SportsOlympics

Canadian curling fans jump to Homan's defence after she's grilled on national television (VIDEO)

Rob Williams
Rob Williams
|
Feb 22 2018, 1:29 am
Canadian curling fans jump to Homan's defence after she's grilled on national television (VIDEO)
Image: CBC

It’s been a rough ride for our men’s and women’s curling teams in PyeongChang.

In a country used to dominating the sport, Canadians are in disbelief watching our teams struggle on the world stage.

Since curling was reintroduced to the Winter Olympics in 1998, Canada has won a medal in every single event ever held – five men’s, five women’s, one mixed.

That streak came to a screeching halt on Tuesday night.

“We left everything out there and tried our hardest,” said Rachel Homan, as the dejected Canadian skip tried to answer difficult questions after an unthinkable result.

Not only will Homan’s rink not win a medal, they won’t even play in the semi-final. A 6-5 loss to Great Britain sealed the fate of the women’s team – giving them their fifth loss of the round robin.

Team Canada began the tournament with an 0-3 record, which proved to be too big a hole to dig themselves out of. They finished tied for fifth place with four wins and five losses.

The worst round robin record ever recorded by a Canadian curling team (men’s or women’s) prior to this year was 6-3.

When we missed out on a medal in men’s hockey in 1998, a national summit was called to fix the game in Canada. Perhaps the same will happen for curling.

“The field is really steep. There are really great teams and it’s definitely a really competitive field on the women’s side.”

Has the world caught up to Canada? Perhaps, although Homan’s team missed a number of shots that we expect our curlers to make.

The loss to Great Britain was very anti-climatic:

The post-match interview was difficult to watch, as Homan squirmed. Colleen Jones, a former two-time world champion curler who now works for the CBC, grilled her.

“When did you know the 10th end was coming off the rails?”

“How much navel gazing will Canadian curling fans do in a sport where they’re used to gold?”

“How disappointed are you?”

Here’s the full interview:

As a journalist, you can understand why Jones asked difficult questions.

But this is the Olympics, and Canadians are firmly on their athletes’ side. As upset as curling fans had to be with Homan’s performance, they came to her defence.

The responses to the video posted on Twitter by CBC, which included former gold medal figure skater Jamie Sale and Stanley Cup winner Craig Simpson, were overwhelmingly sympathetic to Homan, and angry at the interviewer.

Similar responses followed after the Team Homan Twitter account posted this humble message:

With a 6-3 record in the round robin, Kevin Koe and the Canadian men’s curling team had better results – though still not by our country’s standards. They can redeem themselves of course, needing two more wins for the gold medal.

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