FÜSSEN – Okay, now that we’ve gotten that Aerosmith thing off our chest, we feel better.
So do the men who curl for the Czech Republic. They were 0-4 and now they’re 3-4, having just beaten Scotland’s David Murdoch tonight. No wonder they’re smiling (TCN photo by Urs Räber).
Plus, they’re nice guys. And theirs is a great story, having clambered up here from the B-pool last year, and now just hoping and dreaming of a) staying up in the A pool and b) maybe even going to the Worlds.
“It feels great, but we’re still fighting to stay in the A Division,” said skip Jiri Snitil (thumbs up on the right). “We don’t want to go back to the B, we’ve been down there for seven years.
“We weren't ready for Worlds last year. Now we should be ready, if we get the chance. We’re close.”
The top seven teams are going to Grand Forks, with the eighth team facing a challenge from this year’s B Division champ for the final Eurospot at the Worlds.
It was a generally weird night, overall. France’s Thomas Dufour punted three-time World Champion Peja Lindholm of Sweden 7-3. Hello.
And two other strong teams almost gagged it. First it was front-runners Norway, who had to steal three consecutive ends to subdue Italy’s Joel Retornaz, who held a shocking 4-1 lead after three ends of play. Retornaz missed a last-rock draw to force an extra end.
Denmark also got a scare, blowing a 4-1 lead to fall behind 5-4 to Finland’s Kalle Kiiskinen after six ends. Danish skip Johnny Frederiksen eventually made a nervous draw to the four-foot rings for the win.
So where in the world is next year’s Euro shootout? Glad you asked, ’cuz here it is ...
More tomorrow, but to conclude ...
• That David Nedohin sure gets around. Straight from the playoffs in Quebec City did David go, through blizzards and across the ocean to Füssen, and now he’s on his way home again. In the blink of the eye in which he was here, Bob Cowan shot the photo evidence ...
• Did you hear about that ginormous development project in Calgary? According to today’s Calgary Sun, the developers are including “six curling rinks” in the plans.
Er, would that be six rinks or six sheets?
Regardless, can anyone say “SACA heart attack?”
However, neither a rival story nor the developer’s own website say anything about a curling facility (let alone six)... but just about everything else on planet earth seems to be included.
Nothing to get excited about. Yet ...
• A fellow named Fun Sheriff is asking for any blogreaders in the St. Paul, MN area to drop him a line. He needs to curl, you see, and he needs to curl RIGHT NOW ...
• It’s three Peace teams headed to the Alberta men’s provincials ...
• Chris Daw was in T-Bay last weekend, intro’ing the art of wheelchair curling ...
• Another Chris has written a not-so-spectacularly-mediocre curling post – it’s quite neat, actually – located here ...
• And finally, check out this story right away – the Record folks aren’t knows to leave their content available for very long. At all.
But what a cool piece. The incredibly sharp videos (two of them) perfectly capture the lonely job of the ice technician, and there’s also one of the best close-up shots of pebbled ice we’ve ever seen. Nice job ...
So do the men who curl for the Czech Republic. They were 0-4 and now they’re 3-4, having just beaten Scotland’s David Murdoch tonight. No wonder they’re smiling (TCN photo by Urs Räber).
Plus, they’re nice guys. And theirs is a great story, having clambered up here from the B-pool last year, and now just hoping and dreaming of a) staying up in the A pool and b) maybe even going to the Worlds.
“It feels great, but we’re still fighting to stay in the A Division,” said skip Jiri Snitil (thumbs up on the right). “We don’t want to go back to the B, we’ve been down there for seven years.
“We weren't ready for Worlds last year. Now we should be ready, if we get the chance. We’re close.”
The top seven teams are going to Grand Forks, with the eighth team facing a challenge from this year’s B Division champ for the final Eurospot at the Worlds.
It was a generally weird night, overall. France’s Thomas Dufour punted three-time World Champion Peja Lindholm of Sweden 7-3. Hello.
And two other strong teams almost gagged it. First it was front-runners Norway, who had to steal three consecutive ends to subdue Italy’s Joel Retornaz, who held a shocking 4-1 lead after three ends of play. Retornaz missed a last-rock draw to force an extra end.
Denmark also got a scare, blowing a 4-1 lead to fall behind 5-4 to Finland’s Kalle Kiiskinen after six ends. Danish skip Johnny Frederiksen eventually made a nervous draw to the four-foot rings for the win.
So where in the world is next year’s Euro shootout? Glad you asked, ’cuz here it is ...
More tomorrow, but to conclude ...
• That David Nedohin sure gets around. Straight from the playoffs in Quebec City did David go, through blizzards and across the ocean to Füssen, and now he’s on his way home again. In the blink of the eye in which he was here, Bob Cowan shot the photo evidence ...
• Did you hear about that ginormous development project in Calgary? According to today’s Calgary Sun, the developers are including “six curling rinks” in the plans.
Er, would that be six rinks or six sheets?
Regardless, can anyone say “SACA heart attack?”
However, neither a rival story nor the developer’s own website say anything about a curling facility (let alone six)... but just about everything else on planet earth seems to be included.
Nothing to get excited about. Yet ...
• A fellow named Fun Sheriff is asking for any blogreaders in the St. Paul, MN area to drop him a line. He needs to curl, you see, and he needs to curl RIGHT NOW ...
• It’s three Peace teams headed to the Alberta men’s provincials ...
• Chris Daw was in T-Bay last weekend, intro’ing the art of wheelchair curling ...
• Another Chris has written a not-so-spectacularly-mediocre curling post – it’s quite neat, actually – located here ...
• And finally, check out this story right away – the Record folks aren’t knows to leave their content available for very long. At all.
But what a cool piece. The incredibly sharp videos (two of them) perfectly capture the lonely job of the ice technician, and there’s also one of the best close-up shots of pebbled ice we’ve ever seen. Nice job ...
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