European qualification for the Junior World Championships has started.
From 3 January this year, a qualification tournament will be played for six days in Prague's Na Roztyle curling hall, from which only the winners of the individual categories will advance to the World Junior Curling Championships (March 2010, Flims, Switzerland). The Czech women are absent in Prague because they secured their direct participation in the 2010 World Junior Championships by finishing seventh at last year's World Junior Championships in Vancouver. The men's team consists of Lukáš Klíma (skip), Petr Král (fourth stones), Marek Černovský, Samuel Mokris and Jiří Deyl (coach Karel Kubeška, assistant Kryštof Chaloupek). The opening of the championship went without any problems, if we forget the crashed server for a few hours and the microphone that didn't work for a moment during the team meeting. The first matches were played on Sunday evening and the Czechs played against last year's World Championship participant, Germany (skip Kempf). In a rather defensive and cautious match, the Czech team won 5 : 1, taking advantage of the opponent's mistakes in some moments. Tonight we will face Spain, which yesterday defeated the Netherlands with a surprisingly crushing finish. In our group of seven there are also the Austrians, the Finns and the Poles. A pleasant surprise was the large turnout of Czech fans at the opening match. Thank you for your support on behalf of all the players.
rnphoto: Klíma and front end (Thun 2009)