Team Craik are returning this week to the scene of last season’s major breakthrough as they head to Switzerland to defend their title at the Grand Prix Bern Inter Curling Challenge.
James Craik, Mark Watt, Angus Bruce and Blair Haswell head into the event as one of three Scottish teams in the line-up, along with Teams Waddell and Bryce, looking to repeat that performance which helped catapult them into the sport’s elite.
“That was our first ever men’s title win, so it is quite cool to go out there as defending champions and we have a bit of a target on our backs I guess, but we are starting to feel that is the case in a lot of events just now,” said skip Craik. 
“We want to put in a good performance and hopefully come away with a good result at the end of the weekend.
“Bern is definitely one of our red circle events and last year after we won that it was a bit of a turning point for us and we went out to our first Slam straight afterwards and ended up qualifying (for the knockout stages).
“From then on we started knocking in some really solid performances as a team and so we are really hoping that happens again this year.”
Now ranked 13th in the world, they have become regulars at the Grand Slam events in Canada’s big money Grand Slam circuit and are hoping a trip to Bern can once again help them prepare to step up another level.
“We are looking at this as a kind of springboard to the next part of the season for us,” Craik continued.
“We are really thankful to be regulars at the Grand Slams and we have just got our invite for the Slam at the end of November, start of December so we are really excited for that.
“We want to focus on putting in really solid performances and building on every game and we are looking to go quite deep into this event being one of the top ranked teams there, putting a few wins on the board and getting the ball rolling to create some momentum and hopefully we can then go out to the Slam in Canada and put in some great performances there.
“Our season has been a bit up and down so far and we have maybe not hit the level that we were hoping to.
“We have had a few tough breaks and have had a few injuries too, so we really need to dial in from Bern onwards and on the back of qualifying for the knockout stages at the last Slam, which was really great for us, we now need to really push on for the rest of the season.”
He is also hoping they can feed off the performances of their British Curling colleagues who filled three of the semi-final slots, with two going on to contest the final at a high quality international mixed doubles event in the Swiss city last weekend.
“It would be quite cool to recreate that if Waddell, Bryce and ourselves can put ourselves in the later stages of the competition. 
“That would be quite a fun thing to have lots of Scottish teams up there again so we will just do everything we can to ensure we make the best chances for ourselves out there.”
British Curling colleague Kyle Waddell meanwhile leads his teammates – brother Craig, Mark Taylor and Gavin Barr – into the event just days after it was announced that he will be going to the European Championships this season as alternate for world number one ranked Team Mouat as they seek to claim their fifth title in five appearances at that event.
The 2018 Olympian described that opportunity to represent his country once again as an honour, but his focus is on making progress with his own team who also performed well in Bern last year, reaching the semi-finals before losing to Craik’s men.
“It’s good ice and a nice club and after last year inevitably you are looking at going a bit further and obviously we would like to win the event this year, but we can only really focus on our own performances and deliver on the things we know we need to in order to win games and we will see where that takes us,” he said.
Now ranked in the top 20 in the world, he believes they are capable of joining the three Scottish teams who are now regularly challenging in the highest calibre competitions, but that they have to draw on the experience they have gained over the past year, which included a trip to Canada to take part in the second tier event at the last Grand Slam, the Tour Challenge, which was won by Team Mouat earlier this month.
“We put ourselves in a position at the end of last year to make the Slams this year, but unfortunately didn’t quite deliver the performance and outcome that we wanted at the Tier 2,” Waddell admitted.
“That was extremely disappointing, but we have got Bern and Basel to bounce back and put in two good performances in and hopefully get two good outcomes out of it to see where that takes us. 
“I think we are close to joining the other Scottish teams at the Slams but again you need to perform consistently to get into them and we have performed well at times, but not consistently enough so that will be the focus.
“I am looking forward to that and we will see where the rest of the season takes us after these two events.”
Other British Curling Performance Foundation teams are also heading to Europe this weekend with Teams Carson, Watt and Laurie all competing at the European Junior Curling Tour event in Oslo.
Team Carson are looking to build on their form having won two Asham U21 titles this season and have recruited Youth Olympic gold medallist Ethan Brewster as a sub for Archie Hyslop.
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Images: PPA/Graeme Hart
