Kevin Martin’s team has been touring the country as rock stars after winning their Curling Olympic Gold Medals. This weekend they are in Halifax, Nova Scotia and autograph seekers are waiting in long line-ups just for the chance to have something signed. There is one other event going on in Halifax this week: The Brier – The Canadian Men’s Curling Championship. An event that Martin’s team is not competing in.

Curling has never had as much exposure as it had at the Olympics with up to 6.9 million people in Canada watching a portion of the Gold Medal game from Vancouver during the Olympics. People who have never tried Curling across Canada and the United States are visiting Curling clubs to give the sport a try after becoming interested from watching the hours of coverage available during the Winter Games. The Brier could capitalize on the enthusiasm with thousands of new viewers tuning in looking to get their Curling fix only a short week after Canada’s Gold Medal victory. This new and less Curling savvy audience will likely be tuning in to see Kevin Martin and his team of John Morris, Marc Kennedy and Ben Hebert compete against the best Men’s teams from Canada. The sad thing is that they won’t see his team there because of the Canadian Curling Association’s (CCA) choice to not give the defending champion a bye to the Brier like they do for the women at the Scotties Tournament of Hearts.

Kevin Martin chose not to play in Alberta playdowns after winning the Canadian Olympic Trials in order to focus on winning Gold in Vancouver. In order to play in the Alberta Championship, his team would have had to play up until the day before departing for Vancouver which undoubtedly would have left them fatigued heading into the Olympics. Very few people could have questioned the choice to only focus on the Olympics. Martin’s team is the first Brier champion to win Olympic Trials in the same year. But, the CCA should have known this was inevitably going to happen. The year long marketing possibilities that are being missed by not having the returning champion participating are huge and the fact that you have an Olympic Gold Medalist signing autographs instead of playing is even greater.

Men’s Curling can learn something from Women’s Curling and Scott Paper. Having the defending champion return to the Canadian Championship has worked well for the women and can work just as well for the men. It’s time the CCA made the change, especially this year with the best and most recognizable team in the world not throwing a single stone.

Eight years later, Canada’s Kevin Martin finally has redemption for his missed opportunity at Gold in 2002. The Canadian team dominated the competition during the Olympic tournament becoming the first team ever to go undefeated winning the second Gold medal for Canada and the fourth medal in total in men’s Curling. Sounding relieved after the game, Martin said “Finally, it took a long time. But the hard work was worth it.”

The game turned in the fourth and fifth ends when Norway’s Thomas Ulsrud missed draws on his final shots allowing Canada to steal one in each of those ends to take a three point lead. Kevin Martin’s team hasn’t lost a game in which they had a three point lead since September 20 of 2009 and they weren’t about let it happen in the Gold medal game.

Norway managed two points in the sixth end to close the score to 3-2. In the seventh end, Norway was lying three counters when Martin went to throw Canada’s penultimate shot of the end. He froze perfectly to one of Norway’s stones on the button making it very difficult for Ulsrud to remove it. Ulsrud’s attempt almost removed it far enough but left it scoring in the eight-foot circle allowing Martin to draw for two and a commanding 5-2 lead.

Canada forced Norway to one in the eighth to take hammer into the ninth end. Norway managed to have a good end and put pressure on Canada leaving Martin looking at two Norwegian counters with one buried on the button behind a guard. Martin’s final stone of the end gently tapped the Norway’s stone back far enough to score one and recapture a three point lead.

Canada played a perfect end in the tenth end. Martin released his final stone of the Olympics knowing he had it made and finally coming through to get the Gold medal he deeply desired and one that the rest of Canada had expected from him. “I can’t explain it.” A jubilant Kevin Martin remarked. “It’s an amazing feeling and I think it will get better and better as the day goes on.”

Canadian second Marc Kennedy who’s accuracy was a sensational 95% during the game was ecstatic afterward. “Unbelievable. Incredible experience. Sense of super excitement and relief. [I] get that sense of national pride today. [This] is the best thing to be a part of, words can’t explain it.”

Thomas Ulsrud was not expected to be in the Gold Medal game and exceeded most everyone’s expectations. His Norwegian team had won two straight bronze medals at the World Championships and everyone was anticipating another game between Kevin Martin and Great Britain’s David Murdoch to complete the trilogy. Norway took the next step up on the podium but are disappointed they did not achieve Gold. “If you give me 10 minutes then I’ll probably be happy with Silver.” Ulsrud said regarding their loss. “I’m a bit disappointed right now, but I think I will still be happy with Silver. An Olympic medal was our goal. When you are in the Final you always hope to win, but I think we’ll take it. We’ll take it as a great experience. We really enjoyed it.”

Easy rests the Olympic crown on Kevin Martin’s head. Finally.

Eight years after his last shot in Salt Lake City slid far enough for silver and Norway celebrated that last half an inch for all the gold it was worth and more, the tables turned on Sunday and it was Martin at the top of his game and the podium.

Fittingly, the Edmonton skip delivered the last rock this time too, a hit-and-stick in the 10th that ran Norway’s Thomas Ulsrud out of rocks and the ghost of Salt Lake City out of the picture.

Full story -  Martin’s golden redemption – Edmonton Journal.

As the Canadian men’s curling team neared victory in the gold medal match against Norway on Saturday, the crowd in the Vancouver Olympic Centre stood and began singing “O, Canada.”

When Canadian skip Kevin Martin threw the last stone, ensuring a 6-3 victory and the gold, the Canadian players leaped into each other’s arms, women in the stands wept, and the Prime Minister cheered.

Curling is a strange sport, more housekeeping on ice than a true, death-defying, high-speed winter game, and yet it was curling that provided perhaps the quintessential Canadian moment near the end of the Vancouver Olympics.

The men’s curling gold medal match started with noise: foot-stomping, head-splitting, ground-shaking noise.

The bagpipes came next. Then the pants. Not just any pants, but checkered pants, Rodney Dangerfield meets argyle meets the jack of diamonds. They belonged to the members of Norway’s powerhouse curling team, and the pants, not the curlers, boast some 533,000 fans on Facebook.

Full story – To Delight of Crowd, Canada Wins Men’s Olympic Curling Gold – NYTimes.com.

Let me get this over right away. I was wrong about David Murdoch’s Scottish team.

I still believe the worlds field is a lot weaker than the Brier field – except for David Murdoch. There are two levels of teams at the World Championship level for men’s curling: Scotland and Canada, then everybody else. So, I don’t take that part of my previous post back. But I do take back what I said about Murdoch not being able to qualify for the Brier out of the more difficult provinces in Canada. Clearly, he can.

Who would have thought any team in the world could have beaten Kevin Martin three times in row? There were a lot of people (including me) who thought this team was close to curling invincibility. Teams all over Canada are going to be analyzing those three losses to see the strategy Murdoch employed to take down the giants. One loss to Scotland or anybody could have been considered a fluke, a bad game or lack of focus. Three losses clearly demonstrate an Achiles heel in the Martin machine.

Now the questions that come to my mind are how much are these three losses going to affect Kevin Martin and the rest of his squad? What about the strategy in the tenth end of the final? For a long, long time their minds are going to be occupied with thoughts of not peeling earlier in the end and, of course, throwing the first skip stone away. These are all things that have broken up many good teams.

We are all going to see just how strong of a unit Martin’s team is in the next year and whether they can avoid the team in-fighting that lesser teams suffer. It was clear that Ben Hebert and Marc Kennedy were less than happy with the play of John Morris in the final and we all saw Hebert’s reaction to Martin throwing away his second to last stone in the world final. If this team wants to win a gold medal at the Olympics in Vancouver next year, they will have to get over this loss very quickly. I guarantee you the teams of Glenn Howard, Randy Ferbey, Jeff Stoughton and Brad Gushue already smell blood in the water.

Martin first read of the prophecies of Nostradamus 20 years ago, and has come not only to put some faith in them, but also make decisions based in part on them.

“He’s right a lot, in my opinion,” said Martin of the controversial 16th-century figure, whose prophecies have been interpreted for centuries as foretelling various historic events. “I’m not a real book reader, but I watch any documentary on Nostradamus. It’s very interesting to me.

Did any of Nostradamus’ prophecies mention a curling team from Alberta winning 26 straight games in two Briers with some of the strongest fields ever?

Full story – Calgary Herald