Lethbridge Curling Club hoping to host 2025 Olympic trials

Lethbridge Curling Club is working to bring another major sporting event to the city. Representatives made a presentation to the city’s Economic Policy Committee last week seeking a letter of support and funding for a bid to host the 2025 Olympic Curling Trials.

“Curling Trials, also known as the Roar of the Rings, has been held every four years since 1997, crowning a men’s and women’s national representative to wear the maple leaf at the following year’s Olympics,” said Mike Mulroy, co-chairman The club’s committee working on the bid adds that Saskatoon was the final host. “Lethbridge would be the only town on this list to not only have hosted the Trials but every other curling championship in the sport of curling. We understand we’re quick on the Brier’s heels here, but the calendar is really what drives this event and the opportunity to host it.”

The club asked for $900,000 to be spent after the event only if the offer is successful. The money would come from a city grant set up to help host events — currently there’s $1.77 million in the budget for the city’s four-year fiscal cycle, according to City Treasurer Darrel Mathews. The event, if approved, would consume about 90 percent of the grant budget.

“I’m looking at this spending of pretty much every penny that we’ve budgeted for other major events over the next four years and that worries me a bit, I like to be a lot more strategic and I’m not the first to think about the post goes out and winners take all,” Councilman Jeff Carlson said.

Carlson asked how the event would compare to the Brier Curling Championships, which the city was hosting in 2022.

“It’s bigger for a lot of people in the curling community – it’s the only Curling Canada event of its kind where both men’s and women’s teams compete in the same venue, so it’s a combination you don’t see anywhere else. said Kirk Mearns of Lethbridge Curling Club. “It is a very special event. It dictates who our Olympic qualifiers will be, it dictates who goes to France and curls for Canada.”

The club is supported in promotion by Curling Alberta, Enmax Centre, Servus Sport Centre, Tourism Lethbridge and Lethbridge Sport Council. If successful, the Enmax and the Servus Sport Center will be venues.

The committee unanimously approved the motion to recommend that City Council allocate the money and produce the letter of support. Mearns said the application deadline is June 30 and the host city will be decided by November this year.