Hosts double down on U.S. success
LAS VEGAS Is Las Vegas a bad bet this time?
With the success stories of three Continental Cups held here, you might figure Las Vegas might smash its previous records to smithereens as host of the World Men’s Curling Championship that begins Saturday.
But more than 90 per cent of the fans that attended the four-day Continental Cups in January were Canadians and almost half of them from Alberta. Nowhere near that many Canadians will be here for the worlds.
The question coming off the Olympic gold medal win by U.S. skip John Shuster is how many Americans will show up to take their place?
Las Vegas already holds the United States attendance record for playing host to a major curling competition, knocking off the previous records held by the 2002 Salt Lake Olympics and the 2008 worlds in Grand Forks, N.D.
The 2016 Continental Cup recorded an attendance total of 62,498, last year’s hit 52,715 and the inaugural edition drew 52,215.
“I’m pretty sure we’ll crack the list of our previous totals someplace,” said organizing committee head Jon Killoran of those numbers.
“We have lots of fans joining us from Norway, Sweden, Scotland, Switzerland and other competing countries, which was not the case with past Continental Cups. And we got a big bump from our U.S. fans, too, especially thanks to Team USA’s gold medal win during last month’s Olympics.”
Killoran says Gushue winning the Brier helped.
“He has a sizable group of family and friends coming down and we have heard of a lot of spectators now making plans to come because his team is representing Canada.”
Gushue says two dozen family and friends and just as many from his curling club in St. John’s, N.L., are coming.
FORGET PYEONGCHANG
Yes, Canada’s Rachel Homan and Kevin Koe suffered monumental pratfalls and failed to manufacture a curling medal at a single Games for the first time in Canadian Olympic history.
But it’s a little difficult to call for some sort of national inquiry in the sport when you consider one statistic.
Canada has a 44-game combined winning streak at the men’s and women’s world curling championships going into Saturday’s pair of games to open these worlds.
Canada opens with games against Russia’s Alexey Timofeev and Scotland’s Bruce Mouat.