Glynhill Ladies International Curling Championship
Thursday 18th – Sunday 21st January 2018, Braehead Curling Rink, Glasgow
The 11th annual Glynhill Ladies International Curling Championship gets underway at Braehead Curling Rink, Glasgow at 5.30pm next Thursday. In this busy build-up period to the start of the February Winter Olympics in Korea, four of the teams bound for PyeongChang will be taking part in the 20-team event which is part of the World Curling Tour programme and counts towards the World Order of Merit.
Leading the way will be Team GB representatives Eve Muirhead, Anna Sloan, Vicki Adams and Lauren Gray who will be defending the Glynhill title they won last year in beating 2015 World Champion Alina Paetz from Switzerland. Eve and her rink took Bronze at the 2014 Sochi Olympics and the 2017 Worlds, captured the European Champions title in St Galen, Switzerland in November and will be looking to add another Glynhill title as a launch pad for their Olympic quest next month.
Main contenders for the 2018 title will be three other Olympic contending nations who are competing at Braehead. 2009 World Champion Bingyu Wang from China, champion rink in the 2014 Glynhill, returns with her experienced rink on the back of taking all before her in the Olympic Qualifying event in Pilsen, Czech Republic last month. Also qualifying from Pilsen and competing at Braehead in their Olympic build-up is the established Danish rink headed up by the evergreen Dupont sisters. Completing the Olympic quartet will be Viktoria Moiseeva and her Russian rink who won the right to the plane trip to Korea by beating the rival rink of three-time World bronze medallist and current World Silver medallist Anna Sidorova and her rink in a best of seven match playdown. The Moiseeva rink are worthy representatives and challengers, coming from a relatively unknown track record to surprise many rinks by taking the Gold medal in the 2016 European Championships held at the Braehead Arena.
Apart from a strong challenge expected from the Sidorova rink, another front runner will be the experienced Swiss World Champions of 2014 and 2016, Binia Feltscher and her rink from Flims. The international popularity of the competition continues with champion rinks from Germany, Sweden, Italy and Poland and a young Korean rink making a first visit to Scotland.
The remainder of the twenty teams feature a mixture of the best of the current
Senior and Junior Scottish Performance teams looking to take on some of the world’s leading rinks on home soil.
The competition plays in a round robin format over the first three days with the knockout stage on the Sunday culminating in the Championship final at 2.30pm on the Sunday (21st).
Admission is free throughout the event which will be one of the last competitive outings for the Olympic bound teams.
For further information:
Alan Sloan, Chairman GLI 2018
Tel: 0141 577 6940 (H)
07710 786719 (M)
12th January 2018