Mea Culpa and Skins thoughts

This morning, a bit of a mea culpa and a bit of a clarification. After yesterday’s post, I received an e-mail from Warren Hansen about the CCA’s involvement with the top teams being used for promotion.
He pointed out that the CCA has taken over the marketing of all the big events under its umbrella, not the local organizing committees as I sort of inferred.
As well, Hansen said the CCA has been using the athletes for promotion for a few years now, with this year being the most aggressive with both the Martin and Jones teams being contracted to promote the Timmies, the Scotties and the Trials. Guy Hemmings and Russ Howard are also under contract for the worlds.
Good to hear and glad that Warren cleared things up.
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On to the Skins. I didn’t make it to Rama yesterday as I’m suffering with the flu. So I tuned in on the tube and watched the two games. Seems unfortunate that the conditions – ice and rocks – weren’t up to snuff and that led to a lot of uncharacteristic misses in both games -- how does Ben Hebert hog four shots?. I suppose the ice is understandable when you consider the make-shift arena but it sounds like a bit of an unforced error here -- too much chlorine in the water. And according to The Star's Brian McAndrew, the rocks were not fully tested. Not sure how someone can let that happen for a big televised event, but it's really a brain cramp. However, there many be more to the story in this one.
Anyhoo, as has been the case in past battles-of-the-sexes, Glenn Howard easily handled Jennifer Jones (although as she pointed out, she won more than Kevin Martin). All the hype was washed away in a flash. I don’t think it was so much of a case of men being superior as it was of one team just totally out-curling the other.
Poor Jennifer didn’t get much help in front of her and every end it seemed she was trying shots that had a very high degree of difficulty. I mean, that team really didn’t have it.
I do, however, think there were a few notable strategy lapses by the women and that’s understandable considering the limited Skins experience they have. For instance, in seven, I’m not sure why she didn’t just play it wide open and try to carry things over until the eighth. But hey. . . they’re world champs and I’m a lowly scribe.