Hosting World Mixed Doubles, Senior events is a team effort
It was a challenge — and a risk.
When the World Curling Federation named Lethbridge as the site of this year’s World Mixed Doubles and World Senior championships, all the city had operating was a 60-year-old downtown facility.
“This place wasn’t built,” says Mike Mulroy, sitting in an office in the shiny, new ATB Centre near the city’s western limit.
And there was no easy “Plan B” if construction was significantly delayed.
But Mulroy, co-chair of the events for the Lethbridge Curling Club, was sure he could count on the contractors — and on the local volunteers who’d undertake all the responsibilities involved in putting on a world-scale competition.
“We felt confident,” says Mulroy. “We wanted to showcase this new facility,” and this week’s competitions have certainly done that.
The week’s events also demonstrated, once again, how readily Lethbridge-area people will step up and take on unpaid work for a good cause. Nearly 300 signed up, Mulroy reports, covering shifts that started in early morning while others ran past midnight.
Many of them, he adds, brought prior volunteer experience at events like the Scotties and the Ford World Women’s curling championships in Lethbridge.
Mulroy points out this week’s competition served as a qualifying event for a new Olympic sport, mixed doubles curling, scheduled to debut next year in South Korea. But it’s also stirred plenty of interest here.
All going well, he hopes to see this variation on the traditional game added to the schedule when curling resumes here this fall. The building itself drew attention as well, and words of appreciation.
“There have been a lot of very good comments,” about the facility and the quality of the ice, as well as praise for the volunteers staffing it.
“We can put on world-class events here,” including televised Grand Slam competitions between some of the world’s top players.
Southern Alberta curling fans who attended the championships also contributed to their success, Mulroy says.
“The crowds have been much larger than we thought.”
Nearly 300 people bought fullweek passes, he says, and spectator attendance was averaging 250 to 300 during round-robin play midweek. The finals would attract still more.
For competitors, the Lethbridge location offered other attractions as well. Many planned their travels to include visits to Banff, the Rockies and other Alberta destinations.
“A lot of them came a week or two early.”
Here in the city, Mulroy says, “there were over 300 hotel rooms dedicated to these events,” many of them for nine or 10 nights. But brightly-garbed competitors were visible in many places around town throughout the week.
With curlers here from 40 nations, some teams brought more experience than others. A common factor for many of them, Mulroy observes, is that they were coached by a Canadian instructor. Evidently many people in the “Canadian diaspora” take their love of the game with them.
But other newcomers learned to curl after moving to Canada, he adds. Brazil is known for its prowess in soccer, not curling, but the South American nation was represented here by players who took up the game after moving to Vancouver.
An awards presentation banquet downtown on the weekend would mark the end of competition, but volunteers will then get to work taking down banners and packing up equipment. And accountants will start running their figures, to determine if the event broke even or turned a profit.
If there’s a surplus, Mulroy says, it could help provide some of the items identified as needs during the club’s regular season.
“With a lot of the start-up costs, there are a lot of unknowns.”
But you can’t put a pricetag on the experience gained, or on the reputation Lethbridge continues to build as a host for major curling events.
“And typically, we see a bump in interest,” he says, with more people coming out to curl after a competition like this.
Should we bid for another world-level event?
“Knowing what I know now, I feel we could definitely do it again.”
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