The excitement is palpable as the teams – and broadcasters – depart today for the Canadian Olympic Trials in Halifax, opening Saturday morning and airing on TSN later that afternoon.Allen Cameron's preview piece appears in seven newspapers this morning, including the National Post – which is subscription-only. Fortunately, for readers of The Curling News, his expanded 1,600-word version is already in the December issue, which has been arriving this week at subscriber's homes. Yep, better not wait to catch the club copies folks, heaven knows when Canada Post will decide to deliver them. Your subscription is clearly your best option.
Joe Pavia has Ottawa's take; Tim Phillips talks Trials in Sudbury; armchair pundits are predicting, and so on. You can't escape. Curling has Olympic fever again.
David Nedohin, in the December issue's They Said It:
I'm really anxious about it. The last couple were really big events but these Trials seems to have an extra energy about them. It's just a massive event – bigger than the Olympics even for curling. But it's going to be tough because any one of the (twenty) teams there honestly has a great chance to win it.
Elsewhere, Great Britain/Scotland's defending world wheelchair champs won a major Paralympic tuneup event in Prague (Canada placed third); U.S. women's Olympians Team Johnson were featured on Voice of America; and the city of Lowell, Mass. is starting to get crazy about curling, in advance of the 2006 men's worlds coming to town in March.
That all sounds palpable.
The Trials are the last remaining example of the old style curlin' era (1980 up to the Page Playoff). Top three make playoffs, with first getting a bye to the final and numbers two and three meeting in the semi.
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