Fifty spectators.
About fifty warmly clad spectators watched the three five-game matches played at Curl Aberdeen today as part of the 2023 European Curling Championships. The morning started with the women, including the Czechs, challenging the Italians. The Italian women's team were in a similar situation to us a few years ago, i.e. they were bouncing between Group A and B, having better and worse years and struggling with training facilities. Already the 2006 Olympics (Torino, Pinerolo) moved Italian curling towards more interest. But the current Olympic program, tied to the 2026 Winter Olympics, has already made Italian curling teams pure professionals travelling to the best tournaments in the world. Certainly, the gold medal won by the Italian pair Constantini and Mosaner in the mixed doubles category at the last Olympics contributed significantly to the prestige of curling among other winter sports in Italy, but even so, overall Italian curling is experiencing an unstoppable growth in quality. The match had a cautious start and the first turning point came in the fifth end when, after several inaccuracies, three better placed Italian stones remained in the rings. We countered with only a one, but then cashed in a five while trying to create a situation aimed at equalizing. The Czech men lost to the Finns in the next round and the day ended with a duel between the Czechs and the Turks. A confident start, backed by gaining the advantage of the last stone for the first end, failed to translate into more points, and the teams tugged at each other's one. The Turks gained two points in the sixth end, but then notably gained another two points in the seventh end, and that was troublesome. We squeaked out hope with a deuce in the eighth end and after a deuce from our opponent we went two down with the advantage going into the end. We needed to play a stone to four feet for the extra end, but that part of the lane was no longer played and that proved decisive. With a speed of 14.1 (the time it takes a stone to travel the distance between the starting and finishing hog-line), the stone didn't even make it to the circle. A few dozen minutes ago, it would have safely made it to the center of the circle. The win belongs to Turkey.
rnphoto: Turkish skip Yildiz