Canada’s curlers get some Olympic recon from Sochi fact finding mission

Curling fans get another taste of international competition beginning this weekend with the World Women's Championship getting underway in Riga, Latvia. Many of the teams in action there will very likely be at next year's Olympics, too, and while it's not certain whether Canada's representative at the worlds (skipped by Rachel Homan) will be there, one thing is certain: Whoever sports the maple leaf on their back in Sochi will get plenty of support from a behind-the-scenes team that is already hard at work.

"Any potential problems or challenges that may arise, we hope to have an answer for them," said Olympic Curling Team Leader Paul Webster, after getting back from a reconnaissance mission in Russia, earlier this week. The "Olympic familiarization trip" is similar to ones being taken by other Canadian Olympic team leaders in advance of the games.

Webster, a national team coach with the Canadian Curling Association's high performance training centre in Calgary, assumes the role of Olympic team leader for the first time, after apprenticing with outgoing head Gerry Peckham at both the 2006 and 2010 games. "I can’t say enough for the leadership he’s shown us," Webster said of Peckham.

The brand new "Ice Cube" curling centre got its tires kicked by the best junior curlers on the planet at the World Junior Championships last week. That event offered the opportunity for a first hand look at the facility in full swing.

Along with a crew that included men's coach Rick Lang, women's coach Elaine Dagg-Jackson, and Jock Tyre, who is charged with looking after the athletes' families, Webster continued the fact-finding quest that will go a long way towards ensuring Canada's curlers can concentrate on just the game when they hit the ice in 2014.

Five days spent in the Olympic town of Adler were sandwiched between two thirty-hour trips to and from Russia.

"We wanted to get a sense of where the friends and family are staying, said Webster, about the attention to detail necessary to make sure curling athletes and their families are well taken care of next February. "We wanted to get a sense of the options in accommodations for our athletes when they’re over there."

Ensuring Canada's Olympic curling teams feel comfortable is essential in contributing to their success. Attending to every possible detail that might arise for them and their families takes hours and hours of preparation.

And information. Reams of it.

Along with getting to know the new curling facility in Adler - "The ice and rocks are great," said Webster - the crew documented every bit of infrastructure detail they could while on the trip. They stayed in the hotel designated for friends and families, took notes on transportation, spied the nearest pharmacies and much, much more.

"Where do we get groceries, where do we get food if we want to go outside the village for a restaurant?" Webster asked. "In terms of that, every time we went out for a meal we tried to find whatever hole-in-the-wall or whatever sign that said ‘restaurant' and we jumped in it. We grabbed a meal and took pictures of the menus, took pictures of the signs, so..."

So, every tiny little detail that an athlete or guest might have will hopefully be found in the resource material the team is compiling. It's no small consideration as there might very well be some culture shock for rookie visitors to Russia otherwise. “It’s definitely not a North American experience," said Webster.

“In that respect, we tried to do a fair bit of audio-visual stuff so we can show them what the curling venue looks like inside, what the walk (to and from the athletes village) would look like, what the downtown of Adler looks like and so on, just so they get the sense. So we’re not just trying to discover and experiment when we get to the Sochi Olympics. A lot of those key decisions would already be known."

Although we are hit - seemingly every day - with reports about the 'woeful' state of venue and infrastructure readiness for the 2014 Olympics, Webster says that, if it's true, the same can't be said about the curling venue. Seems the designers took care of plenty of details and organizers enlisted well-known ice maker Hans Wutrich to give them specifications for the ice plant. Wutrich and his staff will oversee the ice at the Sochi Games.

"It looks great," said Webster. "It’s a dedicated curling facility. Everyone’s got their own dressing rooms, there’s an athletes' lounge and workout room, dedicated areas for the media and so on and it’s just designed for curling at the Olympics."

The rating?

“Nine and a half out of ten. The extra half a point? After what I just described to you, I’m not sure why I didn’t give it yet," he chuckled.

While the curling situation is at pretty much the completed stage, much of the rest of Adler Olympic construction carries on at a frenetic pace, with the games just ten and a half months away.

“It seemed like every dump truck in Russia was in Adler," said Webster. "It was amazing going into the curling venue. We were usually sandwiched in between twenty dump trucks in the front and twenty behind us. And they’re going 24/7 right now. They really don’t have a choice.”

Although a late summer trip back to Adler might be in the cards, the next time Webster and his team are likely to be in Russia, will be just a few days ahead of the athletes' arrivals next February.

At that point, he'll do his best to guarantee that the only things Canada's curlers will have to worry about are hitting the broom and throwing the right weight.