HISTORIC HEARTBREAK
Homan rink will miss podium
In the end, there were just too many mistakes, too many half shots and too much indecision for Rachel Homan’s team to be successful at the Olympics.
As a result, the Canadian women are going home without a medal for the first time ever in Olympic curling competition.
Homan’s team fell to a jaw-dropping record of 3-5 on Wednesday morning with a 6-5 loss to Great Britain’s Eve Muirhead.
Like a dagger to the heart, Muirhead sealed Canada’s fate by scoring two points in the 10th end for the victory.
“I’m just a little bit disappointed,” said Homan, who curls out of Ottawa with Emma Miskew, Joanne Courtney and Lisa Weagle. “We wanted to try to make the playoffs for Canada. But we gave it all we had, we never gave up and that’s the way it goes sometimes with sport.”
The Canadians started with three straight losses at the Gangneung Curling Centre, bounced back to win their next three, but reverted to their struggles in their last two games, falling to China and Great Britain.
Not only did they not make it to the podium, they didn’t even make the playoffs.
Nobody would have predicted this for the defending world women’s curling champions, for a country that has won five medals in five tries in women’s curling at the Olympics, including gold in 2014. Nobody would have predicted this for a country that has 11 medals (six gold) in 11 events — including in mixed doubles curling this year — since the sport became part of the Olympics in 1998.
There had to be a first time, eventually. It just didn’t seem likely that it would happen this year, to this team.
“We were just getting everyone’s best game and that’s what happens when you’re the world champs,” Miskew said.
“Every team was making a ton of shots against us. Every single team that was here earned their right to be here and they ’re amazing teams. They all play on tour with the Canadian teams and they beat the Canadian teams very often.”
That statement from Miskew could raise a question about how Canada selects its curling representatives for the Olympics.
Most of the teams in the Olympic curling competition have known for a long time that they would be coming here and have been training accordingly, largely by playing on the grand slam tour in Canada.
Meanwhile, Homan and Co. have only known since December, when they won the Canadian Olympic trials, that they would be coming here. Since that time they’ve changed alternate players (from Cheryl Kreviazuk to Cheryl Bernard) and have had a new coach (national team coach Renée Sonnenberg) added into their mix.
Perhaps, when coming to play against a field this good — it’s fair to say the world has caught up to Canada in women’s curling — that eight-week period between the trials and the Olympics is not long enough.
This is not to provide an excuse for the Homan team. They simply did not perform well enough in the Olympics.
This is so far removed from that type of shooting. This is precision shooting. We’re using a .22. We’re working on emotional control. But there is still that association of it being a firearm. And it really takes a lot of the joy I have out of pursuing a sport like this. U.S. BIATHLETE SUSAN DUNKLEE, about Florida mass shooting