Kevin Martin, circa 1991. We kid you not.

Huzzahs to our friend Bob Cowan at Skip Cottage Curling, the authority on all things Scottish in curling.

First, he recently launched a new blog design… and now, in recent months, he has begun transferring and posting all kinds of ancient videotaped curling footage onto the interweb. Oh joy.

In this posting today, Bob has showcased nearly 10 minutes of VHS footage from the 1991 Safeway World Men’s Curling Championship, featuring a young David Smith of Scotland and a remarkably young – and full-haired and moustached – Kevin Martin, the recent Olympic champion at Vancouver 2010.

As many curling fans are aware, this marked Martin’s adult debut on the world stage and, quite frankly, the peak of his unpopularity. This was mostly due to what we shall dub “Corngate”… and which we shall now explain.

In their round robin match, Martin trailed the Scottish team by a few points at the halfway mark, whereupon he and teammate Kevin Park pulled out corn brooms – the classic, original curling sweeping device – to give the ice surface some more, er, character. A move that was fully within the rules (at that time) but which was considered unethical by many… including the pro-Canadian crowd.

The expected rematch took place in the final, and once again the Scots took the early advantage and… again… the Edmonton squad pulled out the straw. The Winnipeg crowd was not appreciative of this move.

“Listen to the crowd booing and jeering. Quite right, too,” offers BBC commentator Richard Harding.

But the Scots had learned from this strategy, and with some help from some Canadian compatriots, they were prepared to counteract the sticky corn with hog hair brushes purchased from a local curling shop. Scotland went on to prevail, and captured their first world men’s championship in 24 years.

Fantastic stuff.

Click here for the Skip Cottage Curling story page, which will lead you to the video.

Here is a first look at Team Canada, men’s version, on the ice at the Vancouver Olympic Centre.

In The Curling News photo at left, skip Kevin Martin (left) and alternate Adam Enright prepare to keep the path clean for John Morris as the first of two practice days winds down.

“Today was about getting used to the building and really getting that Olympic feel,” Martin told CTVOlympics.ca afterwards. “I was here about 10-15 minutes early to take in the building. Every building is different so I wanted to get a feel without playing a game.”

“It was moving really well, at least four and a half feet,” said Martin. “It was mostly moving late and it was pretty finicky with weight.”

While the team eased into things on Sunday, they plan to get in a more structured session on Monday.

“Today was more mechanical for the guys. They were throwing well and getting comfortable,” said Martin. “Tomorrow (Monday), we’ll do more sweeping and game situations.”

[Click on image to increase size. Copyright owned by The Curling News (2010)]

Tomorrow, Thursday January 14, is Curling Skins Day on the TSN talk show Off The Record (OTR).

Once again, the four skips taking part in this weekend’s Casino Rama Skins Game will be in the hotseats for a half-hour of jabbering, laughing, frowning and finger-pointing.

Make that three skips and one third.

Glenn Howard, Randy Ferbey and Scotland’s David Murdoch will be there. But Kevin Martin‘s chair will be taken by third man John Morris, which could make things quite interesting.

Remember, ace TCN blogger Margo Weber declared that Johnny Mo is going to be a star in Vancouver. Does that star begin ascending on Thursday?

Anyway, a question about questions. Specifically: what kinds of questions would you ask any of these curling stars, if TSN happened to invite your contributions?

Not to toot our own horn too much… but if you post your question ideas in the Comment(s) field below, you just might see and hear your question pop up on Thursday’s show.

TOOT!

[Morris photo montage by Anil Mungal]

Christmas is coming… and TCN publisher George Karrys has this curling take on the Charles Dickens holiday classic, as it appeared Monday in his weekly Sun Media column.

Which do you prefer: Ebenezer Martin, or Kevin Scrooge? (Photoshop job of Kevin Martin by Anil Mungal)

For more curling news, be sure to follow the TCN Twitter feed. We had planned to celebrate our one-thousandth Tweet but, whoops, it looks like we passed that milestone a while ago, and currently sit at more than 1,400 postings (as of Thursday morning).

We hate it when that happens!

Among the awesome curling newsworthys you will find are:

• Team Cheryl Bernard gets their Olympic tattoos

• 130-year-old outdoor curling clubs hits the ice

• CTV Olympics video player allows you to “call the play” from previous Olympic moments, and the CTV guys are huge fans of one such video for the 2006 Olympic men’s curling final

• Men’s, women’s and junior playdown results

• Merry Ho Ho greeting from the Swiss Olympic women

• VANOC Marketplace offers Olympic curling tickets for legal re-sale

• Team Ferbey makes list of Top 10 team sport dynasties of the decade

And more. So much more.

by Margo Weber

 WOMEN

1. Scott – if Schraeder is on I think they’ll pull out the win.
2. Jones – scrappy enough to be among the leaders; they find the wins.
3. Lawton – if they’ve developed their draw game, they’ll be tough to beat.
4. McCarville – my darkhorse pick; well coached; depends on Tara George.
5. Kleibrink – not seeing it for them again.
6. Holland – inexperienced but seem to have great team dynamics.
7. Webster – lacking in ‘big game’ experience; hard to know how they’ll respond.
8. Bernard – not seeing the consistency needed to win an event of this calibre.

MEN
1/2. Martin – proven best shooters around.
1/2. Howard – next to best shooters with better team dynamics.
3. Koe – should be near the top if they can stay in the moment.
4. Stoughton – oh so close once again.
5. Ferbey – still have plenty of talent but will the drive be there?
6. Gunner – they’ll turn a few heads but lack the experience to finish.
7. Middaugh – appear to be a team of individuals.
8. Simmons – could be a frustrating tourney.