 The young Scottish rink skipped by James Craik (photo: Anil Mungal, GSOC) opens their season this weekend in Baden. The 2023/24 campaign saw James Craik, Mark Watt, Angus Bryce, and Blair Haswell establish themselves globally, finishing the season ranked #12 on the World Curling Team Rankings. Reaching the finals of the last two Scottish Championships, the team have drawn inspiration from the performances of fellow Scottish athletes they aspire to follow to Olympian status this summer. "It was nice to get some time off, relax and catch up with family and friends." "The boys and I have been working hard through the summer on our other jobs, but we are really looking forward to now dialling in and fully focusing in on the season and making a real push for the last stages of the Olympic cycle," said their skip Craik. "We've loved watching the Olympics and Team GB and all the athletes representing us out at Paris 2024. "It's been really inspiring seeing them perform and hearing their interviews demonstrating how much of an amazing experience that is, which has been a huge motivator for us in striving towards getting Team GB on our backs at some point in our careers." That has fuelled their belief that they can challenge the teams that have beaten them in those two Scottish Championship finals. "We've tried to sit down, look at last year and focus on what we can try to do differently, what we can improve on and what we can continue with in order to keep progressing and pushing our way up in the world rankings," Craik continued. "This is a crucial season for us after last year, which was a bit of a breakthrough. "Qualifying for all the Grand Slams in Canada has been a real motivator, and we've established ourselves at that level, but we want to make sure we continue that and show we're here to stay and can be one of the world's best in a few years time." They feel the short trip to Switzerland is the ideal way to start the new campaign. "Baden's a great event for us," said Craik. "We absolutely love it because it's such a beautiful ice rink, and we enjoy going across and making an early start to the season, which lets us chase some ranking points nice and early. "Our first few weeks of training on ice have been really good and productive, and we're all super-excited to get going against a world-class field in Switzerland, not too far from home, and we know we really need to try to make a statement. "We're kind of lucky and unlucky to have such a strong field at home and it's hard to push ourselves to be the best, but that's what we want and that's contributed to the speed of our development as a young team on tour." |
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Saskatchewan's Rylan Kleiter (Photo: Anil Mungal/GSOC) defeated Italy's Joel Retornaz 7-6 to grab their first win on the 2025-2026 season in Trentino, Italy.
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