broken windows?! – when everything had been promised to be “okay”. They even ended up tarping the ice the night before the finals, to ensure no water would drip onto it.

I want to take this opportunity, as well, to apologize for my somewhat shortsighted comments regarding practicing with new sets of rocks prior to the finals (see above link). Keith Wendorf, the WCF Technical Consultant to this FISU championship, informed me that this has never been the case at a world championship and I simply had my facts wrong. Okay!

As well, adding one to two hours of additional ice time at night would definitely put a stress on our ice technicians and officials. Now, if given the chance, I would still love the opportunity to take a new set of rocks and practice with them... Keith, if you’re reading...? We will simply have to do a better job of matching stones next time.

This is China’s first big international competition and they have done a fantastic job. A competition like this defiitely starts at the top and kudos to Li Dongyang, General Secretary of the Chinese Curling Association (the CCA of China!). I also want to thank Scotland’s Jeannette Johnson, FISU Representative, who has a tremendous amount of experience with world curling events and was able to guide a new organizing committee with, what seemed from the outside, a degree of strong success. Of course we will never know all the hard work – and headaches – that went on behind the scenes.

Thanks as well to Keith, who is also the Director of Competitions for the WCF, for his hard work behind the scenes. I have known Keith since 1993 and I think his schedule gets busier every year. His work supporting the officials and organizing committee definitely brings some professionalism and player/coach background to every event, and I know this is appreciated by the coaches and athletes alike.

Donna Stadzell and her crew of Mary Pat and Urs ensured everything was looked after on the offciating side of things, and we really didn’t have a hiccup all week. They took a rookie force of officials and made it look like a veteran squad (see photo).

Hey, can anyone see Keith in that photo? Even if you click to zoom in? :-)

We have a couple of days left here in Harbin, which will see the entire Canadian contingent head to the Harbin Tiger Zoo. A rumoured four hundred tigers await, and livestock that is sent in for feeding... all while you stare from a safari bus.

Not sure I’ll be blogging about that!

2009 Universiade curling

Last March, Canadian Curling Association National Development Coach Paul Webster did some TCN Blogging from Vierumaki, Finland at the first-ever World Mixed Doubles Championship.

Webster – and Team Canada – are now in Harbin, China at the 24th Winter Universiade, aka the World University Games. And they’re off and running (er, curling) ...

by Paul Webster

HARBIN, China – China here we come.... actually we are here! It was a bumpy travel road but things worked out in our favour and we made it in time for our first practice!

But not before curling – or some wild form of it – was included in an amazing opening ceremony (photo above).

The round robin features 10 men’s and 10 women’s teams, and this is the third time that curling has featured as a medal sport at the Winter Universiade. Other sports include ice hockey, figure skating, speedskating, alpine skiing, Nordic combined, snowboarding, free-style skiing, cross country skiing, biathlon and ski jumping.

As this is for The Curling News Blog, I’ll stick to curling updates! We are now two games into both the women’s and men’s round robin competitions. Currently China is topping the list for both events with a perfect 2-0 record... which should be no surprise to anyone here. When the decision was made to send their top two squads, the possibility of double-gold on their home soil became exactly that... a definite possibility.

There may be an argument about these Games being a great tool to help develop curling in countries around the world... but there are a few here who are not messing around, and have simply sent their best teams – with China and Russia leading the pack. Other countries, ours included, see this age group as a target market that we want to keep involved in the sport throughout their studies... and the lure of an international event has created some great teams across our country.

Our Canadian men, skipped by Mike Anderson, are currently 1-1 after winning their game this morning against the Japanese. We lost our opener against an extremely tough Swedish team with Scottish import Niklas Edin skipping the team (and if you watched December’s Continental Cup, you will understand the joke!). These boys have a very strong squad and should be somewhere on the podium at the end of the week.

China is doing what they should be doing... and winning! Korea has to be the surprise team so far, with a couple of very strong wins and arguably the all star skip of the event at this early stage..... young Kim C M is on fire!

On the girls’ side of things, our ladies – skipped by Hollie Nicol – are 2-0 and tied for top spot. They had a great comeback victory with an extra-end steal in their first game... against mighty Russia! The Russians have sent four-fifths of their Olympic women’s team here, to see if they can avenge the loss of the 2007 Winter Universiade final in Torino. I’m not sure if they have have a second team as these girls have played in just about everything, and definitely feel at home in an arena setting. They looked a little shaky to start the event... but then so did everyone else... and I’d expect to see them in the top of the standings at the end of the event

Hats off to FISU for organizing a great competition. Scotland’s Jeannette Johnson and her Chinese organizing committee have done an outstanding job covering all the bases. The best decision they have made was bringing in icemakers Scott Henderson and Doug Wright... conditions have been amazing and continue to impress all of the teams.

I will update more often, now that the internet has been hooked up at the venue and in the village!