TIME FOR KOE’S CREW TO STOP CELEBRATING
With Pyeongchang Olympics beckoning, team knows it’s now time to get serious
Kevin Koe lost his first game of the Pinty’s Grand Slam of Curling Series here Wednesday morning to Bruce Mouat of Great Britain. That might be a good thing. The night before, there was a bon voyage party for Koe’s Canadian men’s Olympic team. They are heading to Pyeongchang once the Meridian Canadian Open is done this week.
“Some of our sponsors and Sportsnet put it together. They’re helping members of our families to go over to the Olympics with us. It was an appreciation from us for that. It was good,” said Koe.
Losing to the Great Britain Olympic team in the morning? Not so much.
“We just struggled a little big early in the game. We just weren’t solid,” said the skip.
“It’s tough,” added third Marc Kennedy. “You put all that time and effort into the trials. You reach the point where we reached today, I guess, where you have to tell yourself: ‘You’ve only done half the job. We have to get to Korea totally ready to do the other half of the job and bring home that medal.’”
Koe and his team of Kennedy, Brent Laing and Ben Hebert said they’re kind of at the awkward stage of being an Olympic curling team. They’re still celebrating. But they know it’s now time to get serious.
“It’s been a great feeling,” said the skip. “It’s been a bit of a whirlwind, but obviously it felt great. Now it’s starting to feel a little more real. And it’ll keep going like that until we get closer.
“Here, we’re getting a lot of congratulations and you can really feel how everyone is pulling for you. It feels great.”
For Koe, there’s added satisfaction, of course.
“It’s kind of happiness and relief at the same time,” he said of gassing his old team of Pat Simmons, Carter Rycroft and Nolan Thiessen
You reach the point where (you) have to tell yourself: ‘You’ve only done half the job.’
right after they won the Brier, giving up the chance to skip the first Team Canada at the Brier, to form this team. “Some people thought I was crazy. But it was what I decided to do and I didn’t look back on it with any regrets even when my old team went back as Team Canada and won that Brier. It worked out with them, too. They were able to get another Brier out of it.
“But it is rewarding to see it all come together. It was rewarding a couple of years ago when we won the Worlds.”
For Kennedy and Hebert, it’s a return to the Olympics. They won gold with Kevin Martin of Edmonton at Vancouver 2010.
“Having been through this before, I know you have to take time to let it set in. We worked hard for four years for it to come together. You need time to let it settle and spend time with your family,” said Kennedy, a St. Albert product. “Winning in Edmonton was mostly about me. I wanted to get to the Olympics. This one was more about the people around me. I had some people on the team that I really wanted to go to the Olympics, too, and that was my major motivation.
“It was a bit different than after we won the Roar of the Rings Olympic Trials eight years ago in Edmonton. Part of that was because I knew what to expect at the end of the week. I knew what it would feel like and I knew what the nerves and pressure would be. Having experienced that pressure in Edmonton prepared us for that and I think it made a big difference.”
So far, Koe said the team doesn’t feel any added pressure.
“We’ve been Team Canada before and won a couple world championships. Obviously, this is a much bigger event with way more eyes on it but this team has done well in big events, so we’ll just kind of stick with what we’ve done and we should be OK.”
And when it comes to putting together a plan, Koe has the added advantage of having Kennedy and Hebert as former Olympians.
“Experience never hurts, especially when it’s good experience. We can rely on that a little bit,” he said. “We knew the value of taking a good break over Christmas and using the Continental Cup in London to get back on the ice and get our legs back a little bit and using this one to get a little more serious and start playing well again. Then we’ll head over to Japan for a training camp and get over the jet lag before we go to Korea,” said Kennedy.
As was the case for last year’s Brier in St. John’s, N.L., they’re taking former Ferbey Four second Scott Pfeifer over as a fifth and have also added 2014 Olympic gold medal skip Jennifer Jones as an unofficial consultant.
Jones, of course, is married to second Brent Laing.
“She’s coming,” reported the curler who went to Sochi, Russia with her four years ago. “There’s a lot we can ask her about the village and the Canadian Olympic Committee and working with all the people and how to deal with all the distractions. Being there as a fan was huge for me. It was motivating.”
CAMROSE Why not make it a staple?
If a small-population city in the area known as the World Capital of Curling was ever to consider coming up with another $150,000 in prize money and winning a longterm deal to host a Pinty’s Grand Slam of Curling Series event, the Meridian Canadian Open would be the perfect event.
And you’d have the pro non Curling Canada Season of Champions curling event every season.
It’s not only perfectly positioned on the curling calendar to precede the Scotties and men’s provincials, but every four years it’s the lead-in event to the Olympics.
And the format is brilliant. “I love it. I love this format,” said Norway’s Thomas Ulsrud of the all-the-games-against-teams-with-the-same-record-as-you, triple-knockout, top-16-in-the-world format that has only been around since 2014. “For probably all the players, I think they like this.”
Niklas Edin of Sweden seconded the motion.
“I like it, too. Maybe for the fans it’s not as easy to follow because they are never really sure who will be playing from one game to the next until you get to the suddendeath bracket play on the weekend.
“I definitely think most of the other players like it.”
Both had the chance to experience what it was like to come here and lose their first game and play morning games Wednesday with a desperate need to win. And both did.
But now Canada’s Kevin Koe will have the same experience, having lost 6-4 to Bruce Mouat of Great Britain for openers here Wednesday.
Unlike the other six Pinty’s Grand Slam events, the Canadian Open features a triple-knockout format that is unique in that it virtually guarantees competitive games.
There is never a game between a team that is out of the playoff picture versus a team that already has a spot clinched.
In fact, every game before the eight-team bracket features teams playing for the $250,000 in prize money and with identical records — 0-0, 1-0, 0-1, 2-0, 0-2, 2-1, 1-2 and 2-2 — as they work their way through.
It sounds complicated, but it’s actually ridiculously simple.
To qualify for the money matches on the weekend, you simply must win three games before you lose three. Two teams in the A event of both men’s and women’s play will end up at 3-0 and advance to elite eight, sudden-death bracket play. Three teams from the B event will advance with 3-1 records and three more will advance from the C event with 3-2 records.
You aren’t guaranteed five games like in pool play in other 15-team Slam series events. You could be down 0-2 by the end of the third draw before noon on Day 2 like the South Korean teams here Wednesday. But even that is a positive in a way for Ulsrud, who lost his first game Tuesday 6-3 to Peter de Cruz of Switzerland and was on the ice at 8:30 a.m. Wednesday to dispatch Chang-Min Kim of South Korea 5-2. Edin lost his first game 7-6 Wednesday to John Shuster of the U.S.
In women’s play, EunJung Kim of South Korea was defeated 9-1 by Chelsea Carey of Calgary after losing 8-2 to Anna Hasselborg Tuesday. Carey opened the event Tuesday losing 6-4 to Manitoba’s Kerri Einarson, the team she’ll play in a special sudden-death game to be the 16th team in the new two-pool, Nunavut-included, 16-team Scotties coming into play.
“The Koreans will play their next game against somebody who also has lost two,” said Ulsrud, who eight years ago in Vancouver at practice prior to the Olympics asked your correspondent and another writer if they should wear their Norway flag patterned pants in actual Olympic play and ended up wearing them all week, including the gold-medal game against Kevin Martin, before getting a great sponsorship contract out of the deal.
“If the Koreans win that game, they’ll play somebody who is 1-2. And if they win that one, they’ll play somebody who is 2-2. I think it’s very fair. I think it’s great. It’s win three before you lose three. I think it’s perfect. I think it’s a fantastic format.”
John Morris, who will represent Canada with Kaitlyn Lawes in mixed doubles, now gets to experience an 0-2 start having been a 7-4 loser to Edin Wednesday.
As a $250,000 event, first place pays $30,000, second gets you $18,000, third and fourth are worth $12,000 each and the four semifinal losers go home with $8,000 per team for both men and women.
Imagine if the host committee could pay $50,000 for first, $30,000 for second, $20,000 for third and fourth and $10,000 for the first-round losers?
Get on that, Ken Duggan and Neil Bratrud.