Shiny new things in Charlottetown
Well, that’s more like it.
I’m here to bestow laurels on the triple knockout format, which returned to the Grand Slam of Curling series this past week.
It says here the show in Charlottetown boasted some extra glitter because of it.
There was plenty of competition, mind you, in the shiny new things department.
For one, all games on all sheets were streamed live from the opening stones, which started back on Tuesday.
Not to rest on their laurels, The Curling Group and HomeTeam Live soon unveiled Full House, where you can watch all four simultaneous games on one screen.
A new app was released on day two, which ticks more boxes than not—with the potential of more to come.
There’s a new merch shop, for both the TCG and updated Grand Slam brands.
There’s something called the Grand Slam of Karaoke, which offers the winning yodeler a $1,000 prize.
We’ll have to see that one in person to properly comment on it.
There was a whole second Slam competition taking place, the Tier 2 side of this Tour Challenge event.
Thirty-two additional teams (!) battled for their share of the top tier spotlight, which saw Saskatchewan’s Rylan Kleiter and Christina Black of Halifax win top honours and qualify for an upcoming Slam event.
Which brings us to the on-ice show, i.e. the actual curling. Out were the usual pools, in favour of a staple of many fabled World Curling Tour cashspiels—the triple KO.
Lose one game and you drop to the B-side. Lose another and you’re in the C-side, with just one life left.
C-side life is a vicious kind of existence. Things tend to blur and you might find yourself getting snippy with your teammates. Unless you can immediately revert to autopilot, which is a whole other kind of existence.
Remember when various curling teams would post on their socials about “grinding”? I haven’t seen much of it lately, but players loved to trumpet “the grind” and having to “grind it out.”
Please.
These kids have, for the most part, got it pretty sweet these days.
It’s either one or two games a day in the usual Slam pool system, whereas three-game days are a fact of life—for the unfortunate—in the triple knockouts.
Team Brad Gushue was reminded about the depths of TKO despair this week in Ch’town. The defending Brier champions went 1-2 out of the gate and had to win four games in a row just to make the final; three of them in a single day (gasp).
“I’m very tired,” Gushue told Sportsnet before the final against Scotland’s Bruce Mouat.
“Three tight games. It wasn’t even like we got a break in all of them. An extra end against Nik (Edin), had to make a double raise against Ross (Whyte) and then that one right down to the last shot.
“Three tough games, but I’m excited to get to the final. It hasn’t been our best week, but we’ve gotten better as the week has gone on.”
Gushue and Co. got walloped 10-3 by the Scots in the championship—Mouat’s seventh Slam crown— and sure, they were tired after their run to the money round. I get it. Brad and his mates are no spring chickens.
However, that also means they’re old enough to remember when virtually all of their annual WCT events featured a double or triple knockout format.
I can’t blame them if those memories are a bit foggy, though.
I mean, look at Team Gushue’s hellish schedule at the recent PointsBet Invitational:
• Game 1, 6:00 p.m. Wednesday
• Tuesday off, went golfing
• Game 2, 8:00 p.m. Friday (might have golfed again)
• Game 3, 8:00 p.m. Saturday (might have golfed yet again)
• Final, 3:00 p.m. Sunday
Meanwhile, the women’s Slam Tier 1 finalists navigated duplicate roads to their championship tilt. Here’s the schedule for both the Rachel Homan and Kerri Einarson squads this past week:
• Game 1, 3:00 p.m. Tuesday
• Game 2, 12 noon Wednesday
• Game 3, 12 noon Thursday
• Game 4, 12 noon Friday
• Game 5, 12 noon Saturday
• Game 6, 8:00 p.m. Saturday
• Final, 3:30 p.m. Sunday
Both teams dropped into the B-side fairly early but didn’t lose again, avoiding the dreaded C-side.
That wasn’t quite as smooth a schedule as the A-side winners, but pretty sweet nonetheless.
Props to the besieged Kerri Einarson for beating Rachel Homan for the women’s title. That’s just two losses for the Homanators this season and a damn fine showing for Einarson, who has been juggling madly with different lineups all season.
Kleiter defeated Norway’s Magnus Ramsfjell in their Tier 2 men’s final, while Black upended Japan’s Sayaka Yoshimura by a 7-3 scoreline in their finale.
POSTSCRIPT: If I’m going to pump up the TKO format, I should pay homage to those who lost the most qualifiers in Charlottetown. These teams didn’t get a mention on television—they might have on the streams—but their pain is legion.
GOLD: Niklas Edin, Tabitha Peterson—lost A/B/C qualifiers*
SILVER: Kevin Koe, Xenia Schwaller—lost B/C qualifiers
BRONZE: Matt Dunstone, Kaitlyn Lawes—lost A/B qualifiers, won the C
*A, B, C ya later (if you know, you know).