Peter de Boer at the Naseby Indoor Curling Rink during this
week's Asia and Pacific championships. Photo by Craig
Baxter.
The New Zealand men's team still has a chance to qualify
for the 2014 Winter Olympics and skip Peter de Boer will play a
key role.
The seven countries with the most qualifying points from the
world championships in 2012 and 2013 will gain automatic
entry to the Olympics in Sochi.
The eighth place will be taken by host country Russia. New
Zealand has a chance of gaining one of the final two spots at
a new Olympic qualification event run by the World Curling
Federation in December 2013.
De Boer has been disappointed by the performance of the New
Zealand team in Naseby.
"We have not played well," he said.
"We lack match practice. We don't get enough domestic games
against high-quality opposition and it takes time to get into
that groove.
"We tried hard to do well but we play our best when we are
nice and relaxed."
De Boer is the only member of the New Zealand team that
played in the Asia and Pacific championships who can take
selection for next year's team for granted.
Former internationals Hans Frauenlob, Dan Mustapic and Lorne
De Pape must be considered. They were in the seniors team
that beat the Asia and Pacific team at the New Zealand open
championships in July.
Frauenlob, in particular, has had an outstanding year on the
domestic scene. He also skipped the winning four that
defended the senior men's title and won the mixed doubles
title with Natalie Thurlow.
Frauenlob, Mustapic and de Pape were in the New Zealand team
at the 2006 Olympics.
De Boer (41), general manager of Executive Recruitment in
Wellington, emigrated to New Zealand from Sydney five years
ago. He grew up in Fyfe, in Scotland, and worked in Edinburgh
before spending two years in Australia.
"Our family got to the stage when we wanted to travel and
explore the world so I took a job in Sydney," de Boer said.
He started curling in Scotland at the age of 10 and finished
runner-up in the Scottish championships in 2005 and 2006. His
father, David, curled, and introduced his son to the game.
De Boer made his mark as skip when New Zealand finished fifth
at the world championships in Switzerland last year. He has
long held the dream of competing at the Olympics.
"If we'd won the Scottish championships in 2005 there may
have been an opportunity to be part of the wider Scottish
squad," he said.
He found the standard of play at the world championships a
lot harder than he had been used to.
"You don't get away with errors," he said. "The opposition
plays at a consistently high level and they punish your
errors.
"You have got to make sure you play the simple shots
perfectly every time and give yourself a chance of playing
the difficult ones as well."
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