Jones, Jacobs rinks get to tune up for Olympics at Continental Cup

WINNIPEG – Canada’s Olympic curlers will compete in the Continental Cup, which starts Thursday in Las Vegas.

Winnipeg’s Jennifer Jones, the Canadian women’s skip, is looking forward to the event.

“It will be great to go back and start competing,” she said Tuesday. “A lot of the teams there will be going to the Olympics so it’s a great event, the Continental Cup.

“It’s kind of a loose event so we can go and get some games under our belt.”

Not that Jones’s rink hasn’t been training hard. The squad just returned from Edmonton where it was preparing for the Olympics.

“We’re prepared,” she said. “We had a really good plan going into the trials and I feel we have an even better plan heading into the Olympics.

“We’re feeling great about everything.”

Canada’s men’s team headed by Brad Jacobs will also be there, along with Winnipeg’s Jeff Stoughton and Ottawa’s Rachel Homan.

They’ll be playing for North America with U.S. Olympic hopefuls Erika Brown and John Shuster.

Five of the six teams competing for Team World in Las Vegas will also be at the Olympics: Scotland’s David Murdoch and Eve Muirhead, Niklas Edin and Margaretha Sigfridsson of Sweden and Norway’s Thomas Ulsrud.

The format is modelled after golf’s Ryder Cup.