RESULTS NOT INDICATIVE OF THE BIG PICTURE
No Canadian gold doesn’t mean we faltered as much as the others have improved
Before the hand-wringing begins at home, Marc Kennedy has a message for Canadian curling fans.
“It’s a really f---ing hard game at this level,” Kennedy said. “I think it’s overplayed that Canada is a favourite.”
Kennedy was speaking moments after the Canadian men’s curling team lost 5-3 to the U.S. in the semifinal at the Winter Games. It was a stunning upset by the American team skipped by John Shuster and it took Kevin Koe’s Calgary foursome out of gold-medal contention.
That means there will be no gold medals for Canada in team curling at these Olympics, after Jennifer Jones and Brad Jacobs won the men’s and women’s Olympic titles in 2014.
Were it not for a gold medal by Kaitlyn Lawes and John Morris in the new Olympic discipline of mixed doubles, these Games would have been a disaster for Canada.
As it is, Rachel Homan’s women’s team finished off the podium with a 4-5 record and Koe’s team found itself playing Switzerland for a bronze medal on Friday (1:35 a.m. ET in Canada). The U.S. and Sweden will play for the gold medal.
There’s no question these were crushing results for the Canadians and the fans who have come to expect medals in every Olympic curling event. Canada was 11-for-11 in terms of medalling in Olympic events right up until Homan’s team was eliminated on Wednesday.
There are going to be plenty of people at home wondering just how this happened, but Kennedy wants to make it easy on them.
“We come from a rich history of curling where we won everything and that’s not the way it is any more,” Kennedy said. “Anyone who has been watching the grand slams of curling, we’ve got European teams winning all the time. They spend nine months of the year living in Canada and learning our strategies and using our coaching and using our ice. This is the new normal for Canada and people need to get used to that.
“Canada will be fine, we’ve still got the best curlers in the world but when it comes down to one game, it happens, sometimes you lose.”
In the case of the Homan team, which includes Emma Miskew, Joanne Courtney and Lisa Weagle, they simply didn’t have a good week. They lost their first three games and two of their last three to bow out of the competition.
The Koe team, which includes Kennedy, Brent Laing and Ben Hebert, played close to its best and still lost. That says something about the level of play from the other teams in the field.
“I’ve seen a rise in the level since Sochi,” said Glenn Howard, a former Canadian and world champion who now coaches the Great Britain women’s team. “There was a rise before that from Vancouver, and I think you’re going to continue to see it that way. These teams are putting their heart and soul into it, they’re on the ice 24/7, not that the Canadians aren’t, but because of it you reach a point where everybody’s good. You can be the best but you’ve got to perform that week, and you never know.
“Twenty years ago, it wasn’t as good. Now it’s amazing, and you can see it out there, and Canadians back home have to realize that. It’s a fine line now as to who is the best in the world, and you’ve got to come here and prove it.”
For the Koe foursome, it was literally a matter of centimetres between playing for gold and settling for a chance to play for bronze.
It was the eighth end of their semifinal against the United States and Koe had been in control most of the game. Tied 2-2, he blanked the sixth and seventh ends in order to take the hammer into the all-important eighth.
He was all set up to score a deuce on the even end but his first rock over-curled and ticked a guard and then was forced to draw on the same path against two just to get one. But his rock died well before the rings and the United States had a steal of two.
It all came down to those two shots. Both teams played great, but Canada blinked. And just like that, the gold was gone.