The 2009-2010 Capital One Grand Slam of Curling will kick off the year in Mississauga, ON October 21-25 with a field of nine international Olympic qualifiers and possible qualifiers and five Canadian Olympic Trials qualifiers. Randy Ferbey and Kevin Koe of Edmonton along with Brad Gushue of St. John’s, NL were recently added to fill out the fourteen team field.

The tournament will be an interesting preview of the 2010 Winter Olympics in Vancouver taking place in February. For the nine international teams the strength of the field will give them a taste of the depth of a typical Brier field. It will be intriguing to see how these teams do in a field this strong as well as how Kevin Martin’s team bounces back after the disappointment of losing three straight games to David Murdoch at the 2009 world championship.

The final Canadian invitations were given to Koe and Ferbey after receiving the final two direct births in the Canadian Olympic trials and Gushue was invited as the 2006 Olympic gold medalist.

The fourteen teams invited to compete are:

  • David Murdoch (Lockerbie, Scotland)
  • Kevin Martin (Edmonton, Alberta)
  • Glenn Howard (Coldwater, Ontario)
  • Thomas Ulsrud (Oslo, Norway)
  • Andy Kapp (Unterthingau, Germany)
  • Fengchun Wang (Harbin, China)
  • John Shuster (Chisholm, Minnesota)
  • Niklas Edin (Sundbyberg, Sweden)
  • Ulrik Schmidt (Copenhagen, Denmark)
  • Randy Ferbey (Edmonton, Alberta)
  • Kevin Koe (Edmonton, Alberta)
  • Brad Gushue (St. John’s, Newfoundland)
  • Unconfirmed Olympic qualifier from France
  • Unconfirmed Olympic hopeful from Switzerland

Tickets and ticket packages are available through Ticketmaster.