The Continental Cup - Saturday afternoon

This event still strikes me as rather artificial, but this afternoon's draw was entertaining to watch.

The idea of North America versus the rest of the world in curling does make some sense, and the shape of the competition under this model is changing in interesting ways - we now have major Chinese participation, the clear result of becoming an Olympic sport.

At least a couple of the matches went to shootouts, i.e. draw to the button competitions. And one of those had to go to two rounds, simply because of the great precision of the skips. The skills involved continue to amaze me.

And who in the world is Carmen Schaefer? What a shotmaker, playing this afternoon on the mixed team as third for Team World. I would also concur with this writer's interest in Ms. Schaefer.