HOMAN HUNGRY FOR HOME COOKING
‘Special feeling’ awaits defending world champ at Canadian curling trials
She has three world championship medals, including the gold she won earlier this year, but Rachel Homan is about to do something new that ranks right up there.
On Saturday, the 28-year-old will begin competing in the Canadian Olympic curling trials in her hometown, in an arena that holds special significance for her and her teammates.
“Since we can remember, we’ve been in the stands here watching,” Homan said Friday at the Canadian Tire Centre. “Cheering on the (Ottawa Senators) or coming to concerts, watching Gord Downie a few months ago.
“It’s just a really special venue for us as the hometown team, but having grown up in this rink, it’s a feeling that I’ve never felt before. I’ve been in a lot of arenas, but this is a more special feeling.”
Homan’s team, which includes third Emma Miskew, second Joanne Courtney and lead Lisa Weagle, is coming off its best season. They went 10-1 in the round robin at the Scotties Tourna- ment of Hearts in St. Catharines, Ont., and then beat Manitoba’s Michelle Englot in an extra end in the final.
They then went 11-0 in the round robin at the world championship in Beijing and beat Russia’s Anna Sidorova 8-3 in the gold-medal game.
The success hasn’t really carried over to this year — Team Homan is seventh in the Canadian Team Ranking System — but everything has been geared toward peaking in this event with the most coveted prize on the line.
“I don’t think success really carries forward,” Homan said. “You have to be continually getting better as a team. This is what we prepared for: to be our best at this event. We’ve put everything we can into that.”
Homan is one of the co-favourites in the women’s draw along with 2014 Olympic gold-medallist Jennifer Jones.
On the men’s side, the clear favourite in an extremely strong field is Newfoundland’s Brad Gushue. His team not only won the Brier and the world championship earlier this year, but is the top team in the ranking system.
“Last year is a different year, but we’re also playing pretty good this year,” Gushue said. “The confidence that we have is that we know if we play as good as we can, we’re going to be there at the end of the week, not neces- sarily winning the event, but we will be there at playoff time.”
Gushue and third Mark Nichols were part of Canada’s gold medal-winning squad at the Turin Olympics in 2006. But until last year, Gushue had never won a Brier.
“It was kind of the monkey off the back,” said Gushue, a 37-yearold from St. John’s.
“It really kind of freed us up and made us feel like we can just put some icing on the cake or gravy on the fries and just go out and play.”
THE MEDALS CREWS
They are flying under the radar at the Canadian Olympic curling trials and that’s just the way they want it. While there are many big names in the field of nine men’s and nine women’s teams — 13 competitors have won Olympic gold medals — there are many more who are simply thrilled to be considered underdogs.
Teams skipped by Brendan Bottcher, Steve Laycock and John Epping on the men’s side and Julie Tippin, Casey Scheidegger and Allison Flaxey on the women’s side would all qualify as long shots to represent Canada and yet they can all draw inspiration from teams that surprised at previous Olympic trials.
“If you look back three, four Olympic cycles, there’s been a lot of underdog teams come through it at the end,” said Bottcher, a 25-year-old from Sherwood Park, Alta. “There’s a lot that goes into that. There’s certainly a lot less pressure when you are one of the last seeds. You can just come out here and relax.”
Bottcher was the last team to qualify through the recent pre-trials tournament in Prince Edward Island.
“If you’ve been here before, you know what it feels like to win, so that’s certainly a plus, but you’re also expected to win and that’s a negative,” Bottcher said.
“For us, really, being here is the victory. If we can come out and put in a good week, it’s all gravy.”
Tippin, a 34-year-old from Woodstock, Ont., was also the last to qualify through the pretrials. Three years ago when she formed her team, she never thought they’d get this far. “We started off playing pretty locally and we did well right away and after that we started travelling across Canada and internationally. We realized pretty quickly that we could compete at this level with these teams.”
Scheidegger, a 29-year-old teacher from Lethbridge, Alta., considered the Olympic trials to be little more than a dream a year ago. But her team put together such a strong 2016-17 season that it found itself in the mix for a direct entry into the trials
“At first we thought we were probably going to get into the pre-trials, so that’s pretty exciting,” Scheidegger said. “Then after we won the Meridian Open, (Curling Canada coach) Paul Webster called us and said ‘ You should probably start thinking about the trials.’”