Olympic medal win led to sudden stardom
Bernard says she didn’t enjoy the fame
Looking back, Cheryl Bernard figures her 15 minutes of fame at the 2010 Winter Games morphed into lifechanging chaos for roughly 12 months.
Over a span of about a year, the Calgary curler couldn’t fill up her car, pick up a loaf of bread at the grocery store or even go out for a quiet meal without feeling like an NHL player under the intense spotlight.
That’s what winning Olympic silver on home soil will do in a country obsessed with any sport played on ice. Even if it’s not hockey. “I didn’t enjoy it all that much,” Bernard, 46, says of the overnight stardom. “I like it now. People who know the game come up to you and say, ‘Hey, we were cheering. We loved it.’ That’s fine. I can deal with that. I don’t mind that as much.”
The situation upon return home from Vancouver was something else entirely.
“It was pretty crazy there for about a year there to the point we didn’t go out very much,” she said. “I can’t imagine anybody’s life who is actually famous. I couldn’t live that way.
“You never play the game for that. You play the game because you love the game. You never think of that fact, ever. Nobody really prepares you for it.
“I think because the Olympics were in Canada that made it bigger than it ever had been.”
Fast forward almost three years. Much to her delight, Bernard is back in comfy surroundings at the Glencoe Club in the Women’s Southern Alberta playdowns.
Together with Susan O’Connor, Lori OlsonJohns a nd Shannon Aleksic, Bernard is vying for one of three berths to the provincials next month in Lethbridge (Shannon Kleibrink, Crystal Webster. Renee Sonnenberg and Jessie Kaufman have all prequalified.).
Team Bernard opened the tournament Friday night against Morgan Muise.
The southern ‘A’ final is set for Saturday at 2:30 p.m. followed by the ‘B’ final Sunday at 9:30 a.m. and the ‘C’ final Monday at 9:30 a.m.
“We looked at the southern list and said, ‘Good God, this could be the provincials,’” Bernard laughed. “There are great teams in there.”
In a normal year, Bernard would have pre-qualified for
It was pretty crazy there for about a year CURLER CHERYL BERNARD
provincials. But the Calgarybased team is experiencing (anticipated) growing pains after bringing on Aleksic as the lead in place of the departed Jennifer Sadleir.
No matter what, change in curling disrupts chemistry — at least in the short-term.
“We’ve done OK,” Bernard said. “We would have liked to do a little bit better and gone directly to provincials rather than having to take the southern route. But I’ve been around the game long enough that I know to be patient. Our 2010 Olympic team, it was five or six years before we were able to get on a really good roll.”
Clearly, time is of essence with the opening ceremonies for the 2014 Winter Games in Sochi, Russia just 397 days away. So Bernard and her mates are attempting to fasttracking the process.
The time to perform on demand is on the immediate horizon.
“You get a lot of emails from people saying, ‘Look forward to seeing you in Russia in 2014,’” Bernard said. “I’m like, ‘Oh yeah, me too.’ But there are a lot of teams in Canada you have to go through, and it’s tough. Canada has such depth of field, and Alberta itself — it’s almost impossible to get out of this province.
“I think people do assume that you just get to go back and you get a free pass. I wish we did, but we have to do this the same way as everybody else.”