Medals now... and then

Family and friends await the arrival of Team GB from the European Youth Olympic Festival.

Here are the curling GOLD MEDALLISTS. L-R Becca Kesley, Hannah Fleming, Anna Sloan, Lauren Gray, Alice Spence with coach Debbie Knox.

Here are the curling SILVER MEDALLISTS. L-R: Blair Fraser, JayMcWilliam, Colin Dick, Kerr Drummond, Struan Wood with their coach Hazel Wood.

Here is Rhona Martin, who was responsible for the GB curling squads at the EYOF, with Debbie Knox, the coach of the girls' team. They were teammates in the GB Olympic team in Ogden, and seven years ago to the day (with Janice Rankin, Fiona MacDonald and Margaret Morton) they won the gold medals! February 21, 2002, it was. It just added an extra poignancy to the welcome home today at Glasgow Airport.

Curling Today says a big 'Well done' to both teams... and to the coaches, parents and supporters.

Gold for GB girls at EYOF

Anna Sloan, Hannah Fleming, Lauren Gray, Alice Spence and Becca Kesley (alternate) beat Kershin Iten's Switzerland in the final of the European Youth Olympic Festival in Poland this afternoon. The GB team were four up playing the tenth.

Colin Dick, Blair Fraser, Jay McWilliam, Kerr Drummond and Struan Wood (alternate) won the silver medals, losing at the last end to Roger Gulka's Swiss side. Dick and his team went into the last end one up, without last stone, and saw the Swiss draw for a two.

Very well done to both GB sides!

Newsflash from Poland

Both GB teams have reached the finals of the EYOF curling, and will contest the gold against the Swiss this afternoon!

Follow the linescores here.

Elsewhere in the curling world

The GB teams at the World University Games have had their first games in Harbin. Sarah Reid's team lost to the Chinese favourites in their first game but beat Korea in their second match.

John Hamilton's team beat the USA in an extra end in their first round match.

Finding results is just a little problematic. This link takes you to the English home page. From there, click schedules and results on the left, and on the next page scroll down until you find 'curling', at the bottom. Click on that - and you are presented with another page that has little on it, except one link 'curling'. If you haven't lost the will to live by this time, click on that link and you will be presented with a page where you can download, as pdf files, all the draws!

It's rather easier to find the results from the EYOF in Poland thanks to curlinglive.com. Norway beat the Czech Republic for third place in the men's event, and now play Colin Dick's team in the semifinal. The GB women, skipped by Anna Sloan, missed out on a place in the final (with the guarantee of at least a silver medal) by less than a cm as the Draw Shot Distance was used to decide the rankings after three teams finished tied for first place in the rankings on 4 wins. The Swiss are through to the final. The GB team has to play Denmark, who beat them when they met this morning, in the semifinal.

The semifinal games are tomorrow.

And last but not least, the World Curling Tour Europe has relaunched itself as the Curling Champions Tour, see here.

This is a fascinating development, and more about it here in due course.

GB medals at EYOF in Poland

Both GB curling teams at the EYOF in Poland are guaranteed to be bringing home medals - the question is which colour? Colin Dick's team finished the round robin with a 4-1 win-loss record, in second place in the standings, and will meet the winners of a tiebreak between the Czech Republic and Norway in the semifinal, the winner will play Switzerland in the final.

There's a report of the boy's game against Poland on the event website here which I think you will enjoy. Just to explain, the 'new player', to which Colin refers is Struan Wood, who got a game when Blair Fraser had to sit out with an injured shoulder. The report says, "Our new player hasn’t anything to do with the old one playing bad, we just gave him a shot. We’re quite confident and not afraid of other teams.”

Anna Sloan's girls are unbeaten with one game to play. If they win this match against Denmark they will be straight to the final and will come home with silver at least!

The scores and standings are here.

There's a photo gallery on the official website here, from where these two pics have been taken (thank you to the organisers for putting them up). The pics in the gallery give a good impression of the rink, and as I've said before I really like the wall bars! The only one that shows anything of the GB teams is below - that looks like Colin Dick in the far distance.

The photo at the top shows the spectators. I recognise a few faces!

EYOF girls post first win

Anna Sloan and her GB team (see here) have won their first game in Poland, beating Anna Siderova's Russian side 8-4. (Siderova competed at the Glynhill Ladies International last month, her photo is here)

You can follow the results from the other round robin games this week on curlinglive.com. Thanks to those behind the site there for posting the end by end linescores live. Much appreciated. Now, if they could just archive the linescores as well as the final scores! Please. (Note that it says on the site, "We're still in development stage, site exclusively for this event." There's no email contact.)

Above L-R: Hannah Fleming, Lauren Gray, Anna Sloan, Becca Kesley and Alice Spence. Photo by Hugh Stewart.

EYOF off and running

Heavy snowfall may have delayed the start of some of the events at the European Youth Winter Olympic Festival in Poland but the curling is underway.

Colin Dick and his GB team have won their first game, against Norway, 10-2 in seven ends. The results are here. The girls are up next against Russia.

The RCCC website is carrying a BOA story about Anna Sloan getting the honour to carry the flag at the Opening Ceremony. See it here.

Top L-R: Struan Wood, Kerr Drummond, Blair Fraser, Colin Dick and Jay McWilliam. Photo by Hugh Stewart.

EYOF teams

Here they are, at the airport today, on their way to one of their life's big experiences, the two GB curling teams heading for the European Youth Olympic Winter Festival. Back L-R: Kerr Drummond, Hannah Fleming, Lauren Gray, Anna Sloan, Becca Kesley, Alice Spence, Blair Fraser. Front: Struan Wood, Colin Dick, Jay McWilliam.

Photo by Hugh Stewart

Poland here we come

The young curlers who will be wearing GB shirts at the European Youth Olympic Winter Festival fly out to Poland early afternoon today, Friday, February 13.

Until now, only the individuals in the two squads have been named (see here), but Curling Today can reveal that the starting lineup for the first games in Bielsko-Biala will be Anna Sloan (skip), Hannah Fleming (3rd), Lauren Gray (2nd) and Alice Spence (lead). The fifth is Rebecca Kesley. The team coach is Debbie Knox. Rhona Martin has been in charge of putting the GB challenge at the EYOF in place. She intends to ensure that everyone plays and says it is likely that Alice and Rebecca will alternate at lead. All the girls were battling it out in different teams in the final stages of the recent Scottish Junior Championships, but competed together at the Glynhill International in January.

The men’s team will line up as Colin Dick (skip), Blair Fraser (3rd), Jay McWilliam (2nd) and Kerr Drummond (lead). Struan Wood is the 5th. Hazel Wood is the team coach. I think this is a strong team and will be out to put their respective disappointments of the past weekend behind them!

You can find out more details about the curlers here.

Official website for the event is here. Hopefully this will be good for getting all the results, but if it's not and I hear news I'll post it here. The teams will have plenty of support in Poland, as most of the families will be in the arena to cheer them on. No doubt messages will be being passed home so can I ask any readers of the blog to please let me know what is happening. I wish I could be there!

Top: If my Polish is up to scratch this looks like a pic of the hall where the curling is to take place!

Seeing the stones move

Perhaps it is a consequence of getting older, but occasionally these days something that I hear, or see, triggers a whole host of long suppressed memories! A follower of this blog brought my attention to some fabulous online footage of junior curling in Poland, in the venue for the European Youth Olympic Festival next February, see our recent post here. The curling rink will be constructed within the gymnasium of the Bielsko Mechanic School, in the town of Bielsko-Biala, near Krakow. The sports hall floor will be covered with special refrigerated mats, on which the ice for the curling will be laid.

It was seeing the wallbars surrounding the rink which triggered memories of hanging upside down during school gym lessons all these years ago! I'm sure our gym master had the best of intentions, but I don't really have fond memories of gym periods all these years ago! I was almost completely put off all sporting activities... but then the school started up a curling club, and the rest is history!

Looking at the footage above just confirms in my mind that webcasting of curling events will play a big part in our sport's future. Things are a bit confused at the moment. There's the excellent CurlTV of course, with the archive of games to watch and learn from if you have a subscription. I personally haven't had much success with the live Curlingkanalen webcasts, such as those from the Oslo Cup, reflecting I presume the bandwidth considerations that are key in this area. The archive footage (see here) is watchable though. Have a look too at what is happening in the area of internet TV of curling in Switzerland (here) in association with the WCT-e.

In Scotland there is a lot of interest in webcasting, to judge from the posts on the Scottish Curling Forum last season. Big ideas from the Royal Caledonian Curling Club seem to have come to naught. I recently asked Colin Grahamslaw, the Royal Club CEO, what progress had been made. His reply was, "We had been working with a company who had a potential backer on board who would have picked up the costs but the current market state has put an end to that option." Could something be done in-house for the main RCCC competitions? Colin notes, "The main issue with the Scottish (Championship) is pushing BBC to take an early decision as to what they are doing and then releasing the web rights back to us." Watch this space, but why am I thinking, don't hold your breath!

The World Curling Federation sees the future though, and we can expect developments here. President Les Harrison was interviewed on The Curling Show during the summer, and was predicting that the World Mixed Doubles Championship in Cortina next year was a candidate as an event to be webcast. With the huge investment that the WCF has made with its own television production company WCTV, webcasting would seem a natural next step.

Others are moving ahead at home. Alex and Andrew Mitchell pioneered webcasting of the Ramada Perth Masters some years ago, and will be doing so again in January. (Note that the draw for the Perth WCT-e event is now online, see here). Alex is the technical brains behind these endeavours and his expertise has been recruited to provide webcasts for the inaugural WCT-e Edinburgh International next month. The Dunvegan Junior events are at Murrayfield this coming weekend. The Edinburgh International Organising Committee has asked permission to film some of the Dunvegan games as a trial run for their own event in November. During the close season, static cameras were placed directly over both ends of three of Murrayfield’s seven sheets in preparation for filming. In addition, moving hand-held cameras will be deployed at both ice and bar level.

Cameras will be operated by junior volunteers and the whole operation will be coordinated by Alex Mitchell who is currently working on the perennial problem of picture quality when a webcast is highly subscribed. The trial filming of the Dunvegan Trophy games will give him valuable data in his quest for the answer to the problem.

Catherine Dodds, the organiser of this season’s Dunvegan Trophy for Under 21 curlers, reports that the competition entry lists for both the Ladies and Gents competitions are full - eight junior teams will compete in both competitions.

Both competitions will be run in the same way. The eight teams will be split into two sections of four with each team being guaranteed three games on the Saturday. The winners and runners-up from each section will progress to the Sunday knock-out stages. Semifinals will be played on Sunday morning with the finals of both competitions taking place on Sunday afternoon. The total prize fund for the competitions is £1000.

Boys gain invite to EYOF

Curling Today has already talked about the European Youth Olympic Festival, and the selection of a GB girls' team for the competition in Poland next year (see here). A boys' team was on the reserve list, and the news today is that this GB side now has a place in the event.

The Royal Caledonian Curling Club, in partnership with British Curling, has announced the names of the curlers who have been chosen: Blair Fraser, Kerr Drummond, Colin Dick, Struan Wood and Jay McWilliam. No coach has been named as yet.

The junior women's team, Hannah Fleming, Lauren Gray, Rebecca Kesley, Anna Sloan and Alice Spence, is already in training with their coach Debbie Knox for the competition, February 14-21, 2009, in Slask Beskidy.

The event will be the ninth staging of the EYOF, and only the second time that the sport of curling has been included. The other sports are downhill and cross country skiing, biathlon, nordic combined, ski-jumping, snowboarding, figure skating and ice hockey. The curling competition will be held in the town of Bielsko-Biala, in southern Poland, not far from Krakow.

The event website is here.

Here are photos of those selected:

Colin Dick skipped his team to U-17 Slam success last season.

Kerr Drummond has his own RCCC National Academy team this season.

Jay McWilliam won the Scottish Pairs title in 2006.

Struan Wood was in Colin Dick's Slam winning side last season.

Blair Fraser's team has won the first two U-17 events of this season.

Photos by Bob.

Squad announced for European Youth Olympics

The Royal Caledonian Curling Club and British Curling have announced the squad that has been selected to represent Great Britain at the European Youth Olympic Festival in Slask Beskidy, Poland, February 14-21, 2009. See the previous post about the event here.

In alphabetical order, the curlers are Hannah Fleming, Lauren Gray, Rebecca Kesley, Anna Sloan, and Alice Spence. To be eligible, all were born between July 1, 1990, and June 30, 1992. Olympic gold medallist Debbie Knox will be the coach.

A GB boys' team is first reserve for the event at present, and names have not been announced.

The official announcement is here, with quote from British Curling's Chris Hildrey.

A Curling Today reader posted this link to a photo album where you can see photos from the Polish Junior Nationals at the rink in Bielsko-Biala where the EYOF curling will take place.

Here are some pics of those selected for this strong GB squad.

Anna Sloan skipped her team to the Scottish Junior Championship final last season, although will team up with Eve Muirhead for next season's Junior Championships.

Lauren Gray was Anna's longtime third player, and next season will be playing with Claire Hamilton.

Hannah Flemming has skipped her own team for a number of seasons.

Alice Spence has played second for Hannah for several years.

This pic is of Rebecca Kesley practising at Summer Camp last year. Rebecca skipped her own team in the Scottish Junior Finals last season. But she has also teamed up with Hannah, and played with Thomas Sloan and Blair Fraser as a mixed team in the U-17 Slam. They won the first event at Perth (see here).

And I just had to use this photo of Debbie Knox doing an ET impression, when coaching the Claire Hamilton team last season!

Anna's pic is by Richard Gray, the others by Bob.

European Youth Olympic Festival

Last month, I asked Royal Caledonian Curling Club CEO Colin Grahamslaw, "Can you expand on how the RCCC will help British Curling in 'running the British team for the EYOF''', this statement having appeared in the Board Minutes. His reply then was, "Not really, as we have not made final arrangements yet – but I would expect that it would be the same as last time where the Royal Club ran the programme on behalf of BC."

Things have obviously moved on somewhat, to judge from the post on the Royal Club website today, here. The RCCC is now looking for young curlers to represent Great Britain at the European Youth Olympic Festival in Slask Beskidy in Poland between February 14-21, 2009. The event website is here.

How does the event fit in to a crowded calendar next season? It follows the Scottish Junior Championships, and is before the Junior Worlds. It overlaps with the World University Games in Harbin.

Britain has a guaranteed place for a girl’s team, for which five members are required. To be eligible, curlers must have been born between July 1, 1990, and June 30, 1992, and have a full British passport. A boy's team is on a reserve list. Presumably the eligibility for the event is dependent on placings at previous World Juniors.

The Royal Club is also looking for an experienced coach to work under the direction of British Curling and the British Olympic Association, to prepare and manage the girl’s team (and possibly a boy’s team) for the event!

Applications should go to Rhona Martin at Cairnie House by the end of this month.

As for the event itself, some background can be found here. The European Youth Olympic Festival is a biennial multi-sport event for youth athletes from the forty-eight member countries of the Association of European Olympic Committees. EYOF's summer games were held for the first time in Brussels in 1991, and a winter edition began two years later in Aosta. Currently the sports that are included in the winter games are downhill and cross country skiing, biathlon, nordic combined, ski-jumping, snowboarding, figure skating, ice hockey, and curling.

The curling venue for the 2009 EYOF is interesting. A special rink has been built and the Polish National Junior Curling Championships took place in the arena at the Bielsko Mechanic School, as a trial event for the EYOF. Installing the rink began only two weeks before the competition was held. The school's sports hall was covered with special refrigerated mats, on which the ice for the curling rinks was laid.