Curling: What a difference a year makes

Finns drop to European B Division and trip to Vancouver Olympics gets appreciably harder

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Finland’s curling quartet of Kalle Kiiskinen, Teemu Salo, Jari Rouvinen, and Wille Mäkelä could finish no better than ninth out of the ten teams taking part in this year’s European Championships, in Füssen in Germany.
      The Finns scored just two wins in their nine matches, and the result means automatic relegation to the European B Division, from where it will be difficult to rise once more to the top flight.
     
The poor showing in Germany is a blow to hopes of qualifying for the Vancouver Olympics in 2010, as an Olympic place is determined by points gained at the World Championships of 2007, 2008, and 2009.
      Needless to say, the Finnish team will not be represented at the 2008 Worlds, since they could not finish among the top seven teams in Europe’s A Division.
      Even 8th place would have given them a shot at qualifying for next April’s tournament in North Dakota, provided they were to beat the promoted team from Division B.
     
Füssen has been a grave disappointment after the sport hit the heights and the headlines hereabouts during the Torino Olympics, when the Finns - under talismanic skip Markku Uusipaavalniemi - went all the way to the silver medals and generated a real boom in curling and some of the most unlikely sporting heroes of the year.
      Uusipaavalniemi (known on the ice as M-15) even parlayed his Olympic prominence into a seat in the Finnish Parliament at the elections last March, but on the ice the sport seems to have slipped backwards alarmingly. The Finns came in joint 6th at last year's World Championships.
     
Things are not helped much by apparent discord within the curling fraternity over who exactly should be representing Finland.
      Some of the players wanted to lock down the names of the Vancouver hopefuls already this year, while Uusipaavalniemi, who took no active part in the European Championships, is of the view that the best quartet should be selected.
      This year’s Olympic grant money all went to the team playing in Germany. They will miss out on half of the EUR 30,000 they were to receive, owing to the failure to secure a place at next year’s World Championships.


Previously in HS International Edition:
  There´s Something About Uusis (28.2.2006)

Links:
  Curling European Championships

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