Homan looking to hometown advantage
Spot in Pyeongchang Olympics awaits the winners of this week’s Ottawa curling event
She has three world championship medals, including the gold she won earlier this year, but Rachel Homan is about to do something new that ranks right up there.
On Saturday, the 28-year-old will begin competing in the Canadian Olympic curling trials, in her hometown, in an arena that holds special significance for her and her teammates.
“Since we can remember, we’ve been in the stands here watching,” Homan said Friday at the Canadian Tire Centre. “Cheering on the (Ottawa Senators) or coming to concerts, watching Gord Downie a few months ago.
“It’s just a really special venue for us as the hometown team but having grown up in this rink, it’s a feeling that I’ve never felt before. I’ve been in a lot of arenas but this is a more special feeling.”
Homan’s team, which includes third Emma Miskew, second Joanne Courtney and lead Lisa Weagle, is coming off its best season. They went 10-1 in the round robin at the Scotties Tournament of Hearts in St. Catharines and then beat Manitoba’s Michelle Englot in an extra-end in the final.
They then went 11-0 in the round robin at the world championship in Beijing and beat Russia’s Anna Sidorova 8-3 in the goldmedal game.
The success hasn’t really carried over to this year — Team Homan ranks seventh in the Canadian Team Ranking System standings — but everything has been geared toward peaking in this event, with the most coveted prize on the line.
“I don’t think success really carries forward,” Homan said. “You have to be continually getting better as a team. This is what we prepared for, to be our best at this event. We’ve put everything we can into that.”
Homan is one of the co-favourites in the women’s draw, along with 2014 Olympic gold medallist Jennifer Jones.
On the men’s side, the clear favourite in an extremely strong field is Newfoundland and Labrador’s Brad Gushue. His team not only won the Brier and the world championship earlier this year, but is the top team in the CTRS rankings this season.
“Last year is a different year but we’re also playing pretty good this year,” Gushue said. “The confidence that we have is that we know if we play as good as we can, we’re going to be there at the end of the week, not necessarily winning the event, but we will be there at playoff time.”
Gushue and his third Mark Nichols were part of Canada’s gold-medal winning squad at the Olympics in Turin in 2006. But until last year, Gushue had never won a Brier.
“It was kind of the monkey off the back,” said Gushue, a 37-yearold from St. John’s.
“It really kind of freed us up and made us feel like we can just put some icing on the cake or gravy on the fries and just go out and play.”
THE MEDALS CREWS
They are flying under the radar as the Canadian Olympic curling trials and that’s just the way they want it. While there are many big names in the field of nine men’s and nine women’s teams — 13 competitors have won Olympic gold medals — there are many more who are simply thrilled to be considered underdogs.
Teams skipped by Brendan Bottcher, Steve Laycock and John Epping on the men’s side and Julie Tippin, Casey Scheidegger and Allison Flaxey on the women’s side would all qualify as long shots to represent Canada at the Olympics and yet they can all draw inspiration from teams who surprised at previous Olympic trials.
“If you look back, three, four Olympic cycles, there’s been a lot of underdog teams come through it at the end,” said Bottcher, a 25-year-old from Edmonton. “There’s a lot that goes into that. There’s certainly a lot less pressure when you are one of the last seeds. You can just come out here and relax.”
Bottcher was the last team to qualify for the trials, through the recent pre-trials tournament in Prince Edward Island.
“If you’ve been here before, you know what it feels like to win, so that’s certainly a plus, but you’re also expected to win, and that’s a negative,” Bottcher said.
“For us, really, being here is the victory. If we can come out and put in a good week, it’s all gravy. Whereas there are some teams here that, if they don’t win it, they’re disappointed. We have a little bit of a different outlook on that and that’s a good thing.”
Tippin, a 34-year-old from Woodstock, Ont., was also the last to qualify through the pre-trials. Three years ago when she formed her team, she never thought they’d even get this far. “We started off playing pretty locally and we did well right away and after that we started travelling across Canada and internationally. We realized pretty quickly that we could compete at this level with these teams.”
Scheidegger, a 29-year-old teacher from Lethbridge, Alta., considered the Olympic trials to be little more than a dream a year ago. But her team put together such a strong 2016-17 season that it found itself in the mix for a direct entry into the trials
“At first we thought we were probably going to get into the pretrials, so that’s pretty exciting,” Scheidegger said. “Then after we won the Meridian Open, (Curling Canada coach) Paul Webster called us and said, ‘You should probably start thinking about the trials.’ It was unbelievable but it was obviously pretty exciting and it was something that we had always hoped to do.”
SENIOR MOMENT
Regina’s Michelle Englot, who is curling out of Winnipeg, was pretty much winding down her lengthy curling career five years ago. She was approaching 50 and wasn’t sure there was room for her on the competitive circuit. “I had geared it back,” she said. On Saturday she’ll skip a team in the Olympic curling trials, looking to follow up on the success her team had last year, which won the Manitoba championship and made it to an extra end before losing the national Scotties Tournament of Hearts to Rachel Homan.
“Extra end, last shot, that’s pretty close,” Englot said. “What we did at the Scotties is what we’re hoping to do here.”
Englot, at 53 is the oldest competitor in the Olympic trials.