It has been 27 years since a national or international curling tournament associated with the Canadian Curling Association or World Curling Federation has happened in Toronto. Isn’t it about time Toronto is given another event?
The Players’ Championship, which pits some of the world’s best men’s and women’s teams actively playing in the sport, begins tonight at the Mattamy Athletic Centre, once the home of the Toronto Maple Leafs. The seating capacity is about 2,500, just right for an event such as this, which is the final Grand Slam of the season on the 2012-13 World Curling Tour. The teams competing include current world champions Niklas Edin of Sweden and Eve Muirhead of Scotland, and Canadian champions Brad Jacobs of Sault Ste. Marie, Ont., and Rachel Homan of Ottawa. Many of the other teams are former Canadian and world champions.
The Players’ is a tough tournament to win, more so than any of the other Slam events. The best teams from the entire season are in attendance, whereas some of them may have missed the earlier Slams for one reason or another, possibly due to schedule or travel conflicts. Almost all of the top 15 men’s and women’s teams from this year’s WCT accepted invitations, knowing the value of playing in this tournament which has $100,000 purses, and individual bonuses Sportsnet is offering for points accumulated in the Slams. It is also the final chance to gain points for the Canadian Team Ranking System that will determine qualifying spots for this December’s Trials that will determine Canada’s men’s and women’s teams for the 2014 Olympics.
So for anyone thinking of watching the Players’ in person, or viewing it on Sportsnet, which begins coverage on Thursday, this should be curling at its finest.
“Being in Toronto is going to be exciting because it’s a chance to maybe grow the sport a little bit,” said Nolan Thiessen, lead for Kevin Koe’s Calgary team that won the Rogers Masters Grand Slam back in November. “Everybody in downtown Toronto is hopefully excited about the sport and hopefully we can showcase it well. It’s our biggest centre in the country. Curling is arguably one of the top two or three sports in this country, so we should be in the major centres.”
But will this be an isolated event in a well-known venue in Toronto or perhaps the precursor of a future CCA or WCF championship?
“The Canadian Curling Association is always looking at all available options for our events, including our major Season of Champions properties,” Greg Stremlaw, the CCA’s chief executive officer, told me.
“Toronto is a market that we continue to assess given its size and location. The business model must work for the CCA for any potential event and that would be true for Toronto as well. The CCA continues to have interest in Toronto, but this depends on our five-year event grid and where we locate other events, the funding support received from the stakeholders and the overall business model for the event to ensure it can be successful.”
“We have not discussed this recently, but it could be a possibility to be considered going forward,” added CCA events director Warren Hansen, who has long been a proponent of trying to bring a major tournament to Toronto. “I think the Ricoh (Coliseum) would be the best option to consider knowing what I currently do about the arena and surrounding show space.”
The Ricoh Coliseum was formerly known as the CNE Coliseum, which housed the last non-CCA/WCT curling event in Toronto, the 1986 Men’s World Championship. The championship had lukewarm interest beyond just the curling community, although it included a separate Battle of the Sexes the night before the final, pitting 1983 Canadian/world men’s champion Ed Werenich and 1986 Canadian/women’s world champion Marilyn Darte (now Marilyn Bodogh). It was way ahead of its time in terms of entertainment, even if the actual curling fell far short of expectations because Werenich’s team made short shrift of Darte’s. But it was a spectacle nonetheless that may go down as one of the craziest things in the history of curling.
The game has changed significantly since then, in terms of character and personality. It is more of a business because of advertising revenues and money available to players, and the International Olympic Committee granting curling official medal status in 1998.
But despite all of that and the fact Ontario has produced a fair share of top players, some of whom reside in or around the Golden Horseshoe, Toronto has been bypassed as a place for a CCA or WCT event. I’m not sure whether it’s because there is no push from a local committee or it has been deemed that putting an event in Toronto would not ensure financial success given other markets that are proven.
The national men’s and women’s championships have become a major financial cash cow for the CCA, which normally seizes upon a city that is hot for curling or has a perfectly-sized venue. Winnipeg, Calgary, Edmonton, Saskatoon or Regina do well for Canadian and World Championships, but Toronto hasn’t even been on the radar.
Thiessen suggested Toronto could be an ideal venue for the Canadian Curling Trials that determine Canada’s men’s and women’s representative for the Olympics. This year’s Trials take place in Winnipeg in December. Thiessen thinks Toronto should be considered for the 2017 Trials.
“I think that will create a lot of excitement and get a lot of fans in the stands,” he said. “Hopefully we show this week that Toronto is a good curling centre and big events should come there.”
History will be made with this year’s Players’ in Toronto, notably because of the venue that has a lot of the competitors excited. Maybe it will be a precursor to a future CCA or WCF event. Time will tell, but for what it’s worth you couldn’t assemble a better overall group of curlers than the ones competing in the Players’. Some teams are the same ones that will be featured in next year’s Olympic Games or trying to get there through the Canadian Olympic Trials in December. This is a chance to see the best of the best before that.