1999 Brier
SLAM! Sports
SLAM! Curling
1999 BRIER
ON THE ROCKS
INTERACTIVE
ALSO ON SLAM!
Hectic Hemmings not planning to slow down
EDMONTON (CP) -- Quebec skip Guy Hemmings has kept up a hectic pace at the Brier both on and off the ice and he's not planning to slow it down on either front heading into the playoffs.Hemmings, 36, of St-Aime, Que., the runner-up in Winnipeg last year, is once again a popular figure at the championship.
His dishevelled appearance, constant five o'clock shadow and willingness to chat it up with the crowd have made him an audience favourite.
"I went to the Brierpatch until midnight last night. We were there with our sponsor Canadian Club, it was good to show our sponsor that people appreciate our curling," said Hemmings, a greenhouse operator.
"We play the game for fun, if we're going to sit in our room and wait until the next game and not meet anybody, I don't think it's worth it because it's not a job.
"The main thing we are doing is for the fun of the game and meeting people who like it."
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NETWORK SWITCH: A continuing strike by CBC technicians has bumped both the Brier semifinals and final from the people's network to TSN.
The move to TSN, which usually covers just the round-robin and page playoff games, forced minor schedule changes.
Saturday's semifinals will be broadcast at 4 p.m. EST, and the Brier final moves to 2 p.m. EST on Sunday.
Moving the Brier to a speciality cable channel like TSN will hurt the potential television audience.
TSN reaches into about 80 per cent of Canadian homes, while CBC is available to anyone with a television -- cable or not.
Brier finals have typically drawn a television audience of between 1.1 million and 1.5 million viewers on CBC -- considered on of the network's best properties.
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HOARSE HOWLERS: The big yellers at the 1999 Labatt Brier have become the big croakers as low humidity and too much screaming has some skips popping cough drops and searching for unusual cures.
Russ Howard had most of his voice restored by a penetrating magnetic massage gizmo called a Magboy. He was back to yelling rocks into the rings in a loss to Quebec on Thursday morning.
It has caused some communication problems for skips like Nova Scotia's Paul Flemming, who has been croaking all week.
He's turned to lozenges and has a pocket full of them wherever he goes.
"We find it frustrating. I think we might have missed some shots because nobody knows what's going on," sad Flemming.