Curling calendar girl Daniela Jentsch

Well... this kitten is certainly out of the bag.

2009 Women of Curling calendar girl Daniela Jentsch of Germany has approved the full image release of her nude calendar pic, and the result is a feeding frenzy of Deutsch media.

Which will hopefully result in more sales of the fundraising calendar, too.

“I never thought this would cause so much attention,” says Dani, who played for Germany at the 2000 Ford Worlds and also skipped her country twice at the European Championships.

“Newspapers and TV stations keep calling me since the story was published.”

The situation is unusual, in that the calendar athlete/models usually avoid allowing the release of their image without cropping (see this example here). The idea is that by withholding selected, ah, portions of the image, the potential purchaser is more likely to actually purchase the fundraising product.

Jentsch made an exception for Germany’s Welt and just like that, here comes another calendar media pile-on. All within Germany, mind you.

And after consulting with Dani, she has decided that The Curling News Blog can also publish her full calendar image... meaning that you, dear reader, can see one of the 16 athlete/models above, as fully photographed by Ana Arce.

“We can’t let our non-German curling friends miss out, right?” Jentsch laughs.

“But seriously, if this will help sell more calendars to help all the girls and their teams, absolutely.”

Other media pickup we have seen includes RP Online, Westdeutsche Zeitung, Eurosport (only competition photos, please!), Berliner Morgenpost and even this Austrian paper, which also links back to The Curling News.

There’s also this “Sexy Wintersport” feature from Bild, which includes Dani plus fellow German calendar curling girl Anna Hartelt along with athletes from other sports.

Hier gehen wir wieder!

As for Dani’s on-ice career, it has recently jumped from slow to very busy.

“My federation is checking to see if I’m eligible to compete with Andrea Schoepp and if permitted, I’ll play nationals with them,” reports Jentsch.

“If not, they’ll will play without me and if they win, I’ll go to the worlds in Korea with them.

“No matter what, my Olympic goal is more realistic now, since I was not curling much until last week. We went to Berne and came second, so even with a three-month break I got the results... and a few sore muscles.”

So there you have it. Another plug for the 2009 Women of Curling.

PS: on the left side of the page beside the Welt story there is a poll asking “Which winter sport interests you most?” Curling is currently ranked fourth with first-place Biathalon holding a whopping near-forty per cent lead over second place Skiing. Blogreaders know what to do when there’s another online poll with Curling not in the lead... right, gang?