Women's curling is sure to receive a lot more exposure this year, thanks to a new international calendar that features nude and scantily clad female curlers. The calendar is the brainchild of Ana Arce, a photographer who skipped the Andorran women's team for three seasons before moving to Spain this year. All proceeds will be split between the teams of the curlers who pose in the calendar, called the Ana Arce Team Sponsorship Calendar 2006.

Arce contacted only women she knew personally through her years in curling, including two Canadians: Melanie Robillard of Ottawa and Lynsay Ryan of Kelowna, B.C., the daughter of two-time world champion skip and 2006 Olympic hopeful Pat Ryan.

The 12 models represent curling teams from Denmark, Italy, Spain, England, Poland, Germany and Canada. The calendar isn't the first of its kind. The Canadian women's rugby, water polo and cross-country ski teams all have produced similar calendars. On the men's front, there has been beefcake calendars from the men of Australian Rules Football and the Stade Francais rugby team in Paris.

jk90

The first one is quite nice as far as you can tell from the small piccys.

I must admit I didn't know that there were any English curlers, I thought the GB team were all Jocks.

Thanks a lot for the pictures and the information. Cool piece of cultural snippet!

The pics are great, thanks. Just that, when I read the title, for a split second, I sort of half-expected to see Russia's Ludmila Privivkova, or Sweden's Anna Svard and/or Ulrika Bergman... too bad

And I'm betting not too many here know who they are, so helping along: an image of Privivkova from the 2006 Winter Olympics and an image of the Swedish national curling team (Bergman is first from the right and Svard is right next to her).

do u have the rest??

yea, i would also appreciate seeing the rest of the calendar