(THE CURLING COMMUNITY HAS) SUPPORTED US ALL ALONG AND BEEN EVEN MORE SUPPORTIVE NOW.

over the devastation of what just happened,” said Kennedy.

“We knew it would be important to show up and talk to those people. We knew it wasn’t going to be easy. It’s not that this happened weeks ago. We’re still dealing with our disappointments.

“I know there are some negative comments out there, but I haven’t had one from the curling community. They’ve supported us all along and been even more supportive now that things didn’t work out.”

Kennedy and Hebert came to the Halifax Brier in 2010 for a cele- bration with Kevin Martin and John Morris with their Vancouver Olympic medals.

“That was great. It really was a full-on celebration. This wasn’t quite the same, obviously. But we got out and showed our faces.”

“There were a lot of people who wanted to share their experiences watching our games and ask us questions,” said Kennedy.

He said the most asked question from curling fans was ‘What happened to your draw weight?’

“It’s a fair question. Sometimes if you struggle with draw weight it affects your overall confidence and I think that’s what happened.”

For Kennedy himself, everything changed after the fifth game when the decision was taken to sandpaper the running face of the rocks to add curl.

“It was a very unusual decision and unfortunately for us, they did it at a time when we were 4-1,” he said. “I was upset because I didn’t think I’d ever curled that well before as I did in the first five games of the Olympics. I felt great. And all of a sudden it changed and we had to adjust and adapt and it was difficult. It was tough. It was hard. We didn’t want to complain and we did our absolute best to adjust. But we were never able to get the same level of play back from our team after they sanded the rocks.”

At the end of the day, said Kennedy, they were still Olympians.

“We were pretty sad and pretty upset. We had some pretty high expectations. Walking away with a medal would have been pretty satisfying, but it didn’t happen.

“We spent the last couple days trying to enjoy the experience. It’s not every day you get to go to the Olympics. We wanted to support the other athletes, go around and do some fun things and we did. But deep down, our team has been on an incredible journey so to have it come to an end that way was disappointing. It was devastating.”