Victoria curling fans hoping to get a glimpse of Canada’s best curlers better keep their eyes glued to TSN this week for the Olympic trials broadcasts from Winnipeg.
The Victoria Curling Classic, held at Archie Browning Sports Centre in Esquimalt, will take a one-year hiatus from the World Curling Tour schedule this spring, meaning no stop in the B.C. capital.
Organizer Al Sutherland opted to bypass this Olympic curling year in favour of bouncing back stronger in 2015.
“Everything is bunched up at the end of the season this year. They moved one of the World Curling Tour events into March, which puts it right after the Brier. So it would have been the Brier, a Grand Slam and then our event,” said Sutherland. “I think that’s a bit too many consecutive events.
“I thought it was just wiser to take a year off and regroup next year.”
The Sochi Olympics will stretch out over the middle two weeks of February, culminating with gold medal games on Feb. 20 and 21 for the women and men, respectively.
Canada’s national championship, the Tim Hortons Brier, goes March 1-9 in Kamloops, followed by the National — a Grand Slam event on the WCT — slated for March 12-16 in Fort McMurray, Alta., and the Pomeroy Inn & Suites Prairie Showdown takes place from March 27-30.
The eighth annual Victoria Curling Classic was held from March 21-24 last year.
“It’s a chance to take a breather, reassess where we’re going and see where the dates fall for next year,” said Sutherland, who said there was still plenty of interest from curlers.
“A lot of them had been phoning, wanting to come out. There are always the hard-core teams who want to come out, but it’s the lesser-knowns that you need to fill out the field [of 24 teams],” said Sutherland.
“It doesn’t hurt to take the break. Yeah, it’s a little disappointing, but it’s been a lot of work for the volunteers and over the last eight years, it’s been the same group, too.”
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