by Rodger Schmidt

After having quite a lot to say for most of last week about the World Curling Federation and their activities – I don’t have much to say about it today.

The World of Curling is probably going to be surprised that this organization took out their President in a well-orchestrated fix, but to anyone who has been watching this group operate over the past years what happened on that Wednesday in Cortina was not such a surprise.

It has been clear since the planes landed at the beginning of the competition that enough delegates had managed to get their knives through security. What has been less clear is why this nasty business – that quite frankly should not have been necessary – was, in fact, necessary.

One would think that an organization such as the WCF would require more than just a strong President, but also a strong Executive Committee to function effectively. The only knock on Les Harrison that has come out in discussions (in which I was present) is that he was too close to Canadian interests, and not particularly good at dealing with the IOC. Who really knows, and what this really means, is an unknown... to me, anyway.

Also sketchy in my world is the direction that the new team powered by president Kate Caithness and vice president Patrick Huerlimann intend to steer the good ship WCF, although these quotes here would indicate a new focus on bricks and mortar, ie. actual curling facilities...? A collision course with North America – and particularly Canada – in respect to marketing and the distribution of the next millions is rumored by some, but only time will tell.

My editor points me to the only quotes Harrison has given on the situation, from his home town newspaper in Moncton.

I had her (Caithness) support in December but a couple of months later she decided to run for president. It’s politics ... they banded together and it was all about more European control.

More surprising in those WCF happenings was what didn’t happen. Remember all those wacky rule changes that the WCF had been proposing and pitching to their delegates over the past two years? The vote on this hefty list took place and... nothing happened. “Just kidding”, they seemed to say, “it wasn’t really as important as we thought, maybe we didn’t think is all through to the extent that is required. Sorry about all that time we wasted, we’ll try to waste less time next time”.

Of course, that was me editorializing.