The Edinburgh International is an annual bonspiel, or curling tournament, that takes place in late November at the Murrayfield Curling Club in Edinburgh, Scotland. The tournament is held in a round robin format.
The tournament was started in 1922 as the Worlds Curling Championship, an open competition between Scottish curlers held at the Haymarket Ice Rink. The tournament was renamed the Edinburgh International Curling Championship in 1975 in order for the International Curling Federation to reserve the name "World Curling Championship" for the Air Canada Silver Broom, the men's world curling championship at the time. It became an invitational tournament, inviting the semifinalists of the same year's World Championships, and moved venues to the Murrayfield Curling Rink. A period of decreased interest in the tournament led to the event's relegation from a highly respected international tournament to a domestic circuit tournament. In 2007, the tournament became part of the World Curling Tour and the Curling Champions Tour, the European portion of the World Curling Tour, and was slotted to be held in late November. [1] The event was dropped from the tour after 2016, and currently only consists of a senior men's and senior women's tournament. [2]
Only skip's name is displayed before 1952. Team line-up order: skip, third, second, lead. [3]
Curling is a sport in which players slide stones on a sheet of ice toward a target area which is segmented into four concentric circles. It is related to bowls, boules, and shuffleboard. Two teams, each with four players, take turns sliding heavy, polished granite stones, also called rocks, across the ice curling sheet toward the house, a circular target marked on the ice. Each team has eight stones, with each player throwing two. The purpose is to accumulate the highest score for a game; points are scored for the stones resting closest to the centre of the house at the conclusion of each end, which is completed when both teams have thrown all of their stones once. A game usually consists of eight or ten ends.
Murrayfield Stadium is a Rugby stadium located in the Murrayfield area of Edinburgh, Scotland. It has a seating capacity of 67,144 making it the largest stadium in Scotland and the fifth largest in the United Kingdom.
The World Junior Curling Championships are an annual curling bonspiel featuring the world's best curlers who are 21 years old or younger. The competitions for both men and women occur at the same venue. The men's tournament has occurred since 1975 and the women's since 1988. Since curling became an Olympic sport in 1998, the World Junior Curling Championship of the year preceding the Olympic Games have been held at the site of the curling tournament for the upcoming Games.
David Matthew Murdoch is a retired Scottish curler from Stirling. As the Scotland skip, he and his former team of Ewan MacDonald, Warwick Smith, Euan Byers and Peter Smith are the 2006 and 2009 World Curling Champions. Representing Great Britain, he has been skip at three Winter Olympics, Torino 2006, finishing fourth, Vancouver 2010, finishing fifth and Sochi 2014, where he won an Olympic silver medal. He currently serves as a coach, performance team manager and consultant for British Curling.
The Royal Caledonian Curling Club (RCCC), branded as Scottish Curling is a curling club in Edinburgh, Scotland. It developed the first official rules for the sport, and is the governing body of curling in Scotland. The RCCC was founded on 25 July 1838 in Edinburgh, and granted its royal charter by Queen Victoria in 1843, after she had witnessed a demonstration of the sport played on the polished ballroom floor of Scone Palace the previous year.
The Bemidji Curling Club is a curling club located in the city of Bemidji, Minnesota. It is notable for its long line of champions in many competitions, including men's and women's rinks which represented the United States in the 2005 World Curling Championship and the 2006 Winter Olympics in Turin, Italy. Pete Fenson skipped the men's rink, which won the Olympic bronze medal, the first-ever medal in curling for the U.S. Cassandra Johnson skipped the women's rink, which lost to Sweden in the final match of the 2005 World Women's Curling Championship.
Sport plays a central role in Scottish culture. The temperate, oceanic climate has played a key part in the evolution of sport in Scotland, with all-weather sports like association football and golf dominating the national sporting consciousness. However, many other sports are played in the country, with popularity varying between sports and between regions.
Johan Niklas Edin is a Swedish curler. He currently resides in Karlstad, which has been his curling home base since 2008. He holds several sport distinctions. He is the first and the only skip in World Curling Federation (WCF) history to win three Olympic medals – gold (2022), silver (2018), and bronze (2014) – and to skip men's curling teams to six World Men's Curling Championship medals. He is also a seven-time European Curling Championship titleholder and won three silver medals in those championships. He is currently tied with Oskar Eriksson in first place on the WCF-recognized list of championship medals, with thirty-eight in total. He reached the playoffs in thirty-seven Grand Slam of Curling events and won the Pinty's Cup with his current teammates, Oskar Eriksson, Rasmus Wranå, and Christopher Sundgren. With the same lineup in 2022, Edin and his teammates also became the first and only men's curling team to win a fourth consecutive World Men's Curling Championship. Edin has played exclusively in the position of skip since 2007. The team bearing his name has been ranked on the World Curling Tour as high as No. 1, including for most of the 2017–18 season. As of the end of the 2021–22 Curling Season, Team Edin was ranked in the top three teams in the world.
Kevin Koe is a Canadian curler. Koe is a two-time World champion and four-time Canadian champion. He was the skip of the Canadian men's team at the 2018 Winter Olympics in PyeongChang.
Anna Ellinor Hasselborg is a Swedish curler who is the 2018 Olympic Champion in women's curling and a former World Junior Champion skip. In November 2019, she became the first curler in history to reign as the simultaneous holder of the European Curling Championship gold medal, the World Mixed Doubles Curling Championship gold medal, and the Olympic gold medal.
Thomas Brewster Jr. is a Scottish curler from Aberdeen, Scotland. He is currently the coach of the Ross Paterson men's team.
Laura Walker is a Canadian curler from Edmonton, Alberta. She is a two-time Canadian University champion, a national junior champion, world junior silver medallist and world mixed doubles bronze medallist. Walker is originally from Scarborough, Ontario.
Kerry Barr is a Scottish curler from Murrayfield. She is a former World Junior champion.
Kyle Smith is a retired Scottish curler from Guildford, Perthshire. During his career, he skipped the British men's curling team at the 2018 Winter Olympics in PyeongChang, South Korea, placing fifth. He also skipped Scotland at two European Curling Championships, two Winter Universiade and three World Junior Curling Championships, winning the event in 2013.
Darren Moulding is a Canadian curler from Lacombe, Alberta and curls out of the Saville Sports Centre and the Lacombe Curling Club. He is a former Canadian Junior Silver Medallist, a Canadian Mixed Champion, and represented Alberta in the 2017, 2018, 2020 and Team Wild Card in the 2019 Brier Canadian men's championship.
Bruce Mouat is a Scottish curler. He is an Olympic silver medallist, having skipped Great Britain to a second place finish in the men's team event at the 2022 Winter Olympics.
Cameron "Cammy" Smith is a retired Scottish curler from Perthshire. He was the longtime lead for his brother Kyle. During his career, he competed for Great Britain at the 2018 Winter Olympics in PyeongChang, South Korea, placing fifth. He also played for Scotland at two European Curling Championships, two World Junior Curling Championships and the 2013 Winter Universiade, winning the 2013 World Junior Curling Championships.
Kyle Waddell is a Scottish curler from Hamilton, Scotland. He currently skips his own team. In 2018, he competed for Great Britain at the 2018 Winter Olympics in PyeongChang, South Korea, placing fifth. He has represented Scotland at three European Curling Championships and three World Junior Curling Championships, winning gold at the 2013 World Junior Curling Championships as a member of the Kyle Smith rink.
Bobby Lammie is a Scottish curler from Stranraer. He currently plays second on Team Bruce Mouat.
Ross Paterson is a retired Scottish curler from Glasgow. During his career, he represented Scotland at four World Men's Curling Championships and four European Curling Championships, winning a bronze medal at both the 2018 World Men's Curling Championship and the 2019 European Curling Championships. He also won silver at the 2007 Winter Universiade and bronze at the 2005 World Junior Curling Championships in his junior career. In 2018, he skipped his team to victory at the 2018 National Grand Slam of Curling event. He is a two-time champion at the Scottish Men's Curling Championship, winning the title in both 2016 and 2022.