We are the champions — of the curling world! ‘Pegger makes curling history

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This article was published 11/04/2005 (7801 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

VICTORIA — Winnipeg’s David Nedohin woke up here yesterday morning and decided he’d spend the day winning a world curling championship.

And then Nedohin went out in the final of the World Men’s Curling Championship and did exactly that.

Nedohin shot a blistering 95 per cent and was brilliant in authoring the first — and second — five-enders ever scored in the history of world men’s finals to lead Randy Ferbey’s Edmonton foursome to an 11-4 pummelling of Scotland’s David Murdoch.

In a week that saw Nedohin’s team forced to win eight sudden-death games in a row, yesterday’s historic victory was a joint effort as team members who had uncharacteristically struggled through the week all finally found their games here yesterday when it counted most to simply overwhelm a young Scottish squad.

But in the end — just like so many times before — yesterday’s win was all about a Winnipeg native who threw his very first rocks as a youngster at a Don Duguid clinic in Winnipeg’s Granite Curling Club — and then cried in Duguid’s lap when he burned one of them.

“I felt really comfortable this morning right from the first end, knowing that we’d have a good game and play well,” said Nedohin. “We were really confident that if we could keep our momentum going, we’d probably win today.

“We were due for one of those games and it just happened to come in the final.”

After surviving four last rock victories in their previous five games, yesterday’s game against Murdoch was over early.

Trailing 2-1 in the third end, Nedohin haired by a guard just outside the rings with the last rock of the end, chipping out a Scottish stone and scoring a decisive five-ender.

But in a week when the Canadians blew a 5-2 lead to Australia, even their 6-2 cushion over Scotland didn’t look entirely safe until the seventh end.

That’s when Nedohin haired by another guard and chipped out another Scottish stone for yet another five-ender and an 11-3 lead.

The Scots drew to an empty house with the last rock of the next end, taking one and conceding defeat.

“They just made all the shots that end,” Murdoch said of Canada’s first five-ender, “and we didn’t. It was a bit of a shocker of an end.

“But we’re a young team. Hopefully, we can come back and do what Randy’s team has done.”

That will be a tall order. Yesterday’s victory for the Ferbey foursome — Ferbey, Nedohin, second Scott Pfeifer and lead Marcel Rocque — was dripping with history:

Their third world title in four years.

Ferbey’s fourth world title, making him the first men’s curler to win four world titles in more than 40 years and putting him in the select company of only the legendary Ernie, Arnold and Sam Richardson of Saskatchewan, who pulled off the feat with their fourth title in five years way back in 1963.

The first men’s team to win a Canadian or world championship coming through the tiebreakers of the page playoffs.

And Canada’s record 29th world curling championship, dating back to the start of the men’s worlds in 1959.

“Not bad for a bunch of four burned-out curlers,” Ferbey joked afterward.

The 45-year-old skip was referring to speculation earlier in the week, when the team was in danger of missing the playoffs with a 4-3 round-robin record, that perhaps the foursome had exhausted themselves in a gruelling winter where they attempted to become Canada’s first professional curlers.

“I’ll never forget this victory,” said Rocque. “It’s the best one by far. We stuck it out as a team and fought it out for Canada.”

While he never admitted it during the week, Nedohin finally conceded yesterday that there were times over the past week when he started to have doubts.

“You start to think maybe it’s not our week,” he said. “But all you can do is play as well as you can and as hard as you can. And if it’s meant to be, it will happen.”

Although they’ve rewritten curling’s record books in recent years, the biggest prize in curling is still in front of them at next December’s Olympic Trials in Halifax, where Canada’s curling representatives for the 2006 Winter Olympics will be decided.

“We’ve got one last goal,” said Ferbey, “and that’s to represent Canada at the Olympics.”

paul.wiecek@freepress.mb.ca