World Cup 2018.
The second round of the Curling World Cup fell prey to the Japanese when the young, 19-year-old Korean skip resisted the pressure of the moment and her 13.26 on the last draw to win ended up a foot clear of the two Japanese stones. In the men's event, John Schuster's American team outplayed the Swedish curling team led by skip Niclas Edin. In the men's, there was an interesting ending to the seventh end, with the Swedes preferring to clear on the American one over the option of playing one to level. So they went into the eighth end two down. But it didn't pay off. All these picks, like doubling the corner guard, are brought about by the rule change about the number of stones in the free guard zone, and I still feel that we haven't researched it well enough, and that we don't take it seriously enough. The ice in Omaha had its own evolution, from swinging around two feet to a reasonable four late in the contest and especially with the draw weight at 14.30 for the entire game. A significant blemish from my perspective is the lack of electronic handrails. It looks to me as if they didn't check the long jump overstep at the Diamond League or if they stopped waving offside in the UEFA Champions League. I remember well that the World Cup is designed by the World Curling Federation to be a showcase of curling at its best, but I'm afraid it hasn't quite gone to plan yet. Minimum spectators, probably even less than at the European Championships in Tallinn in Group B, no TV coverage on Eurosport. It really seems to be a series of preparatory tournaments mainly for Asian teams. The conflict of term with the Canada Cup sent Team Gunnlaugson to Omaha, whose skip Jason is probably more famous for his affair with the Russian Curling Federation (scheduled to play for Team Russia at the 2014 Winter Olympics) than for his achievements in Canadian competitions. Let's hope that this is just the null edition of the World Cup, and that the real first one will have a different flavour.