Finnish curlers Eszter Juhasz and Markku Uusipaavalniemi are one of the most interesting participants of 2018 Arctic Curling Cup. Markku is the most experienced player among all 20 curlers, his international career began in mid-1980s! He won medals at 2006 Winter Olympics, World and European Championships. He was a member of Finnish parliament and last years he began to play mixed doubles with Eszter Juhasz. And Eszter comes to Dudinka for second consecutive year, in 2017 she played here in the tournament of women’s teams. Only Russian Anna Venevtseva also played both in 2017 and 2018.

Eszter, you are one of two curlers (with Anna Venevtseva), who played Arctic Curling Cup last year in Oona Kauste team. What is your impressions about previous tournament in Dudinka?

Eszter: I like my last year experience very much that’s why I didn’t hesitate to go to Dudinka this year.

Markku, you are real legend of Finnish curling, most successful skip in the history of your country. How do you think, when new generation of Finnish curlers will be able to win medals at world championships and Olympic Games, do you see new strong players?

Markku: Unfortunately, I don’t see new strong players in Finland, who will be able to win medals at Olympic Games. I’m ready to help Finnish curling with my experience, but our sport is not so popular among young people like in Canada, Scotland or Switzerland.

Here in Dudinka we see a lot of very strong players. How do you think who is favorite of the tournament? What is your aim at this tournament?

Markku: Of course, Canadians Courtney and Carruthers are big favorites. Rachel Homan and Niklas Edin are the curlers who can win any tournament even they play together for the first time. Of course, we understand that several teams are stronger than our team, but if we’ll have luck we can go rather far, maybe even make top-3.

What is your impressions about yesterday cultural program here? Did something surprise you?

Markku: I’m not surprised with the Taymyr’s climate because my family is from Rovaniemi, which is situated at Polar circle. If we speak about cultural program it was very interesting to see mammoth, which was found few years ago.

You trained at Taymyr arena just few minutes ago, what can you say about ice?

Markku: everything was nice, very good arena, ice prepared very well, everything is ready for good games.