I imagine that many skipcottagecurling blogallies will be looking forward to watching a lot of winter sport in the weeks ahead, as I plan to do. The Olympic Games begin on Friday with the ski jumping qualification, with the first curling games scheduled for next Tuesday. Local time in Vancouver is eight hours behind us here in the UK. By my calculation then, if it is 4pm at Skip it is only 8am at the Vancouver Olympic/Paralympic Centre. If you want to be sure what the time is in Vancouver, just click here.The official Vanoc curling site, which gives the draw schedule and is also where results will be posted, can be found here. There's a gallery of curling photos too, and some news items.
Team GB is against Sweden in the opening round of the men's event at 9am on Tuesday, that's 5pm here. The women are not on the ice in the first set of games and face China at 9am local time on Wednesday.
What most will want to know though, is where and when we can see the curling on the box. The place to start is on the BBC's Vancouver 2010 webpage here. What the beeb plans to show can be found here. It looks as if every GB game is going to be on the red button! Can't wait.
It will be interesting to hear how Rhona Martin and Steve Cram get on working together as the commentary team. For those who are interested in the Olympics generally, I'm sure that the coverage on BBC1 and 2 will be up to the usual standard. Certainly, Beijing was great.
If you want a real laugh, have a look at the head and shoulders pics of all the competing curlers here. And I thought my passport photo was bad!
If you want to smile, or even shed a tear, go here to watch Rhona's last stone in 2002, in a clip from the BBC's archives. And here's an interesting article which appeared in the Guardian, asking the question on what happened to the members of that successful team!
More armchair Olympics as I stumble across things which interest me.
