Climbing to the top of the world can be a slippery slope to summit for Canadian curlers.
The men haven’t won worlds since Glenn Howard in 2012, the 34th for Canada, and the last women’s rink to pull off the feat was Jennifer Jones in 2008 for Canada’s 15th.
“That gives you an idea what the international level is like,” said Marc Kennedy, of St. Albert and the third for Team Canada.
Worlds start Saturday in Basel, Switzerland and the first game for the Brier champions is against Aku Kauste of Finland, the fourth-place finisher at the 2015 worlds in Halifax.
Niklas Edin of Sweden and Thomas Ulsrud of Norway, last year’s gold and silver medallists, respectively, are among the favourites to medal again.
“We’re going to play a lot of teams that we’ve played (against on the World Curling Tour) in the last few years so the field is deep and strong,” Kennedy said. “We’re also out of our element being in a different country. You always have to take that into effect as well but we’re confident and we’re playing good. We’ll give it everything we have and see how it goes.”
Kennedy, 34, will curl in his third worlds with lead Ben Hebert but their first with skip Kevin Koe and second Brent Laing. Both are former world champions.
Kennedy and Hebert celebrated a world championship in 2008 in Grand Forks, ND and were silver medallists the next year in Moncton with skip Kevin Martin and third John Morris. Both finals were against David Murdoch of Scotland.
“Not having a full stadium of fans and not having Canadians around us, it’s just a different feeling but it’s something we’re really going to relish and look forward to and see how it goes,” Kennedy said.
In January, the first rink to qualify for the 2017 Roar of the Rings Olympic Trials as winners of the 2015 Home Hardware Canada Cup competed in the Perth Masters in Scotland and beat Ulsrud 7-4 in the final for a payout of $13,356.
“One of the reasons we went over to Scotland was to get some more experience overseas because the ultimate goal is getting to the Olympics and if we happen to do that they would be in South Korea. Everything you have to deal with overseas – the jet lag, food and lack of sleep – it just gets you out of your comfort zone and it’s hard to curl really well when you’re out of your comfort zone so we wanted to be comfortable being uncomfortable and the experience in Scotland really helped us and it’s going to prepare us well for Switzerland,” Kennedy said. “We’re not overly concerned being in Switzerland but it’s still something you have to think about.”
At the Brier, the 9-5 victory in nine ends over Brad Gushue of Newfoundland and Labrador in the March 13 final not only punched Team Alberta’s ticket to worlds, it marked the third Brier championship in seven appearances for Kennedy, the third in six years for Koe and the third as well for Laing, the former second for Howard, and Hebert.
“When you’re a bit younger and you win you just feel like you’re going to win all the time,” said Kennedy, a back-to-back Brier champion in 2008-09 with Martin, Morris and Hebert. “It was wonderful but again I thought I would win 10 Briers and now that it’s been seven years to get back and win the way we did against the field we won against is a special feeling. We really enjoyed every minute of it knowing that we might never get back. You never know so we tried to relish everything.”
Next year they will be Team Canada at the Brier in St. John’s, Nfld.
“We don’t have to battle all the tough Alberta teams so that’s nice,” Kennedy said. “Winning a Brier gives you a lot of opportunities and lots of chances to do some great things.”
After the Brier, the Glencoe Club rink from Calgary was back on the ice a few days later in Victoria at the Elite 10 on the Grand Slam of Canada tour. The trip ended with a semifinal loss and $14,000 in prize money.
“We were tired but it was also a nice chance for the four of us to spend some time together and enjoy our victory at the Brier,” Kennedy said. “We’ve had two weeks here to kind of get the body and mind refreshed and ready for a long week in Switzerland. It’s going to be a lot of adversity and a lot of great teams. We’re going to have to battle hard but we’re going to go in refreshed and excited and hopefully we can get on the same roll we did at the Brier because if we do that we’ll be tough to beat.”
As for directional sweeping, a Brier first this year, Kennedy is not sure how the technique involving one curler sweeping at a time instead of two will unfold at worlds.
“If you watch the women (at worlds in Swift Current) they’re still doing it so the rules are very similar, it just depends how adamant they want to enforce them. Being in Canada for the women I think they’re being quite lenient on it. Being overseas, we might see a little more strictness when it comes to what we can do with the brooms but we’ll gauge that as necessary. One thing we’ve done really well all year – no matter what the rules, no matter what the fabric, no matter what – we’ve adapted really well because we still feel like we have the best sweepers in the world so give us anything and we’ll manage,” said the 2010 Olympic gold medallist.
“The funny thing is that almost everybody has been doing directional sweeping for a long time. The difference now is that people understand what the fabrics can do so for a long time we never understood how powerful a hair broom was or how powerful a fresh synthetic broom was but now that the sport has evolved a bit we’re aware of what we can do and that’s what made directional sweeping the big thing in curling. The technique hasn’t really changed, it’s just the materials are the biggest thing and we’re still trying to get a handle on where to go in the sport in general in the next couple of years.”
