Czech curling qualification for the World Championships?
The Czech Curling Federation introduced a qualification experiment to its competitions already for the 2014/2015 season, when in the fight for the national shirt for Europe 2015 (Esbjerg, Denmark) the Kolibris 1 team unexpectedly won, which subsequently lost Group A for Czech men's curling. This has not yet been rectified at the next two European Championships and the Czech men's team will go to the "B" group again this November, for the third time in a row. The qualification phenomenon already had its test before the 2014 Olympics, when two women's teams played "best of five" for the right to play the so-called "Olympic Q Event". The few qualifiers played have a common denominator, namely the dramatic disadvantage of teams with international ambitions. These teams try to play Champions Tour competitions, go to summer camps, go to fitness and physiotherapy regularly and playing two or three qualifying tournaments on home ice is an extreme burden for them for several reasons. The increase in taking holidays, blocking the dates of foreign tournaments where they earn points for the world ranking, playing on ice that does not have the necessary parameters. Most of the foreign ice and stones have different characteristics than what we have in our hall. However, the last Czech qualification was really extreme. Ice that spins in some places on a draw less than two feet is completely unsuitable for competitions that are supposed to generate national representatives for the World Championships. The bizarre decision to play on only two lanes with only one running and no one practicing on the other, even though the team has one hour allocated there to improve performance and ice or stone reading, is incomprehensible. However, given that almost no Czech women's team aspiring to participate in the world's highest quality tournament has a coach, it's not too surprising. Neither the head icemaker nor the national coach, not to mention other officials, are attending the tournament. God knows why. Except for the final two matches, there are no spectators at all, the restaurant is less than 18 degrees and apart from a lousy coffee, one can only have a microwave goulash or pickled ermine and watch a fragment of the track over the shoulder of the timekeeper and his oversized table. At the entrance to the hall we are greeted by a huge wooden crate on which a trash can sits, with lots of trash and dust behind it all. Rusty light bulbs in the CURLING sign on the lobby, unlit bins in the restroom, and sagging design elements on the restaurant steps, flaking penny gum on the walkway behind the track. Overall, a really sad sight for a top tournament hosted by CSC in its own sports facility.
But back to qualification. If we want Czech curling to return to the positions it held in the past (regular participation of teams in the A group of the adult European Championships, participation in the World Championships, good results of the junior national teams in the form of maintaining the A group of the World Championships - not the second to third ten in the overall ranking, not to mention the medals, etc.), we need to start a real, professional debate of relevant authorities, from which a new, up-to-date view of performance curling will emerge. A minor nudge may be the seminar organised by the Ice Sports Academy on Wednesday 21 February 2018 on the implementation of the five-stone rule in the Free Guard Zone in WCF competitions starting next season and its impact on game procedures. At least someone understands the need to follow trends and prepare as they do in developed curling countries.