The road to the PyeongChang 2018 Olympics runs through Ottawa for St. Albert curler Marc Kennedy.
The southpaw third for the Kevin Koe rink slides into his fourth Canadian Olympic Trials after the defending provincial champions won the 12th edition of the Home Hardware Canada Cup on Sunday in Grande Prairie.
“It’s huge for our team, just huge,” Kennedy said with a sigh of relief on Monday morning. “Our number one goal is to get to those Olympic trials and try our best to win it so to wrap up a spot this early is really good.”
It’s the first men’s berth to the Tim Hortons Roar of the Rings in December of 2017 in the nation’s capital. The bonspiel will decide the Canadian reps at the Winter Olympics in South Korea.
“That Olympic trials is going to be a really tough event to qualify for and I think it was going to get very stressful for a lot of teams over the next two years. That stress is on everybody, especially the families when you’re gone so much,” said Kennedy, an Olympic gold medallist with the Kevin Martin rink in 2010.
Team Koe, with Brent Laing at second and Ben Hebert, was formed last season with the 2018 Olympics as the end goal.
“There is never a lot of certainty in the sport of curling so any time you can wrap up a spot in a big event two years down the road, it helps you plan and that’s the biggest advantage,” said Kennedy, 33. “We can play the events that we think can help us the most. We can avoid what we call the point’s chase, where you’re going to every event in Canada just to try and pick up Canadian team ranking points and that wears you down. You feel like you’re grinding so much and by the time you get to the Olympic trials you’re exhausted. This way we can plan our schedule around peaking for those trials and not being burnt out.
“This will be my fourth Olympic trials and I’ve always qualified for them early and it’s a huge blessing in disguise.”
Team Koe also pocketed $21,500 at the Canada Cup – $14,000 for winning the event and $1,500 for each of their five round-robin victories – and qualified for the 2016 World Financial Group Continental Cup next month in Las Vegas.
The men’s draw at the Canada Cup featured the 2015 Brier champion, Pat Simmons of Calgary, the defending Canada Cup champion, Mike McEwen of Winnipeg, and the next six highest qualified teams from the 2014/15 Canadian Team Ranking System.
Team Koe finished 7-2 overall after defeating McEwan 7-3 in nine ends in the final.
“The event is so hard. All the teams are so good that the round robin is actually the really stressful part because you can easily go 1-6 or 6-1, you don’t really know how the week is going to play,” Kennedy said. “Once you put yourself in a playoff position it almost freezes you up to just go out and play your best because the week has already been a success. You’re playing these eight best teams in Canada and to make it to the final three is an accomplishment in itself.
“Yeah, there is stress and pressure in those final two games but it’s more of an excitement because you have a great opportunity to do something awesome.”
Team Koe, featuring eight Brier and five world champions and two Olympic gold medallists, proved they still had the right stuff after last season’s debut as a foursome that included a fifth-place 6-5 record at the Brier in Calgary.
“This is the best we’ve played as a team in the last two years. That’s the team we expected we would be when we put this team together so it was kind of a validation to us that we’re on the right track,” said Kennedy, a two-time Brier winner and 2008 world champion with the Martin lineup of John Morris and Hebert. “We played really well the whole week and everything kind of went our way. I think we were 90 per cent as a team the whole week. We had only one game where we didn’t really play great and that was against John Epping (9-5 loss) in the round robin.”
The winners of the inaugural 2015 Tour Challenge, their first Grand Slam victory as a team, advanced into the Canada Cup playoffs with a 5-2 record and in the semifinal edged Epping of Toronto 7-6.
In the final, the Calgary-based rink never trailed after counting one in the first end and then surged ahead in three by splitting the house for a deuce to make it 3-1. They split the house again in six, forcing McEwen to draw to the four-foot for one while facing three Koe counters to go into seven down 3-2 without the hammer.
Both skips pulled off exceptional shots in seven and Koe delivered his last shot through a small opening for a freeze on the button to secure one.
In nine, Koe pulled off a skinny double-takeout to score three for the win.
“Having the hammer, we never lost control and Kevin just played great (at 92 per cent). He knows how to turn it up a notch for big games. It’s fun to watch. I just stand in the house and tell him where to put the rock and he does it so it was pretty special,” Kennedy said.
On tap next is the Canadian Open, a Grand Slam event this week in Yorkton, for the No. 2 rink on the World Curling Tour money list at $89,500. Brad Gushue of St. John’s, Nfld. is first at $114,551.
Team Koe also wants another shot at the Brier and provincials are Feb. 10 to 14 in Camrose.
In six Brier appearances, Kennedy was the second-team all-star at third in 2015 after five selections at second in 2007, 2008, 2009 and 2011 on the first team and 2013 on the second team by the Paul Kane High School alumnus.
