Thursday's Smile

Have a look at Tom Brewster in action during last weekend's World Financial Group Continental Cup. Team Brewster is representing Team World and is up against Jeff Stoughton.

Here's a shot which will bring a smile to your face today. Or just click on the image.

Brewster's team won the game 7-6.

The clip is from TSN's coverage of the event.

Team World Wins Con Cup

Team World, which included the Tom Brewster and Eve Muirhead teams, won the World Financial Group's Continental Cup yesterday. Going into the last men's skins game, worth fifty-five points, Thomas Ulsrud's side only needed one point to secure victory, and this was accomplished when they won the skin on the third end. The Norwegian side went on to win the game against Jeff Stoughton 35-20.

A full report of the game, and a photo of the winning side, can be found here. You can watch games again from this page - eleven 'videos on demand' are listed on the menu on the right of the page.

Each player on Team World, including David Hay, the Team Captain, will receive around £1,600 as their share of the winnings.

Continental Cup Update

Team World leads Team North America by 170 points to 120 at the World Financial Group Continental Cup in Langley, British Columbia. Read the Day 3 update here.

There are just two games to be played in the competition, but there are 55 points at stake in each. Don't ask me why. It's simply a nonsense that the results in the final two games could cancel out everything that has gone before in three days of play. Ryder Cup this is not. Team World has not lost one of the nine previous rounds in a variety of disciplines.

Anyway, Team World’s Bingyu Wang meets North America’s Stefanie Lawton in the Women’s Skins and in the Men’s Skins game Norway’s Team Ulsrud will play for Team World against Canada’s Jeff Stoughton for Team North America. Team World needs to score just thirty-one points to reach the 201 needed for the win.

I've enjoyed the webcasts from the event, and you can watch the key games here. And there are lots of photos in galleries on the WCF website here.

Eve's Quadruple at Con Cup

Eve Muirhead and Fredrik Lindstrom won their Mixed Doubles game yesterday at the World Financial Group Continental Cup. I was tickled to be able to watch the game online (from this page), and witnessed Eve making a quadruple takeout. Sweet, it was. I hope that piece of video gets saved for posterity. The Team World pairing defeated Ben Hebert and Stefanie Lawton, Eve having to make a pressure last stone hit for the win.

During the webcast there were glimpses of Anna Sloan and Greg Drummond who won their MDs tie too.

All the results can be found here.

If you are a fan of the Royal Club's Your Curler, you may be interested in comparisons with the Canadian Curling Association supported daily newspaper from the Continental Cup in Langley, the Morning Cup. You can download the first two editions from this page. High quality indeed, as expected from any publication with Larry Wood's input.

I noted one the Canadian Curling Association's 'Start Curling' adverts which ran during one of the breaks on the TSN feed. It's available to watch on YouTube here, and there's other similar adverts, all designed to get Canadian television viewers curling, here and here.

Now write an essay on the cultural differences between Scots and Canadians!

Con Cup Update

As I write this at 6pm, I'm watching the TSN webcast of the World Financial Group's Continental Cup. It's online here, complete with adverts. The featured game is Team World's Anette Norberg v Stefanie Lawton, representing Team North America. It's good to have this, and it will be interesting to see how robust the webcast is over my home broadband.

And if you want a smile, have a read at these articles, here and here, in the Canadian media. I couldn't have written a better post on April 1 myself. Splendid stuff.

Top: Screenshot of the webcast from my computer.

Webcasting of Continental Cup

No sooner than I had a moan about the lack of television coverage of the World Financial Group's Continental Cup in Europe, see here, I learn that the World Curling Federation is to stream action from Langley, British Columbia, on its own website, in partnership with TSN. The link is here.

Good news, and something to look forward to.

2012 Continental Cup

The Tom Brewster and Eve Muirhead teams are in Canada to compete for Team World at the World Financial Group Continental Cup. The event gets underway in Langley, British Columbia, on Thursday. The schedule can be found here.

Team World comprises Brewster, Niklas Edin and Thomas Ulsrud, alongside Muirhead, Anette Norberg and Bingyu Wang. They are up against Team North America, the best in Canada and the USA. Team photos are all here.

The competition gets a lot of coverage on the other side of the pond, and the enthusiasm can be felt in this piece. But as I've said ad naseum on this blog, the whole thing continues to leave me cold. It is a made for television event, that cannot be seen on television in Scotland or in Europe. Go figure.

There's a little promotional video on YouTube here. We've 'Gotta Be There'!

Still, there's no doubt that the teams taking part in it have a good time, and it helps their bank balances. So, good luck to them. Team World were second last time, in a one-sided competition, so it's upwards and onwards!

By the way, Team Brewster's participation in the Continental Cup has resulted in them avoiding the qualifying competition for the Co-operative Funeralcare Scottish Men's Championship, over the next two weekends at Perth. Nine teams will come forward from three sections, to meet Team Brewster, the current Scottish Champions, in the finals, February 13-19, also at the Dewar's Centre.

Teams Named for 2012 Continental Cup

The teams have been announced for the 2012 World Financial Group Continental Cup, presented by Monsanto, which will be held in Langley, British Columbia, January 12-15, 2012. The complete press release is here.

Six teams from North America will compete against six teams representing the rest of the world playing Team Games, Mixed Doubles, Singles, Mixed Skins and Skins Games.

Scotland's Eve Muirhead and Tom Brewster will skip two of Team World’s sides. The others will be skipped by Niklas Edin (Sweden), Thomas Ulsrud (Norway), Anette Norberg (Sweden), and Bingyu Wang (China).

The captain for Team World will be former world champion David Hay from Scotland while Sweden’s Peja Lindholm, a three-time world champion, is coach.

Team North America will be represented by four teams from Canada - skipped by Jeff Stoughton from Winnipeg, Glenn Howard from Coldwater, Amber Holland of Kronau, Saskatchewan and Stefanie Lawton of Saskatoon and two teams from the United States - skipped by Pete Fenson of Bemidji, Minnesota and Patti Lank of Lewiston, New York.

Their captain will be former world champion Julie Skinner of Victoria, British Columbia, while three-time Canadian Men’s Champion and two-time world champion Rick Lang of Thunder Bay will return as coach.

In 2012 the winning side will receive $52,000 CDN ($2,000 per member, including captain and coach), while the losing side gets $26,000 ($1,000 per member, including captain and coach). In addition, the side which wins the final Men’s Skins game receives an additional $13,000.

The Canadian sports channel TSN will provide complete coverage of the event, which is being sponsored for the second consecutive year by World Financial Group.

The World Financial Group Continental Cup, which was staged for the first time in mid-January this past season, after previously being conducted in late November/early December, is a joint venture of the Canadian Curling Association, World Curling Federation and United States Curling Association. The event website is here.

Here is the full list of participants:

TEAM WORLD - MEN

BREWSTER (SCO)
Fourth/Skip: Tom Brewster
Third: Greg Drummond
Second: Scott Andrews
Lead: Michael Goodfellow

ULSRUD (NOR)
Fourth/Skip: Thomas Ulsrud
Third: Torger Nergård
Second: Christoffer Svae
Lead: Håvard Vad Petersson

EDIN (SWE)
Fourth/Skip: Niklas Edin* (Skip)
Third: Sebastian Kraupp
Second: Fredrik Lindberg
Lead: Viktor Kjäll

TEAM WORLD - WOMEN

WANG (CHN)
Fourth/Skip: Bingyu Wang (Skip)
Third: Yin Liu
Second: Qingshuang Yue
Lead: Yan Zhou

MUIRHEAD (SCO)
Fourth/Skip: Eve Muirhead
Third: Anna Sloan
Second: Vicki Adams
Lead: Claire Hamilton

NORBERG (SWE)
Fourth/Skip: Anette Norberg
Third: Cissi Östlund
Second: Sara Carlsson
Lead: Lotta Lennartsson

Team Captain: David Hay (SCO)
Team Coach: Peja Lindholm (SWE)

TEAM NORTH AMERICA - MEN

STOUGHTON (CAN)
Fourth/Skip: Jeff Stoughton
Third: Jon Mead
Second: Reid Carruthers
Lead: Steve Gould

HOWARD (CAN)
Fourth/Skip: Glenn Howard
Third: Wayne Middaugh
Second: Brent Laing
Lead: Craig Savill

FENSEN (USA)
Fourth/Skip: Pete Fenson (Skip)
Third: Shawn Rojeski
Second: Joe Polo
Lead: Ryan Brunt

TEAM NORTH AMERICA - WOMEN

LAWTON (CAN)
Fourth/Skip: Stefanie Lawton
Third: Sherry Anderson
Second: Sherri Singler
Lead: Marliese Kasner

HOLLAND (CAN)
Fourth/Skip: Amber Holland
Third: Kim Schneider
Second: Tammy Schneider
Lead: Heather Kalenchuk

LANK (USA)
Fourth/Skip: Patti Lank
Third: Nina Spatola
Second: Caitlin Maroldo
Lead: Molly Bonner

Team Captain: Julie Skinner (CAN)
Team Coach: Rick Lang (CAN)