Prague Ladies International.
The second edition of the Prague curling tournament of the World Curling Tour category 200 series was held with the participation of thirteen teams, almost half of which were junior teams, either two domestic or one each from Italy, Canada or Germany. The tournament schedule of two unevenly sized groups did not allow the teams to play all of their opponents within the group, and so, for example, the current Czech women's national team missed the late tournament winners, the German team Messenzehl. Two teams emerged from the group to advance directly to the semi-finals and two pairs for the qualifying matches, which were played on Sunday morning. One semi-final pitted Canada and Italy against each other and the other brought a rematch of last year's final, a derby between the two current top Czech teams. Like last year, the women of Savona H (skip Nemcokova) made it through to the final, but were unable to repeat last year's triumph, succumbing to their German opponents after seven ends. The ice, which showed some tricky spots and surprising trajectories, required excellent and extremely attentive reading by the team as well as superior adaptability of the individual players. Not even one of the so-called "A" teams, i.e. the participants of the European Championships in November - Group A, made it to the superstructure. Neither the Hungarians, Lithuanians nor the Turks were among the six qualifiers. The Czech national team (Zelingrová) finished fourth and the junior national champions, the Farková team, finished fifth to sixth.
rnphoto: Sara Messenzehl