World Leads North America

The 8th edition of the Continental Cup of Curling is underway. After one full day of action, Team World is a step ahead of the North American crew. This all-star competition has three more days of events left and lots of points up for grabs. Here's our recap of the event so far.

The women hit the ice for the first draw. The three North American womens squads were skipped by Patty Lank, Stefanie Lawton, and Amber Holland. They were taking on the World's skips Bingyu Wang, Anette Norberg, and Eve Muirhead.

It was the two Canadian skips who came away with points for Team North America. Both Stefanie Lawton and Amber Holland combined to earn 9 points in the draw for North America's cumulative total. The Americans, however, fell to Bingyu Wang, surrendering a big 6 points to Team World.

Next up was the mixed game, an exciting new format that the World Curling Federation has been trying to push recently.

Team World put together the stronger performance in the mixed game, adding 12 points to their score, bringing their total to 21. Team North America could only come away with 6 points, slowing growing their cumulative total.

The evening draw was the highlight event of the day, the men's draw. The star-studded draw featured three match-ups: Fenson vs. Brewster, Howard vs. Ulsrud, and Stoughton vs. Edin.

Again, it was the Americans who proved to be the weakest link in the North American chain. Fenson crumbled to a 7-1 defeat at the hands of the Scottish squad. This allowed Team World to collect a big 6 points and extend their lead. Glenn Howard, arguably facing the toughest member of Team World, Thomas Ulsrud, found himself trailing. The veteran Ontario skip engineered a strong come-back, however, overcoming a two point deficit to tie the game in the final end and split the points with Team World. Both sides added 3 points to their totals.

It was Manitoba's Jeff Stoughton who collected the most points for Team North America. He toppled Niklas Edin (Sweden) to take all 6 of the points that were up for grabs.

At the end of day one, Team World leads 30-24. Not a huge lead, but one that Team North America needs to cut into early if they want to hoist the Continental Cup this year.