Friday, February 24, 2006

It's Curling Day in Newfoundland

Not that we take sports seriously back home or anything, but at roughly noon today in Newfoundland all public schools and most public buildings will be shut down.

The reason, the men's curling gold medal game starts at 1:00 and there is almost no chance of any work getting done after that point. No Newfoundland based team or individual competitor has ever won an Olympic gold medal. Andrew Crosby won a gold in '92 for rowing, but he was just one member of a 9 man crew. Today in Turin, Brad, Mark, Russ, Jamie and Mike can change all that. With 2 of the 5 from the island itself, 2 from Labrador City, and Russ being from Cape Breton, which is beer parlance could be considered essentially 'Newfoundland Lite', they have already become the most celebrated Olympians in the 709 area code, a gold medal would just be the icing on the cake.

If you are anywhere near the east coast, or for that matter large sections of Alberta and Ontario, expect to hear a lot of noise or even see the occasional spontaneous parade sometime around 1:30 eastern time.

Go Team Gushue!!

Update:
The final result, Canada wins gold by a score of 10-4. Let the parties begin.

Even with their 2 steals early in the game, things stayed pretty close until the sixth end. Starting with an amazing shot by Mark Nichols to clear the house of any red stones, and ending with a unlucky hit off a guard by the Finnish skip, the game went from a 4-3 nail biter to a 10-4 blowout. Then it was all over except for the handshakes.

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