Competition is expected to be tight as some of the world’s top curlers are in London for the 2020 Continental Cup.
There will be six teams representing Canada — three men’s and three women’s — who will face off against six European teams at the 16th edition of the tournament, which runs Thursday through Sunday.
The tournament’s setup is similar to golf’s Ryder Cup. Team Canada will take on Team Europe in a series of matches, featuring traditional four-player matches and mixed doubles, among others, over the four days of competition.
Chelsea Carey will be competing with her Calgary rink, and she expects the competition to be tough.
“It’s going to be a battle for sure. There’s nothing easy about this tournament: whoever wins, it’s going to be ‘blood and guts’ probably, but that’s how you want it. It should be exciting for us to play and for everyone to watch,” Carey said.
London last hosted the Continental Cup in 2018, when North America squeaked out a narrow victory over Team World.
Carey says this tournament is a tough one to win because there are a lot of unknowns going into it.
“You only play one game with your own team. The rest of the time, you are shuffled around with new players; you’ve never played together before so that takes some getting used to,” she said.
The curler’s father, Dan Carey, won the 1992 Brier. Carey says watching her father’s success in the sport helped her find a similar love for it.
“He won the Brier when I was like seven, and I remember thinking, ‘That is pretty cool. I think that’s something I would like to do,'” she said.
“I remember walking into a curling club when I was little, and he’d be held up for an hour just talking with everybody because they would all stop and talk to him, and I remember thinking, ‘This is crazy, my dad is famous.'”
Rachel Homan, Kevin Koe and Brendan Bottcher are among the other top Canadian curlers competing at the Continental Cup.
Teams from North America have won the Continental Cup 10 times over the past 15 tournaments, but Team World defeated North America 34-26 last year in Las Vegas, ending a six-year run for North America.