Kate hanging around at ECC 2009After a full day of agonizing – should we or shouldn’t we? – we have decided: YES, we shall showcase a rather eye-popping online video.
After all, we are The Curling News and we’ve claimed (ad nauseum) to be the ultimate source of curling info going right back to our first year of 1957, so... if it’s got a curling theme, we are the ones to unearth and magnify it, right? Whatever it is, correct?
So read on, if you dare.
As you should be aware, the 2012 Women of Curling Calendar is now available and sales are going well. The product finally started shipping late last week, so why not make a purchase yourself? You will be supporting a remarkable charitable cause – one which each of the 12 lovely athlete models have chosen to support – and the calendar does make a great holiday gift.
(NOTE: For more great curling-themed holiday gift ideas, make sure you grab the current and check out our feature story on page 10, The Curling News Shopping Guide. It’s got no less than 12 gift ideas for that curling fan of yours: subscribe today)
But back to this eye-popping video.
One of our curling calendar models is veteran Russian curling star Ekaterina Galkina, who has been a mainstay on the Russian national team since their surprise 2006 European championship title. And yes, she is the subject of this video.
Russians and curling have been appearing in the news often, to wit...
• The country recently hosted its first world championship (unfortunately during the Icelandic volcano);
• Galkina and Co. regularly compete each fall on the World Curling Tour in Canada, and even won the 2011 edition of the prestigious Sandra Schmirler Classic;
• Right now, the women’s and men’s teams are battling on home ice at the 2011 European championships in Moscow;
• And, of course, the sport world was quite shocked when the Russian Black Sea resort city of Sochi was announced as hosts for the 2014 Olympic Winter Games.
Now, our “Kate” may not be a high-profile skip or third – like teammates Liudmila Privivkova and Anna Siderova – and she might not get the attention those back-end players do, but it turns out that our Kate also posed months ago for photo shoot for which a brief promotional video has only recently been found online... and which caused our jaws to, well, drop.
So much for getting attention!
It behooves us to note that this photo shoot was NOT the one commissioned for Galkina’s appearance in the 2012 Women of Curling Calendar. In fact, all of the images in the WoC Calendar are a step away from the racy images that marked the origins of the original Fire On Ice calendars, which debuted before the 2006 Olympics and were published through 2009. So if you are offended by the nature of the content shown in this video (and the content is somewhat explicit, ie. NSFW), rest assured that you will not find the content of the Women of Curling Calendar offensive.
But enough of the preamble. Click here to view this promo video of Kate at an unknown photo shoot, and be warned – again – that this is NSFW, aka Not Suitable For Work...
[Photo of Ekaterina Galkina is COPYRIGHT by WCF/Urs Raeber – click to view larger]