The Tour Challenge, known as the HearingLife Tour Challenge for sponsorship reasons, is a
bonspiel
A bonspiel is a curling tournament, consisting of several games, often held on a weekend. Until the 20th century most bonspiels were held outdoors, on a frozen freshwater loch. Today almost all bonspiels are held indoors on specially prepared ar ...
, or
curling
Curling is a sport in which players slide #Curling stone, stones on a sheet of ice toward a target area that is segmented into four concentric circles. It is related to bowls, boules, and shuffleboard. Two teams, each with four players, take t ...
tournament, which is one of the
Grand Slam of Curling
The Grand Slam of Curling (formerly branded as the Pinty's Grand Slam of Curling for sponsorship reasons) is a series of curling bonspiels that were formerly part of the annual World Curling Tour. Grand Slam events offer a purse of at least Ca ...
events. It was introduced into the Grand Slam lineup starting in the
2015–16 curling season
The 2015–16 curling season began in August 2015 and ended in May 2016.
The season was marked by new innovations in curling broom technology that drastically changed how sweeping was done, leading to the "broomgate" scandal. It forced the major ...
.
The event features a men's and women's draw, and is split into two tiers of 16 teams each, Tier 1 and Tier 2.
From 2022 to 2023, the format consisted of four pools, where each team played all four of their games against the four teams of another pool. The top 8 teams overall made the playoffs. In 2023, tiebreakers were dropped.
In 2024, the event became a
triple knockout
Gene knockouts (also known as gene deletion or gene inactivation) are a widely used genetic engineering technique that involves the targeted removal or inactivation of a specific gene within an organism's genome. This can be done through a variet ...
event
for the first time.
The top 16 teams on the
World Curling Federation
World Curling, formerly the World Curling Federation (WCF) is the world governing body for curling accreditation, with offices in Perth, Scotland. It was formed out of the International Curling Federation (ICF), when the push for Olympic Winter ...
team ranking qualify for the Tier 1 event, while the next top 16 teams qualify for the Tier 2 event. The winning team at the Tier 2 event qualifies for another Grand Slam, the
Canadian Open.
Past champions
Men
Tier 1
Tier 2
Women
Tier 1
Tier 2
References
External links
*
{{Grand Slam of Curling
Men's Grand Slam (curling) events
Women's Grand Slam (curling) events
Annual sporting events in Canada