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Disabled curling will be in Prague. Niklas Edin is looking forward to the Olympics.

Afternoon's meeting with Kate Caithness confirmed that the WCF's view of disability curling is gradually changing. The Czech Republic has put a lot of pressure on the WCF recently and so a discussion forum on disabled curling will be held in the next few days and a presentation and workshop on the same topic is planned for Fussen in the summer. The Czechs should have the main say, especially Roman Suda and with him someone from the Czech Curling Federation. On the second weekend in May, a tournament will be held in Prague with the possibility of training for the disabled and the result will be the content of the presentation for the summer curling workshop.

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My next interview victim was young Swedish curling player Niklas Edin (23). He has a decent collection of achievements for his age, including gold at the last World Winter Universiade (2009, China). But why are the Swedes not at this year's World Championships? Niklas explains, "Swedish curling took a significant step backwards after Peja (Lindholm) announced the end of his career. The teams sensed an opportunity and started to make changes in the line-ups. This stopped the development for a while and last year was a period of searching for most of them. I believe Swedish curling will be at the Winter Olympics (for qualification the Swedes need the not-so-successful performances of the Finns and Danes, which are the Czech Republic's opponents today). In that case my team will probably participate in the Olympics, but the final nomination is up to the national coach Stefan Hasselborg." Niklas Edin undoubtedly owes his performance to three years of study at the curling school in Harnosand (15 - 20 hours of training per week + matches + conditioning). He has yet to visit Prague. Prague tournaments have so far clashed with the Swedish play offs. So we can look forward to the participation of another top European team in one of the upcoming Prague curling tournaments.

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photo by Niklas Edin