Road to the Roar last shot at Olympic trials

Some of Canada's best curlers are in Summerside, P.E.I., for one final run at the Olympic curling trials.

The Home Hardware Road to the Roar beganMonday afternoon at Credit Union Place with draws at 4 p.m. and 8 p.m.

There will be four draws a day from Tuesday to Friday with the playoffs scheduled for the weekend.

The final four slots in the Olympic trials will go to the top two female and males teams.

It's a talented field including two Olympic medalists: John Morris and Shannon Kleibrink. Four-time world champion Glenn Howard also has a team, as does back-to-back world junior champion Kelsey Roque.

Charlottetown'sRobbieDoherty will be an alternate on the GregBalsdonteam from Kingston, Ont.

Seven Mile Bay's own Adam Casey will be skipping the team he played with out of Regina last year.

Casey said he loves any chance to get to play in front of his home crowd.

"I know we're from Saskatchewan on paper," he said,"but I think we'll have the P.E.I. crowd behind us."

Casey's first game is scheduled for Tuesday afternoon.

'There's certainly a buzz'

Two years of planning went into bringing The Road to the Roar event to the City ofSummerside withmore than 120 volunteers helping out with this week's activities.

"When you drop 20plus teams of some fairly big name curlers intoour community, you can feel it," saidJPDesrosiers, Community Service Director for the City ofSummerside.

"You can see the event vehicles driving around town, you can see the satellite trucks rolling into the city, there's certainly abuzz."

Al Cameron, Director of Communications and Media with Curl Canada, said every competitor has spent the last two years working to qualify for this process.

"Right now all 14 men's and 14 women's teams are right on the doorstep and trust me, there's vision of gold medals dancing in their heads," he said.

The teams that will be advancing to Ottawa next month will be announced on Sunday.

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