Rested journey as good as gold
Homan rink ready to battle for title after uneventful trip to Beijing
OTTAWA — Before a rock is thrown, this year’s women’s world curling championship in Beijing is already going much better for Rachel Homan than it did four years ago.
Heading to the 2013 women’s worlds in Latvia, the team of Homan, Emma Miskew, Lisa Weagle, Alison Kreviazuk and Stephanie LeDrew were, thanks to a wicked snowstorm, stranded in the Frankfurt airport for more than a day, forced to sleep on benches overnight.
The story: Following an 8½-hour flight from Toronto, Homan’s team was supposed to board a 10 a.m. flight to Riga, Latvia’s capital city. It was postponed once, twice, three times, then the airport was closed for a couple of hours. Finally, the flight was cancelled. They were put on standby for a later flight, but that too was cancelled. With hotel rooms priced at $650 and very little availability, the women decided to sleep at the airport. After two cancelled flights the next day, Homan and her team finally got on a plane that night.
“We were in a bit of a bad way after sleeping on benches and planes and stuff for two days,” fifth/alternate LeDrew told Postmedia’s Gord Holder at the time.
Homan would battle through and the team would win a bronze medal.
So far, so good this year for Homan and her team, who arrived safely in China’s capital Tuesday after a 13½hour flight. Their trip four years ago to Latvia provided much more than lessons on how to deal with travel delays.
“The first time we went, it was really overwhelming travelling to another country we had never been to — getting acclimatized there and trying to figure out what we could eat and all that sort of stuff,” said Miskew. “The time difference, we know what to expect. It’s a bit more reassuring going over this time.”
Being away from home and the fact many of the games are in the wee hours of the morning back in Canada means there will be fewer eyes on Team Homan, which plays its Saturday opener against China at 1 a.m. EST.
In that game, the Canadians will face a stiff test in the same arena that played host to the 2014 men’s worlds, facing the home team skipped by Bingyu Wang — the 2009 world women’s champ and 2010 Olympic bronze medallist.
Safe to say, the majority of the live audience won’t be cheering for Canada. “It’s a big arena, but there are not always a ton of fans in there,” said Homan. “We don’t know what to expect, but we’ve played in arenas where the crowd was against us. We know how to fight through that and keep focused on our game. If that’s the case, we’re prepared for it and if it’s a quiet arena, we’re ready for that as well. They’ll be gunning for us, home team and opening draw, but we’ll be ready. We’ll be in a bit of a bubble overseas, but we’ve got some people coming to cheer us on and that’s exciting. There are some challenges we anticipate, but because we’re anticipating them, I think we’ll be prepared.”
It will be a tough road, but after winning world bronze (in 2013) and silver (2014 in Saint John, N.B.), Homan’s team has another colour of medal in mind. This time, Homan has Miskew, Weagle, second Joanne Courtney, alternate Cheryl Kreviazuk, coach Adam Kingsbury and national coach Elaine Dagg-Jackson along for the ride.
“We’re going in there with the goal of bringing home a gold medal for Canada,” said Weagle. “It’s been a long time since Canadian women have won gold. I think we’re a bit more experienced and we’re confident going in.”
Saturday’s early contest will be the start of an 11-game, round-robin schedule for Canada, which is without a world title since Jennifer Jones’ triumph in 2008 in Vernon.
“We feel better than we have in the past,” said Homan. “The first time, everything was so new and foreign. We did our best and came up a bit short. The second time was in Canada and we did better. We’re fairly young for going into our third worlds. We have experience on our side and we’ll use the past experience of maybe going over already burnt out and we’ll learn from that.”
Skipping Team Switzerland is Alina Paetz, who beat Jones and Team Canada in the gold-medal game of the 2015 worlds. While there’s more experience in the field — notably 2013 world champ Eve Muirhead of Scotland and three-time bronze medallist Anna Sidorova of Russia — there’s also a new-look Swedish team skipped by former world junior champ Anna Hasselborg, making her world women’s debut.
Other teams in the field include Anna Kubeskova of the Czech Republic, Lene Nielsen of Denmark, Germany’s Daniela Jentsch, Italy’s Diana Gaspari, Eun-Jung Kim of South Korea and Nina Roth of the United States.
Round-robin play will continue until March 23, with the top four teams advancing to the Page playoffs. TSN/RDS2 will provide live coverage of nine of Canada’s 11 round-robin games, in addition to all playoff games.
“We were in a bit of a bad way after sleeping on benches and planes and stuff for two days (in 2013.)” — Stephanie LeDrew