The Curling News: Jan 2007 issue

White Christmas? Green Christmas?

How about pink?

The January 2007 issue of The Curling News is off to the mailhouse, and with it comes the official start of our 50th Anniversary Year. Founded in Calgary in 1957, TCN – previously known as CCN, or Canadian Curling News – has been here, there and everywhere in the sport, giving you all the news, rumours and professional sports journalism that can be found amid sticks and stones.

As regular subscribers know, the 50th Anniversary season has already started, with every issue thus far also including a retrospective section dedicated to our archives. Don’t miss this very special publishing season: subscribe today, or give the gift of TCN to a loved one.

In this issue:

• December’s Masters Grand Slam and European Championships provided a great finish to the traditional "first-half" of the season, and there’s more to come in 07

• A stunning action photograph from a rookie curling shooter, and more photo awards

• Inside Basel: Rodger Schmidt asks What Happened?

• Mixed Doubles? It’s coming to a signup sheet near you

• This month’s 50th Anniversary Celebrations: the previous Masters (in 1963); a very young Kerry Burtnyk provides a Labatt Curling Tip; Larry Wood on the World Challenge and more

• TSN Broadband... whither CurlTV?

• Is Team Gushue becoming Team Turmoil?

• They Said It, our popular collection of interesting and outrageous commentary

• The Curling News TV Guide: where to get your TV curling fix in Janaury

• Teri Lake on why you should be seeking next year’s sponsors right now

• Jill Officer with an inside peek at the movers and shakers on the Women’s Tour

... and more!

The Curling News Blog is now on vacation through January 5 (or so), so here’s a pile of clickables to tide you through the turkey. Have a great 2007 celebration, everyone!

• Canuck Elliot Hicks lives and breathes curling way out in San Diego ...

• Bender loves his calendar (who wouldn’t?) ...

• Notes from Ottawa’s CCup East: of note is Team Kleibrink’s full end replay, and a witty reference to a classic British TV comedy; plus a look at surprise Kamloops qualifier Karen Porritt, and still more Cup East media ...

• 2006 will be a year remembered for tragedy. Just a couple of months after the loss of Ontario curler/journalist Derek Whitehill, Manitoba’s Kyle Flett was also tragically killed last weekend (story here and also here).

And there’s still more. Brandon has honoured a sport – and curling – pioneer who is suffering from rare Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease; and just before the January press deadline, word came of the death of Don Turner, the tireless curling booster and proprieter (along with his wife Elva) of Turner’s Curling Museum in tiny Weyburn, Saskatchewan. Read the January issue for more ...

• Ford Worlds tix are going great, and now the nations have been decided (if not the athletes themselves) for the big shootout at Edmonton’s Rexall Place ...

• DID YOU KNOW: that Russ Howard is feeling a bit blue about his gold-edged Olympic experience? There’s a teaser here, and surely more to come, when his book Hurry Hard comes out in March ...

• And here’s Russ’ brother Glenn, in a snapshot at his other life at The Beer Store ...

• Here’s a TV report from Bismark, North Dakota, site of the 2002 Ford Worlds ...

• DID YOU KNOW II: that Ontario’s Waterloo region is becoming a hotbed for big curling events? Yesterday it was announced that the local K-W Granite and Westmount clubs will co-host the 2008 Ontario men’s championship – the TSC Stores Tankard – at the Waterloo Rec Complex. In the last three years this region has been busy, hosting the national Tournament of Hearts (2003), the $100,000 M&M Skins (2004), the Canadian Mixed (November), and the Masters of Curling Grand Slam... which is coming back again next season, by the way ...

• Some Bear Mountain qualifiers were decided last weekend:

• Edmonton reporter Cam Tait is miffed when curlers don’t put up the score on their sheet of ice quickly enough. Gadzooks... is he aware of the tens of thousands of angry fans who snap when those scores aren’t posted online within seconds?

• In an echo of June’s Canadian curling TV deal between the CCA and TSN, which shut out CBC, the Canadian Football League has now done a similar deal, taking effect in 2008, exclusively with TSN ...

• DID YOU KNOW III: who made it all the way to the final of the Canada Cup West in Edmonton? Yeah, Kevin Martin won it, but who did he beat? Gushue? Burtnyk? Stoughton? Middaugh?

Nope. John Base.

Fresh off his surprise semi-final appearance at the Masters, Base once again did things the hard way. He down to his last life in the C-side and had to win six consecutive games to reach the final. Included was a steal of four points in the seventh end of an 11-5 win over rival Wayne Middaugh in the quarters, and an 8-7 decision over Winnipeg’s Jeff Stoughton in the semi.

“We’re a little tired, playing 11 games since we got here – but we’re happy with ending up in the final,” Base told the Edmonton Journal. “We’re a new team and just in our fourth event of the year.”

Remember what we said after the Masters, folks?

• And finally, don't forget the 2006 Rutabaga Curling Championships going on this weekend in Ithaca, New York (Wikipedia's entry here, and 2005 event photos here and here). Seriously.

Well, okay, not too seriously.