Q: What’s the difference between an Olympic curling year and any other curling year?

A: Media. media. media.

Curlers in San Jose, California managed to get NFL football player Vernon Davis out onto the curling ice earlier this month, and in any other year, the story would have run in local media only. Perhaps with a photo.

We know this because various celebs have tried curling in the past couple of years… and we’ve promoted their experience, right here at The Curling News. Us, and local media where the experience took place.

However, with Vancouver 2010 less than three months away this story has exploded in this viral media universe, complete with video and multiple still pics.

Example: between 9:00am and 9:30am eastern time this morning, no less than 45 media outlets had posted the story online, and the counter was still running.

May we suggest more of these kinds of promotional efforts, from now until Games time. The recipe is simple: grab celeb; apply to ice; write and film.

Rinse and repeat.

Did you miss The Curling News Blog? This may be our first post since last Thursday, but there’s been lots to follow on our Twitter feed. Such as:

• Rizzo beats Kleibrink for 11K; McEwen wins on a measure
• Glenn Howard, Mike Harris and “Buttons” open The Dominion Curling Club Championship tonight
• When will they curl on Vancouver’s super-cool new/old city rink?
• Wayne Middaugh would like to set the record straight:
• Canada loses to Japan at Vancouver wheelchair curling exhibition
• You can follow the Olympic Torch journey online
• No tolls on Team Gushue highway
• 30K raised in little Carmen
• Kevin Martin moves into top spot on Tour money list
• The Daceys are off to Chelyabinsk, Russia
• Vernon, BC gets a Grand Slam
• TSN HD channel available free during Olympic Trials

And so very much more. Click on “Follow” at the top left of this page…

[Photo by Associated Press]

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We must admit, we were having fun with this headline.

“How about: Martin traded to Storm… for Goldline brush and and bag of Chee-tos?”

You know, that sort of thing.

But on to the story.

In advance of his appearance at The National in January, the second Capital One Grand Slam of Curling event of the season, Kevin Martin made a series of promotional appearances in the Guelph, Ontario area earlier this week.

Martin started with a Monday morning trip to a curling club he has visited before. It was the KW Granite Club in Waterloo, the host venue of two TV Skins Games held earlier this decade.

Martin stepped into a club game to call an end and throw a couple of stones (he stole a point). He then answered an unending stream of questions from club members and autographed pictures and brooms.

According to the Waterloo Record, his best story was on the eccentricities of third John Morris. Morris once showed up for a Brier morning draw with an incredibly wrinkled, squashed team jacket. Fearing Morris’s dishevelled appearance was due a late night, the Alberta skip was relieved and amused to hear that Morris had this particular jacket rush-mailed to him from home in an superstitious effort to snap a shooting slump. It worked.

On Tuesday morning, “The Old Bear” dropped by the June Avenue Public School in Guelph, meeting approximately 60 Grade 5 and 6 students to discuss the importance of hard work, and staying focused to achieving goals.

Later that afternoon, Martin laced up his skates to become a Guelph Storm hockey “Player for a Day.”
The 2008 world champion met with Storm players at the Sleeman Centre, site of The National, to provide a motivational address. Afterward, Martin hit the ice with the team and took part in the club’s preliminary practice drills… and even scored a goal (TCN photo by Anil Mungal).

“It was an absolute blast,” Martin told The Curling News. “The guys were real friendly. It was fun to get hockey equipment on for the first time since 1982.

“The biggest message I was trying to get across was believing in themselves. Everyone at this level is good enough to do it. Only the ones that believe deep down they can do it will succeed.”

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The Team Kevin Martin sponsor is offering two western Canadians a chance to win a trip to the Roar of Rings, the Tim Hortons Canadian (Olympic) Curling Trials, on the championship weekend.

Click here to enter before 11:59pm ET tonight.

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Our friend Terry Jones is back on the curling beat, and not a moment too soon.

The veteran Sun Media sports scribe, who also authored the 2007 book The Ferbey Four, was at a “32 days out” ceremony for the massive Roar of the Rings event coming to Edmonton December 6-13.

Otherwise known as the Tim Hortons Canadian Curling Trials, the event is basically the “Olympic Trials” which will declare Canada’s representatives for Vancouver 2010.

As Jones tells us here, many of the late week draw matchups were revealed as part of the news conference.

The much-anticipated and possibly crucial all-Edmonton battle between Kevin Martin and Randy Ferbey will be on the Wednesday afternoon draw, which also features Edmonton’s Kevin Koe versus the other pre-qualified team skipped by Ontario’s Glenn Howard.

Thursday morning features Ferbey-Howard and Martin-Koe, and Thursday night will feature Ferbey-Koe and Martin-Howard.

Winnipeg’s Jennifer Jones, Calgarian Cheryl Bernard, Saskatoon’s Stefanie Lawton and Calgary’s 2006 Olympic bronze medallist Shannon Kleibrink have their feature games against each other Wednesday morning, Wednesday evening and Thursday afternoon.

As any curling fan worth his or her salt knows, the remaining squads will be known after the Road to the Roar in Prince George, B.C., which starts up pretty darned soon.

Jonesy also tells us that ticket sales are already at 134,844 for the eight-day event, and single draw tickets go on sale this Saturday.

Tickets are $50 a pop for the women’s final (Dec. 12) and the men’s final (Dec. 13), while the semifinals are $40 each. The early round-robin draws are $30 each.

For heaven’s sake, this has got to be one of the last wakeup calls for curling fans to get their butt to Edmonton, for this showdown of the ages.

“We can’t believe this event is only a month away,” said host committee woman Jackie-Rae Greening. “Probably in our lifetime we won’t have the opportunity again to watch a trials where the winners get to represent Canada on their home turf at the Olympic Games. Now it’s getting so close, it’s getting so exciting.”

The last word goes to K-Mart, who unveiled some kind of countdown road sign, along with Kleibrink, at yesterday’s newser (photo by inews880AM, click to zoom in).

“I think the level of curling has increased significantly, the curlers have been training harder and have all become better than we were four years ago,” said Martin.

“That’s going to make this event even better and hopefully is going to make Canada even better at the Olympics.”

NOTE: have you signed up to follow The Curling News Twitter account?

If not, you’ve already missed today’s info on New Brunswick’s mixed team; Stoughton and Burtnyk on their Road to the Roar (and McEwen and Gunnlaugson, too); the husband of Sandra Schmirler and his honour at carrying the Olympic Torch; and Brad Gushue as an “interesting choice” to publicize the Tim Hortons Brier… considering that he hopes to not compete in it!

Head to the page and click on “Follow” to get tuned in to the digital curling world!

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TCN publisher George Karrys, who recently made his return as a Toronto-centric Sun Media curling columnist after a 10-year absence, revealed the existence of the Cup for the first time at last week’s Grey Power World Cup of Curling.

The tell-all can be read here.

And here, at last, is the world’s first exclusive photo (above) of the Carrot Cup, temporarily clutched by the jubilant pair of Ben Hebert (left) and John Morris from Team Kevin Martin.

For the record, Team Randy Ferbey held the Cup all summer, following the Grey Power Players’ Championship. Team Kevin Koe then won the Cup over Ferbey at New Westminster. In Mississauga, the Cup changed hands four times – from Koe to Martin to Team Brad Gushue to Koe again, and then finally to Team Glenn Howard.

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by Matt Hames
Capital One photo by Anil Mungal

MISSISSAUGA – This Howard team is kind of annoying. Don’t get me wrong, I like to watch them, but they bug me.

They should have been down at least one (maybe more) at the fourth end break. Team Koe totally out played them and could have been up 4-0. (I still say that Koe should have capped the inturn side in 2, and I’m not sure how Howard scores.)

And with all that said, they leave Kevin Koe with a triple for one. That was the first end where things got a little difficult for Koe. Credit him for coming through with a great shot.

But you can feel a deuce coming. Meaning we’re in for a cracker of a last two ends.

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Capital One photo (Kevin Koe) by Anil Mungal

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As another weekend of epic Tour battles are underway – in Vancouver, in Switzerland, in Calgary and elsewhere – the first webisode of Season of Champions TV hit the airwaves – er, webwaves – last night.

Following some technical difficulties, the entire show is available for viewing today.

The women went first, and during the following male segment,talk turned to the pressure of Olympic expectations.

Kevin Martin spoke about his 1992 Olympic demonstration experience, which proved to be a titanic struggle.

“We didn’t handle it well in 1992,” said Martin. “We were young, heading into our first Olympics. We didn’t handle the media very well. We didn’t really know what we were going in for, we didn’t really know what to expect. And boy, that’s not a good way to go into an event.”

Later, Martin revealed how mental gymnastics can directly affect a high-performance curler.

“And the stress really got to all of us,” said Martin. “I think I started (1991) at 207 (weight in pounds); I finished in 2002 at 167.

“That’s a lot of stress.”

Later, the roundtable of Martin, Randy Ferbey and Kevin Koe discussed some great shots made against each other. Martin praised two back-to-back shots made by Ferbey fourth-shooter David Nedohin against Martin at April’s Grey Power Players’ Championship – both of them 20-foot straight back “nutters”.

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Here’s Glenn Howard showing his stuff at Toronto’s Leaside Curling Club last night.

Howard and teammates Richard Hart and Brent Laing visited Leaside and then the Cricket club to promote next month’s Grey Power World Cup of Curling at Mississauga’s Hershey Centre, located just west of the Toronto airport.

At each club the lads met with members, signed autographs and participated in an interactive on-ice clinic.

Team Howard begins the World Cup with a Wednesday night (Oct. 21) matchup against Germany’s Andy Kapp, in a repeat of the 2007 Ford World Men’s Championship final.

Also in action on that opening draw is Kevin Martin, who faces Sweden’s Olympic hopeful Niklas Edin; 2006 Olympic gold medallist Brad Gushue, who takes on 2006 Olympic bronze medallist John Shuster of the United States; Four-time world champ Randy Ferbey, who battles the Chinese men’s Olympic team; and Edmonton’s Kevin Koe, who takes on Thomas Dufour of France.

Tickets can be purchased via Ticketmaster or the Hershey Centre box office.

Toronto media seem to awakening, briefly, from their NHL hockey pre-season slumber. Both the Globe and Mail and Toronto Sun published advance stories about the World Cup today.

[LATEST: and another Howard-oriented piece from the Globe’s James Christie was released tonight]

The Howards are jetting to the left coast tonight, for the start of Thursday’s World Curling Tour stop in Vernon, B.C. Four of the Olympic women’s teams confirmed for Vancouver are also competing in the women’s division.

[The Curling News photo by Anil Mungal]

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