Friday, February 22, 2002
They're catching us
By TERRY JONES -- Edmonton Sun
OGDEN, Utah -- They were voices Canadians refused to hear in hockey back in the '50s and early '60s.
Teams like the Edmonton Mercurys, Penticton Vees and Trail Smoke Eaters would come back from Olympics and world championships and try to convince Canada that the rest of the world was learning how to play our game.
They'd come home and say that the Russians and Czechs and Swedes and Finns were learning to play our game so well that one day we wouldn't be winning Olympic golds and world championships at will anymore.
Nobody wanted to hear that. Next to nobody chose to believe it. And Canada probably won't listen to Kevin Martin say the same thing about curling today either.
On the eve of his gold-medal game in curling, the Edmonton skip is saying the same things about the other game which is so tied to our national ego, the one where Canadians consider that there's only one medal worth bringing home and that's the gold.
SEEING AHEAD
For the second consecutive Olympics, Canada is coming home with medals of one colour or another in both men's and women's curling. But Martin foresees the day coming, and coming soon, when a Canadian team won't win a medal. He sees a day when a Canadian rink won't even make it to the medal round.
"The Canadian public hasn't seen it yet," Martin said yesterday. "But we have. It's coming. The longer it goes, the more difficult it's going to get for Canada to win this thing. The next Olympics is going to be a real battle for the Canadian teams. It's been a real battle for us here."
Lead Don Bartlett says he and third Don Walchuk were talking about it the other day.
"In the last three or four years, we've been able to see it coming," he said.
In a way, it's the same thing that happened when the IOC put in other sports in which Canada has won lots of medals at their Olympic debuts. Like short-track speed skating. And freestyle skiing.
Put the five Olympic rings around a sport and countries start getting serious about it.
"It's the funding," says Walchuk. "The European countries are putting a lot of money into it. In the last year or two these rinks have been spending two or three months in Canada. They might as well be Canadians," said Bartlett.
Canadians expect their rinks to win almost all their games and most of them big. They know the Canadian rinks can stumble in one key game, like Kelley Law here and Mike Harris in Nagano and Martin himself at a couple of world championships.
"We've had some games end up as blowouts," said Walchuk. "But in the first five or six ends they curled with us. Next Olympics, a lot of those rinks will have the experience not to let some of those games get away."
Martin says he believes the men's rinks here are much better than the men's rinks in Nagano and that'll be true again times two in four years' time.
"I'd say seven teams came here with a chance to be in the medal round this time. Four years from now, there'll be teams with a good chance of winning a medal. It's training and funding. They're practising twice a day every day from July to May."
Canada's going to have to get into that game, said Martin.
"I'm not suggesting funding for Kevin Martin. I'm 35 years old. This is not about me. I'm talking about identifying that really, really sharp 18-year-old in Winnipeg, Manitoba. That's what the Europeans are doing. Look at these guys we've been playing here. They're really young. They're going to come back again and again and they're going to be better and better."
It wasn't that long ago that winning the Brier was bigger than winning the world championships in Canada. Maybe it still is. But this rink says there is nothing bigger than this and no game bigger than the one they'll play today.
Bartlett says it's not even close.
"I've spent my whole curling career waiting to play this game," said the lead who was with Martin in Albertville when curling was a very low grade demonstration sport.
Bartlett is the official team historian and statistician. He says their rink is 2-0 lifetime against Pal Trulsen of Norway and the rink they play today.
"He's not afraid to mix it up. Anybody who beat the Canadian champion twice at the world championships ..."
Trulsen beat Brier champ Randy Ferbey's Edmonton rink in both the round robin and in the semifinal at the world championships last year.
Walchuk bottom-lines it best.
"These European rinks know the game and the strategy and everything now.
"It used to be that they'd be intimidated and I wouldn't be afraid of them. But we're going into a gold-medal game today against a guy who is not intimidated. And I am scared."
'WE'RE CANADA'
So, don't get the national ego caught up in today's gold-medal final? Don't put pressure on Canada to bring back curling gold anymore?
"Nah, that's great," said Martin. "I never want that to change.
"We're Canada.
"We're always going to expect Canada to win gold in curling and hockey no matter how much better the other countries in the world get at playing our games. We went to the Canada-Finland hockey game, proud to be Canadians, and we want them to do nothing less than come home with the gold, too."
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2002 Games Curling Coverage
