One local sports tourism guru says it’s sort of like ‘David and Goliath’.

North Bay is up against Vancouver and Edmonton for a prestigious Canadian Sports Tourism Alliance award.

The 2018 Ford World Women’s Curling Championship, hosted last March in North Bay, is one of three finalists for the Canadian Sport Event of the Year award (Group A: budget greater than $1 million).

The other two are the 106th Grey Cup in Edmonton and the 2018 National Skating Championship in Vancouver.

Pointing to experiences with OFSAA championships as an example, the city’s Sports Tourism Coordinator, Larry Tougas (pictured below), says compared to other communities, North Bay knows how to host a successful event.

“We go to other events in some other towns and it’s just another event for them, for us, it’s always THE event. We make it that type of thing, it’s just the way we are. We have great people that are running these events and we have great support from people, in general,” he says.

Tougas says the economic spin-off from last year’s curling event was $7.3 million dollars.

He also believes this is only the tip of the iceberg, although enhancements would be needed.

“In order to play with the big boys you’re going to have to compete accommodation-wise, you’re going to have to enhance your accommodations, you’re going to have to enhance your infrastructure,” Tougas says.

The award winner will be announced on Wednesday and organizing committee co-chair Dave Bennett (pictured above) says they’re excited to be a finalist.

“I think it’s just sensational to be nominated with Vancouver and Edmonton and big events. It just goes to show we had a pretty big event here too,” he says.

Meantime, it has only been a couple weeks since full event passes went on sale for this October’s Pinty’s Grand Slam of Curling event in North Bay.

Bennett says sales are exceeding the tour organizer’s expectations.

“The full event tickets are going very well, we’re up to 572 right now and that’s blowing Sportsnet away because they didn’t think that full event sales would go that fast, so we’re really excited about it,” he says.

Bennett expects day passes to go on sale at the end of July.