He’s no ordinary Joe curler

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This article was published 09/04/2009 (6313 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Bored to death yet?

If you are, you’ve certainly got company among the legions of Canadian curling fans who are having a hard time getting excited about watching Canada’s Kevin Martin throttle every opponent that’s been thrown at him at the World Men’s Curling Championship in Moncton, N.B., this week.

With two more convincing victories Wednesday — 12-4 over Finland in the morning and 10-6 over the United States in the afternoon — Martin heads into the final day of the round robin today with first place already clinched, a perfect 9-0 record and an eye-popping 33 wins in his last 35 games — a run that goes all the way back to the Alberta provincials in Wainwright two months ago and was marred only by a couple of hiccups at last month’s Canada Cup.

Take the Canada Cup out of the mix , which took place just days after an exhausting 13-0 run by Martin in winning the Brier, and he hasn’t been beaten since February.

Which is good for him, of course. Great for him, in fact, as he gears up for next winter’s Olympic Trials, where he’ll be the overwhelming favourite to win — in front of a rabid hometown Edmonton crowd — the right to represent Canada in Vancouver.

And it’s good for the country generally, for that matter. Because unless one of the other coaches in Moncton orders some goon to go out the next couple of days and go all Bobby Clarke on one of Martin’s ankles, the Edmonton skip and his foursome are going to repeat as world champions this Sunday and Canada is going to add to its record number of world titles.

So, yeah, good for Martin and good for Canadian curling. But for the fans? Not so much.

Because let’s face it — this kind of dominance is boring to watch. It was boring in Calgary when Martin steamrolled everyone all week long, going undefeated for the second year in a row at Canada’s marquee curling event.

And it’s boring this week again. You could have saved the airfares and simply skipped the whole event in Moncton, placed Martin in the final and pulled another country out of the hat, and you’d have gotten the same result as the one we’ll get on Sunday. Which is precisely what you’d have gotten in Calgary if you used the same formula there too.

But if you find this boring, you’d better get used to it, says the man who Martin beat in the Brier final in Calgary.

Jeff Stoughton says what we’ve been witnessing with Martin the past two winters is the professionalization of curling and the death knell for the quaint notion that anyone with a little talent and a little luck can become a curling champion.

"That’s where the next generation of curling is going to go. No question," Stoughton said. "If the goal is to win world and Olympic medals, then that’s what we do in every other sport. Speedskaters train and devote their entire lives for four years to get to the Olympics. They don’t do anything else. There might be some part-time jobs here and there, but every other sport that you look at, all they do is their sport.

"And that’s what Kevin’s team does. They put a lot more time in than the average Joe who just loves the game and wants to win."

And it’s not like Canada is the only country with one dominant team, says Stoughton, pointing at China, which effectively has one women’s team in the entire country — Bingyu Wang’s crew — which also now just happens to the reigning world champion.

Wang’s also been accused of being boring, but Stoughton says the fans love exciting, edge-of-your-seat teams only until they flirt with disaster one too many times and become losing teams. And hello, Jennifer Jones.

"Maybe we’re too kind in Canada," says Stoughton. "Personally, I don’t have a problem with dominating."

And besides, there can be another game to watch when a team like Martin gets on the kind of roll they are on in Moncton, Stoughton says.

"The only way they’re going to lose," he says, "is if they beat themselves."

Now that would finally be some excitement in Moncton — a final pitting Kevin Martin against Kevin Martin.

paul.wiecek@freepress.mb.ca

 

 

What makes them so good

1. He doesn’t miss. No matter how well you shoot in curling, you still need your opponent to miss in order to score. And Kevin Martin almost never misses. He throws so many rocks in practice all year long, that his mechanics are almost flawless and his consistency almost robotic. And just as important, he thrives under pressure and almost never gets rattled in the hack, no matter how tense the situation.

2. He has the horses. Martin third John Morris is a former world junior champion and also skipped his own team all the way to a Brier final in 2002. Morris could skip just about any top team in Canada; having him play third is like batting Derek Jeter in the seven hole. Second Marc Kennedy and lead Ben Hebert are exceptional shooters, but it’s their sweeping — and the extra margin of error it provides the Martin team — that sets them apart.

3. He plays more than anyone else. Martin and his teammates are as close to professional curlers as anyone has seen. There are even rumours that Morris, Hebert and Kennedy draw a salary from Martin, while Martin collects the winnings and sponsorships. Martin has refused to discuss the team’s financial arrangement but what is clear is that they curl more — in practice and in games — than any other team out there. The result is predictable — they also play better than anyone else out there.

 

 

Standings (Following Draw 13)

W L

Canada (Martin) 9 0

Norway (Ulsrud) 6 2

Germany (Kapp) 5 3

Scotland (Murdoch) 5 3

U.S. (Shuster) 4 4

Denmark (Schmidt) 4 4

Switzerland (Stoeckli) 4 4

France (Dufour) 4 6

China (Wang) 3 6

Japan (Morozumi) 3 6

Czech Rep. (J.Snitil) 2 6

Finland (Kiiskinen) 1 7

 

WEDNESDAY RESULTS

Canada 12 Finland 4

Canada 9 U.S. 6

 

TODAY’S GAMES

Denmark vs. Canada (8 a.m.)

Canada vs. Scotland (5:30 p.m.)

 

End of round robin