An uncommon qualification course of for the Tim Hortons Canadian Curling Trials is lastly full. The nine-team fields are set for the deepest home competitors the game has to supply.
A quadrennial not like another has two peaks remaining. The Nov. 20-28 trials in Saskatoon will depart two groups standing as Canadian representatives within the four-player competitions on the 2022 Winter Olympics in February.
“It’s 4 years of prep and it’s everyone’s purpose,” stated Darren Moulding, vice-skip for Brendan Bottcher’s Edmonton-based crew. “It’s simply all of the work that you simply’ve put in for years and years goes to culminate on this occasion.”
Because the pandemic upended the common lead-up to the trials, Curling Canada revised the qualification course of earlier this 12 months. An extra qualifying occasion — the so-called ‘pre-pre-trials’ — was added to the calendar for September.
4 groups then emerged from final week’s 28-team pre-trials occasion in Liverpool, N.S, to spherical out the sphere for the primary trials on the SaskTel Centre. The result’s a stacked eight-day bonspiel for the precise to put on the Maple Leaf in Beijing.
“With regards to the stress, nothing beats what these groups are going to face on the Trials, that’s for positive,” stated curling commentator Mike Harris, who represented Canada on the 1998 Nagano Video games.
“It’s solely as soon as each 4 years and it’s an enormous carrot.”
Krista McCarville of Thunder Bay, Ont., and Jacqueline Harrison of Dundas, Ont., earned the final two girls’s spots. Jason Gunnlaugson of Morris, Man., and Tanner Horgan of Kingston, Ont., rounded out the boys’s subject on the trials.
McCarville was a favorite to make the minimize whereas the veteran Harrison, who beat Corryn Brown within the B-final, will likely be making her trials debut.
Gunnlaugson was a preferred choose to make it out of the boys’s draw whereas Horgan defeated Glenn Howard to lock up the ultimate berth and change into the youngest skip at this 12 months’s trials at 23.
They be part of a males’s subject that features groups skipped by Bottcher, Regina’s Matt Dunstone, Brad Gushue of St. John’s, Brad Jacobs of Sault Ste. Marie, Ont., Calgary’s Kevin Koe, Toronto’s John Epping and Mike McEwen of West St. Paul, Man.
“It’s in all probability essentially the most aggressive occasion I’ve ever performed in,” stated Moulding, who simply missed the playoff minimize on the 2017 trials in Ottawa. “There’s in all probability by no means extra on the road than within the Olympic trials in some ways. I simply suppose that the competitiveness and stress will get ratcheted up.”
The ladies’s subject consists of groups skipped by Edmonton’s Kelsey Rocque, Casey Scheidegger of Lethbridge, Alta., Edmonton’s Laura Walker, Winnipeg’s Jennifer Jones, Tracy Fleury of East St. Paul, Man., Kerri Einarson of Gimli, Man., and Ottawa’s Rachel Homan.
Einarson will likely be one of many favourites after efficiently defending her nationwide girls’s title final season.
“I see us on an upward trajectory proper now,” crew second Shannon Birchard stated in a current interview. “We’re constructing and that’s what we need to be doing at this time limit and peaking in (late) November.”
Koe and Homan skipped the Canadian groups on the 2018 Winter Video games in Pyeongchang, South Korea, however each missed the rostrum. Canada’s John Morris and Kaitlyn Lawes received blended doubles gold within the self-discipline’s Olympic debut.
The SaskTel Centre seats about 14,000 for curling. All athletes, volunteers, media, occasion employees, contractors, and followers over age 12 have to be absolutely vaccinated in opposition to COVID-19 with the intention to attend or take part within the occasion.
© 2021 The Canadian Press
