Canadian coaches improving the field
PYEONGCHANG, SOUTH KOREA— In making sense of the seismic national sporting catastrophe that was Rachel Homan’s historic early exit from the women’s Olympic curling tournament, you could have come up with any number of culprits.
Why, exactly, will Homan go down as the first Canadian skip to leave the Games without a medal since the sport became an Olympic staple 20 years ago? Maybe the pressure inside the Olympic bubble was too much for Homan and teammates Emma Miskew, Joanne Courtney and Lisa Weagle.
Maybe there was some bad luck involved, too — the Homan side’s rocks finding themselves on “the wrong side of the inch” too many times, as Miskew and Courtney both explained it. And certainly there’s consolation in the men’s draw, where Kevin Koe’s rink guaranteed itself a game for a medal by clinching second place and a spot in the semifinals against the United States (which go Thursday at 8:05 a.m.) with an 8-3 romp over Denmark in its final preliminary-round game.
But the overriding feeling in the women’s curling world was that Homan’s lack of success had as much to do with the rise of the international field as it did with her subpar form.
And for that — for the collective upping of the skill level of teams around the world — Canadian curling fans have an obvious target at which to aim: Canadian curling coaches.
Glancing at the standings of the women’s Olympic curling tournament on Wednesday, one couldn’t help but notice the common thread. Six of the top seven teams are coached by Canadians. South Korea’s team, which won seven of its first eight games and handed Canada the Games-opening loss that sent Homan into an irreversible tailspin, is coached by Peter Gallant, a 59year-old from Charlottetown, P.E.I., who made nine Brier appearances during his playing days.
The British team that knocked out Homan here Wednesday is coached by Glenn Howard, a member of four world champion rinks representing Canada as a player. The hot-playing Swedes are coached by a Swede. But surprisingly competitive Japan? They’re helmed by Albertan J.D. Lind. The U.S.? They’re coached by Thunder Bay’s Al Hackner, skip of two world champion rinks in the 1980s. China and Switzerland are also Canadian-coached.
In other words: Who’s responsible for 2018’s great Canadian curling crisis? Cheque-cashing Canadian turncoats, if that’s how you’d like to frame it. More rationally, they’re curling lifers landing work where they can find it, and, in at least a couple of cases, feeling vaguely conflicted about their hand in their birth country’s Olympic demise.
“(Eliminating Canada) was awesome, and then tough at the same time,” said the 55-year-old Howard, who curls out of St. George’s Golf and Country Club in Etobicoke. “Listen, I’m Canadian. I wish it didn’t come down to us putting Canada out. I struggled with that.”
Howard, it should be noted, was wearing a perma-smile as he spoke those words.
“In the grand scheme of things, that was my job. I love these girls,” he said, speaking of the rink skipped by Scotswoman Eve Muirhead. “We’ve had a great two years together. And I was 100-per-cent behind Great Britain. That’s why I’ve got this jacket on.”
The phenomenon of the Canadian curling coach spreading knowledge of the game around the globe goes back decades, of course. Ray Turnbull, the late curler and TSN analyst, travelled the planet holding curling schools for years in the late 20th century, eventually laying claim to have taught the game or directly coached some 17 world champions.
But if Turnbull was a globetrotting missionary, his successors are simple mercenaries — contract coaches hired by national sporting federations bent on finding success.
Now, 20 years into curling’s run as a five-ringed feature attraction, the worldwide spread of Canadian-bred sporting IQ has helped the rest of the world catch up to a traditional power.
“To see Canada out, obviously (Canadian curling coaches) are a big part of that,” said Lind, the 33-yearold Albertan who coaches Japan’s women’s entry.
“I’m a proud Canadian. I always will be. The people on (Homan’s) team are my friends. I grew up playing in Alberta with Joanne Courtney. I hate to see it. But, at the same time, that’s part of the competition.”
Lind moved to Japan in the summer of 2013 for a job at a curling academy that led to work as the national team coach at the Sochi Olympics and here.
“There’s a lot of great coaches in Canada, and there’s not enough work for all of us (in Canada),” he
“Listen, I’m Canadian. I wish it didn’t come down to us putting Canada out. I struggled with that.” GLENN HOWARD GREAT BRITAIN COACH
said. “To get the opportunity to make a living in curling — not a lot of people get to do that . . . But also to move to Japan, see a different culture, it was more of a life experience, too.”
Lind’s work is bearing fruit. While Canada is grappling with an epic failure, Lind’s Japan rink is on track to qualify for the medal round for the first time in Japan’s history.
“Obviously, it’s tough for Canada to digest,” Lind said. “As Canadians, we always want to win and feel we’re the top country. And we still are. The result for Homan this week is just that — it’s one week of curling in four years.
“To judge her team on one event is definitely not a representation of how strong they’ve been since she was a junior. But this event just showed that on any given week, any team can win.”