CANADA’S LOSS IS THE REST OF THE WORLD’S BIG GAIN Homan’s podium-less performance also provides an opportunity to re-evaluate
Let me preface this column with the following thought: Rachel Homan missing the podium at the Olympics is actually a good thing for curling.
It’s not good for Homan, her teammates and her crushed Canadian fans, but it’s beneficial for the game as a whole. Canada winning all the time is boring for everyone who lives elsewhere, and it does nothing to grow the game internationally.
You know what does? A team like South Korea winning the gold medal. It could happen, as the Koreans finished first in the women’s curling round robin and will play in Friday’s semifinals.
Just imagine what something like that could do for curling in Asia, the largest potential growth market for the game.
Canada missing the podium may constitute a national curling crisis, but we’ll get over it. People will still play the game in droves and it will still draw good TV ratings throughout the winter.
And in a way, Homan and her teammates missing the podium could be good for Canadian curling as well. This will force Curling Canada to look at its procedures for selecting representatives for the Olympics to make sure they have the right formula and it will force Homan and the Canadian coaches to re-think how they approach big events.
The selection method has obviously worked in the past. Until Homan, Emma Miskew, Joanne Courtney and Lisa Weagle crashed out in Pyeongchang, Canada had won 11 of 11 possible medals handed out in the history of Olympic curling.
But it didn’t work this time, and one former world champion believes she knows why.
“I think we do have to take a lesson from what the other countries are doing,” Colleen Jones said. “What most of them do is declare their Olympians a lot in advance and those teams know they’re coming for a long time.
“We need to look at the timing of our events and how does it best serve the curlers and how does it make sure the teams are able to peak hard in December for the Olympic trials and hard again in February.”
The thinking here is that the teams in the women’s field at these Olympics were better than the ones who competed against gold medallist Jennifer Jones in Sochi four years ago.
Having been named as Olympians long ago, many of the teams competed regularly on the Grand Slam Tour in Canada. They worked with the same support group and coaches for the whole season, with every intention of peaking at the Olympics.
Meanwhile, Homan’s team went through an intense Canadian Olympic trials in Ottawa and then had just about two months to prepare for becoming Team Canada, with a whole new support staff.
They had a new coach for the Olympics (national team coach Renee Sonnenberg) and didn’t have much time to become familiar with her before the Games.
Could working over a whole season with a national team coach — someone like Sonnenberg or Canadian world champion Glenn Howard, who is coaching Great Britain’s women’s team in these Olympics — make a difference for Canada?
Wouldn’t Canada also benefit from having its Olympic representative decided sooner, so the team has time to work toward peaking for the Winter Games?
“I think you have to, after every Olympics, take a real critical look at what works and what doesn’t and you’re playing a fool’s game if you don’t analyze it, be honest about it, see where you need to make changes and go from there,” Jones said. “I think there’s going to be a lot of examination of what happened here. It starts with the timing of our Olympic trials. Maybe it’s too close together for two big events.”
Canadian men’s third Marc Kennedy, a 2010 Olympic gold medallist and world champion, disagrees with Jones.
“Canada has done really well (in the past) and the medals show that if you continue to use the momentum that you picked up at the trials, you can succeed,” Kennedy said. “We’ve proven that.”
Personally, I find it hard to blame Team Homan’s performance on the Olympic selection process. To me, they simply didn’t execute well enough under the bright lights of the biggest stage.
The problem, in my opinion, is the Homan team was too predictable. They didn’t tailor their games to their opponents and with every team knowing what strategy to expect from Canada, they were able to be aggressive. Homan had no answer for it.
The thinking is: If you can make Homan uncomfortable, you can beat her.
So it’s not so much about the selection process, at least in this case, as it is the approach.
Still, the world is getting better, which is a good thing, and maybe Canada has to use forward thinkingto make sure it stay sat the top. If that means taking a hard look at the selection process and the strategic coaching support for Olympic teams, then so be it. Perhaps a coach that would have helped Homan become less predictable could have made a significant difference.
Of course, there’s also the line of thinking out there that failing to medal at the Olympics or the worlds is going to happen from time to time as the game is globalized.
“This is just a sign of the times in men’s and women’s curling,” said Canadian men’s skip Kevin Koe.
“Gone are the days when you could just show up. This week, we knew it was going to be tough to get every win. It’s not easy. The gap has been narrowed a bit.”