The opening ceremonies of the first Winter Youth Olympic Games kicked off in Innsbruck, Austria, on Friday, January 13, and Canada’s curlers were looking forward to finally hitting the ice on Saturday.
Corryn Brown, Emily Gray, Thomas Scoffin and Derek Oryniak take in the view from the top of Innsbruck’s Bergisel Stadium, site of the 2012 First Winter Youth Olympic Games (Photo H. Radford)
Team Canada’s Thomas Scoffin, Corryn Brown, Derek Oryniak and Emily Gray, along with coach Helen Radford, spent a week getting acclimatized to the athletes’ village and preparing for the first day of competition. They’ll compete in the both the Mixed Team event, and a scrambled Mixed Doubles event, in which curlers from different countries are paired in a two-on-two curling format.
With the opening ceremonies behind them – team vice Corryn Brown had the honour of carrying the Canadian flag into Bergisel Stadium – the team’s focus is now on the ice.
Day One of competition began with a postponement: a power outage at the Innsbruck Exhibition Centre Curling Hall forced the rescheduling of the first draw to later in the week.
As a result, Canada’s first game was Saturday afternoon against Austria, who earned a 6-5 victory over the Canadians, cheered on by the home crowd.