#2
Date sent: Tue, 29 Jan 2002 20:47:33 -0500
From: Jeff Timson [Media Director, St. Clair Group]
Subject: 2002 Canadian Seniors start Saturday
2002 CANADIAN SENIORS START SATURDAY IN ST. THOMAS
January 29, 2002...The Canadian Senior Men's and Women's Curling
Championships, the third event in the Season of Champions, get
underway Saturday at the St. Thomas Curling Club in St. Thomas,
Ontario.
Twelve men's and 12 women's teams, representing the 10 provinces plus
entries from Northern Ontario and Yukon/Northwest Territories, will
compete. Following the round robin, the first place teams advance to
their respective finals on Sunday, February 10. The second and third
place teams meet in semi-finals, the men's on Saturday afternoon, the
women's on Friday evening, unless a tiebreaker is required, in which
case it will also be played Saturday afternoon. TSN will televise
both the women's (at 1:00 pm ET, tape-delayed) and men's (at 5:00 pm
ET, live) finals on February 10.
This will be the eighth time that the Senior men's championship has
been staged in Ontario, the last in Sault Ste. Marie in 1998, since
the competition began in 1965 in Port Arthur. Manitoba and Ontario
have each won a leading nine titles. Last year in Calgary,
Manitoba's Gary Ross upset Alberta's Tom Reed in the final.
The Senior women's event, which began in Ottawa in 1973, has been
hosted by Ontario on five previous occasions. British Columbia and
Ontario share the lead with six women's victories apiece. The men's
and women's championships were conducted separately until 1985 in
Yorkton, Saskatchewan. At the 2001 Canadian Seniors in Calgary,
Ontario's Anne Dunn came from a third place tiebreaker to defeat
Manitoba's Linda Van Daele in the final.
This year's women's field includes defending champion Anne Dunn of
Cambridge and Quebec's Agnès Charette, a three-time senior women's
champion, who along with her Buckingham Curling Club teammates Martha
Don, Lois Baines and Mary Anne Robertson captured Canadian titles in
1997 (Thornhill), 1999 (Saskatoon) and 2000 (Portage la Prairie).
Also competing are Saskatchewan's Nancy Kerr, the 1980 Canadian and
world champion who finished second at the 2000 Canadian Seniors and
Maymar Gemmell, now of Northern Ontario, a two-time Canadian Seniors
champion (1990, 1993), who also skipped British Columbia to a
runner-up finish in 1999.
The men's roster includes 1994 Canadian senior men's champion skip
David Sullivan of New Brunswick, Saskatchewan's Eugene Hritzuk,
runner-up at the 1988 Labatt Brier in Chicoutimi, former Brier skips
Bob Fedosa of Ontario, Ted MacFadyen of Prince Edward Island and
Chuck Haines of Yukon/NWT and Northern Ontario's Bill Johnston,
runner-up at the 1996 Canadian Seniors.
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