Wheels off to Vancouver

The Scottish wheelchair curling team flies out tomorrow to compete in the 2009 World Wheelchair Curling Championship in Canada. Rosemary Lenton, Jim Sellar, Tom Killin, Aileen Neilson, and Michael McCreadie, seen above with coach Tom Pendreigh, will spend the time before the championship begins at a holding camp in Richmond, just south of Vancouver itself. Bon voyage and good luck to our team!

The World Wheelchair Championship, February 21-28, is the first event to be held at the new venue which has been built in Hillcrest Park, Vancouver, for the curling competitions at the 2010 Olympic and Paralympic Winter Games. More information about the Vancouver Olympic Centre is here.

I've taken the following from the official WCF press release. "The 2009 World Wheelchair Curling Championship features ten teams from three continents vying for wheelchair curling supremacy, including two-time defending champions Norway, skipped by Rune Lorentsen; 2008 world finalists Korea, led by Hak Sung Kim; and the 2008 world bronze medallists from the United States, skipped by Augusto Perez.

Canada will be skipped by Vancouver's Jim Armstrong, an accomplished able-bodied competitor from the 1970s and 1980s who will represent Canada at the event for the first time.

Other teams include Sweden's 2006 Paralympic bronze medallist Jalle Jungnell, Germany's Jens Jaeger, Italy's Andrea Tabanelli, China's Haitao Wang and Switzerland's Daniel Meyer.

The championship features two daily draws from February 21-26 with tiebreakers and the Page Playoffs scheduled for Friday, February 27. The semifinals take place Saturday, February 27 at 9:00am local time with the championship and bronze medal games taking place the same day, at 2:30pm local time."

The event website is here.

Photo courtesy of Tom Pendreigh