Tuesday, March 21, 2006

Norberg vs. Gushue?
What would that match be worth?
Who would win?

Watching the rink of Anette Norberg from Sweden at the 2006 women's Ford World Curling Championship, I am absolutely blown away by how good they are. After 8 draws, they are tops in curling percentage as a team, and they rank 3rd, 1st, 1st, and 1st, respectively, as individual curlers. Unless Team Canada starts curling as well as they did at The Scott, the only teams that look likely to challenge Sweden are from the U.S. and from China.

Suppose you were a sports promoter. What would a match between Anette Norberg's rink and Brad Gushue's Olympic rink be worth? How many people would be willing to pay to see it? How many would watch it on television? Would it be able to attract sufficient sponsorship to cover all the costs?

And, finally, who do you think would win? I know, I know, the men throw the up-weight better, and I've even written previously that, on average, men are better curlers than women at the top levels; but I'm not convinced Gushue would be able to beat Norberg.

How about a best two out of three match between those two? Or how about a World Championship in which the six best men and six best women teams are invited?

1 Comments:

At 3/21/2006 8:59 p.m., Blogger EclectEcon said...

Ms. Eclectic says:

"I expect Gushue would win. Not only do they have the up weight as well as the draw weight, but they throw somewhere in the 90%s. No matter how good Norberg is, I doubt she and her team are in the 90%’s. I remember watching the last Gushue game in the Olympics. It was damn near perfection, as far as I was concerned. I don’t think Norberg is THAT good."

 

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