BLAINE, Minn. – (May 18, 2017) – The next Olympic Games are only 9 months away. Athletes all around the world are preparing to compete. A pair of athletes that will represent Team USA will be determined at a competition to be held right here in Blaine.
Fogerty Arena and the Four Seasons Curling Club have been selected as the host site for the 2018 U.S. Olympic Team Trials for Mixed Doubles Curling. The competition will take place over five days in December and will include 13 hours of live coverage by NBC Sports.
John Benton, the Director of Curling Operations for the Four Seasons Curling Club, explained how the Twin Cities got the bid this year.
“There’s a bit of a bid process with USA curling and their desire to hold the event in an arena venue was really kind of the driving force. And they wanted to be in a place that was centrally located that would obviously have a draw, and so being the Olympic training site already, being in the Twin Cities, close to a metropolitan airport I think was a big deal,” Benton said.
The curling Olympic Trials were previously held in Minnesota back in 1998 when that event came to Duluth. Blaine has also previously hosted an Olympic Trial event when the 1992 cycling trials were held at the Velodrome at the National Sports Center.
What’s new is mixed doubles curling is will be making its Olympic debut. Benton pointed out that there are a few differences from traditional team curling.
“So the difference between mixed doubles and the regular curling game that people are used to is that by name, there’s only two people: there’s a man and a woman and then the format of the game is slightly different,” Benton explained.
“There are some placed rocks before play even starts and then each team only throws five stones so somebody has to throw the first and the last stone then the middle three are thrown by the other player, so there’s actually a lot of times when the shooter will get up and sweep their own rock. It’s a much faster game, so it generally takes about an hour and a half, an hour and forty five minutes. So it’s kind of built for TV, actually.
The Four Seasons Curling Club has hosted large events in the past, including the televised Curling Night in America, but this will be its biggest event to date.
” I think we’re going with ‘curling town USA’ as kind of the moniker for the week, so trying to get the whole north metro involved” Benton said.
If the event is a success, Benton believes there will be more high caliber events in the future.
“That’s the hope, we’re putting 110 percent effort into this particular trials and we want to show them that we know how to do it, and the north metro here is really welcoming to these types of events and want to put us on the map,” Benton said.
The winning team will go on to represent Team USA at the 2018 Winter Olympic Games in PyeongChang, South Korea.
Ticketing packages for the trials will be announced by USA Curling at a later date.
