Some of the very best of British, European and global curling will be in action in Scotland this weekend as the Mercure City of Perth Masters offers a flavour of what is to come on the other side of the world at next month’s Winter Olympics.
The title will be defended by Tom Brewster who, along with Greg Drummond, is one of two skips taking part who were members of the British team which reached the last Winter Olympic final in Sochi. Both are accompanied by team-mates from that silver medal winning rink, in Brewster’s case Scott Andrews and in Drummond’s Michael Goodfellow.
The Scottish team that has been most impressive this season so far is, meanwhile, Bruce Mouat’s newly-formed quartet who have won three titles in Canada this season, including claiming The Boost National, which saw him become the first Scottish skip and the youngest from any nation to win a prestigious ‘Grand Slam’ title.
Yet, in demonstrating the depth that has developed in recent years, another group of youngsters are currently the top Scots in the world rankings and will consequently be heading to PyeongChang next month, Kyle Smith having led his men into the top 10 over the last year. Along with Team Mouat, whose results have taken already taken them to 16th, they are among seven of the world’s top 20 involved in the tournament that gets underway tonight and, even more significantly, seven of the 10 teams that will contest the Olympic title.
They include all three of the other European teams in the world’s top 10 Team Edin, Sweden’s European champions who have been swapping places at the top of the world rankings with Canada’s Team Gushue throughout the season, their fellow former world champions Team Ulsrud from Norway and Switzerland’s Team De Cruz and it could be argued that an event to which there is free entry to the public, is of an even higher overall standard than the Winter Olympics.
That makes it an ideal opportunity for Smith and his team-mates – brother Cammy, Kyle Waddell and Thomas Muirhead, whose brother Glen is their Olympic alternate – to test their readiness as the biggest year of their careers to date gets underway, having reached the final on only their second appearance at a European Championships in November, then claimed a third place finish in a major Japanese event to round off 2017.
“It will be good to get going again after time off for Christmas and the new year to recharge the batteries and we are hoping to find some of the form we had in our last two competitions of 2017 at the Europeans and the Karuizawa International where we performed and worked well together,” said the 25-year-old, who will be on home ice, the Smiths and Muirheads all having grown up playing in the Dewar’s Centre.
Mouat having led his previous rink to victory over Smith in the semi-finals of the Scottish Championships less than a year ago, however, they are not necessarily entitled to be seen as the favourites among the homegrown teams and the 2 3-year-old from Edinburgh is naturally keen to make another statement.
“The Perth Masters is always a great way to start off a new year of curling. The guys and I will be looking to continue the success we had towards the end of last year and it’s nice to see a number of the Olympic teams playing as well, so it will be a strong event,” said Mouat.
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