1999 Brier
SLAM! Sports
SLAM! Curling
1999 BRIER
ON THE ROCKS
INTERACTIVE
ALSO ON SLAM!
Shymko in the running
The computer that controls the brine flow at Edmonton's Skyreach Centre conked out.
Workers came out at 1:30 a.m. once the alarm sounded and the problem was finally found at 5 a.m.
By that time, the temperature of the ice had risen four degrees celsius.
That delayed the opening draw by 50 minutes. Afterwards, the curlers praised the work of the ice-making crew, who feverishly laboured to get the surface into playable condition.
There were several key matchups when the action finally got underway.
Going into today's action, a huge pack of nine teams were within one game of each other on the leaderboard.
So, the elimination round began.
Saskatchewan's Gerald Shymko kept going with a 7-6 win over Jeff Stoughton of Manitoba; Ontario's Rich Moffatt needed an extra end to take out Scott Patterson of Northern Ontario 6-5 and B.C. Bert Gretzinger knocked Alberta's Ken Hunka down a notch with a 7-5 win.
All three winners moved to a five-win status, meaning there are now seven teams atop the standings with five wins.
"It was a huge win for us and it was a huge loss for Ken,'' said Gretzinger. "He's at four (losses) now and he can't lose another game for sure. Even at that, he's still going to be looking up top. I think three is still the number you have to be if you want to be playing on Friday. We need to win three more to be comfortable and we have to start with that one this afternoon (against Robert Campbell of P.E.I.). Hopefully, we can do that.''
Shymko is also hitting his stride, taking his fourth win in five starts.
"It's still a nice mess,'' said Shymko. "It's great for the media and great for all the fans and it's a great race. She's far from over. We're going to come down to Thursday night.
"We were a bit shaky (Tuesday) night, but it was still a W. Now, we have to play solid. We want to be right in the middle of it. Every game's big right now.''
It's a big improvement from his 0-2 start.
"We're right in the hunt - 0-2 was a bit of a problem but we realized why we were 0-2 was because we weren't playing that well. We just had to make more shot. It had nothing to do with nerves, crowd, anything - we just weren't making enough shots and playing our style of game.''