When the U.S. Olympic Committee announced last summer that the United States would not bid to host the Winter Olympic Games in 2022, Lt. Gov. Brian Krolicki vowed to continue to try to attract world-class winter sports events to the state.
Today, four groups made a joint announcement that some of the world’s best curlers will be competing in Las Vegas in 2014, just prior to the Winter Olympic Games in Sochi, Russia.
The Canadian Curling Association, the U.S. Curling Association, the World Curling Federation and the Reno Tahoe Winter Games Coalition announced that the 2014 World Financial Group Continental Cup would be played Jan. 16-19, 2014, at the 9,500-seat Orleans Arena.
It will be the first time the competition is staged outside Canada. Event tickets are expected to go on sale in early 2013.
“The Reno Tahoe Winter Games Coalition has a long-established commitment to bringing elite sporting events to Nevada,” said Krolicki, who serves as chairman of the coalition.
“We are honored to partner with the World Curling Federation, the Canadian Curling Association and USA Curling to bring the World Financial Group Continental Cup of Curling to the United States for the first time,” he said in a release issued today.
Krolicki, who chairs the Nevada Tourism Commission as lieutenant governor, gave frequent updates on the state’s efforts to team with California to bring the Winter Olympics to Lake Tahoe in 2022.
In July, the coalition learned that the U.S. Olympic Committee made a decision not to bid for the 2022 Games, which experts perceived as focusing its full attention on securing the 2024 Summer Olympics in the United States.
While groups in Northern Nevada had worked more than seven years to bring the Olympics to Lake Tahoe, there were no assurances that it would even win the U.S. nomination. Other proposals were made for those games by Denver, Salt Lake City and Bozeman, Mont.
The Olympic Committee was bitterly disappointed that it lost the bid to bring the 2016 Summer Games to Chicago. Those games were awarded to Rio de Janeiro.
The International Olympic Committee has whittled down the 2020 site to Tokyo; Madrid, Spain; or Istanbul, Turkey. Las Vegas reportedly submitted an unauthorized bid to host in 2020, but the International Olympic Committee rejected it.
When the Lake Tahoe Winter Olympics bid proposal was in play, there were discussions about having the curling competition in Las Vegas. While the Olympics won’t be coming to Nevada, winter sports enthusiasts concur that hosting the Continental Cup is a major coup for the state because thousands of people will be traveling to Las Vegas for the event.
“Las Vegas is one of the iconic destinations in the world,” World Curling Federation President Kate Caithness said in a release. “The World Curling Federation and its partners, the World Financial Group, the Canadian Curling Association and the U.S. Curling Association, are thrilled to be able to showcase the sport of curling and its top international players in such a high-profile location just ahead of the 2014 Olympic and Paralympic Winter Games.”
“The World Financial Group Continental Cup continues to build momentum and demonstrate its special place in the sport of curling,” added Greg Stremlaw, CEO of the Canadian Curling Association. “We felt that this would be a great profile for the sport with some of the world’s greatest curling athletes coming to Vegas only weeks before the 2014 Olympic Winter Games.”
The event will be televised in Canada on English and French networks.
Most international visitors to Las Vegas come from Canada. Three Canadian airlines average 17 daily flights from nine Canadian cities, and more than 1 million people have flown between Las Vegas and Canada in the first nine months of 2012.
“We are excited to showcase the World Financial Group Continental Cup in Las Vegas,” said Las Vegas Convention and Visitors Authority President and CEO Rossi Ralenkotter. “With our world-class resorts, entertainment, shopping, dining and nightlife, Las Vegas offers a one-of-a-kind experience for the teams and the fans.”
Curling, a sport that has its roots in 1500s Scotland, is played by teams that slide a thick stone disc weighing about 40 pounds more than 100 feet on a narrow ice sheet to a 15-foot circular target. Teams can alter the course of the sliding stone by sweeping the ice with special brooms. The game is played and scored like shuffleboard.
A curling club is active in Las Vegas and is working to establish a league here.
The WFG Continental Cup is unusual in that it pits the world’s best players against each other by region, like golf’s Ryder Cup. The North American team will have two teams from the United States and four from Canada competing against the World team, which will have six teams from the rest of the world.
Over four days, the teams will compete in a variety of curling disciplines — team games, mixed doubles, singles, skins and mixed skins, with each segment worth a specified number of points. Each side also will have a captain and a coach.
North America and the World are deadlocked at four wins apiece since the inaugural Cup in 2002 in Regina, Saskatchewan. The tie will be broken in January, when the 2013 Continental Cup takes place in Penticton, British Columbia.