Martin team making best of bad conditions

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This article was published 06/04/2009 (6337 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

MONCTON, N.B. — Ben Hebert is one of the strongest sweepers in the world, but he spent much of the opening weekend at the Ford world men’s curling championship feeling like his broom was all but useless.

The lead man for Kevin Martin’s Canadian champs — 3-0 after drilling Thomas Dufour of France 7-2 and Fengchun Wang of China 9-4 Sunday at the Moncton Coliseum — said the excess frost on the ice, caused by warm temperatures and high humidity, are making life tough not only for the men throwing the rocks, but also their teammates sweeping them.

And it’s particularly tough on a team like Canada, which boasts arguably the best front-end tandem (Hebert and second Marc Kennedy) in the field.

“One of our biggest strengths is sweeping, and we can’t use it to get around guards or drag rocks,” said the Calgary-based Hebert, who had much better conditions to work with in the late win over China. “Sweeping does nothing. If you throw it light, it doesn’t matter if its Marc and I or our moms sweeping; it ain’t going any further.

“You know what this is? It’s like women’s curling. They have no sweeping (relatively speaking), so you have to throw it where it’s going to be anyways (on the assumption that sweeping won’t help). So now we’re figuring out how hard it is to make shots as a girl. I guess it’s hard.”

Canada, which heads into play Monday tied for top spot at 3-0 with Thomas Ulsrud of Norway, has made enough of them to date.

“It’s all good so far,” said Martin, who was able to use fifth player Terry Meek of Calgary in place of Hebert after building a lead against China. “The guys are playing well. We were able to be more aggressive tonight, and if the ice stays like this, we’ll be more aggressive.”

While it’s been a grind at times on the Coliseum ice — it could get worse as rain is forecast in the Moncton area, and temperatures are going to remain above normal — Martin can see a bright side to the situation.

“This is a very good thing,” said the defending world champ from Edmonton, whose team is rounded out by third John Morris. “When we go to most arena events in Canada, the conditions are pristine. John and I have played on some adverse conditions before but Ben and Marc haven’t. So this is great for us, it really us. It might not show up on the percentage sheet, but it’s good for our team.”

“It’s not a bad thing,” added Hebert. “If we get on really good ice, to be honest, we would hammer a few teams out here. This is going to keep things a lot closer.

So, for that matter, are the rocks — the same set of granite that will be used at the Vancouver Olympics in 2010, although they’re still a work in progress in terms of finding matched pairs of rocks (in essence, two rocks that behave as similarly as possible).

The World Curling Federation says it did rock-matching tests in Scotland, and they were used during the world junior and world wheelchair championships in Vancouver earlier this year.

But Martin was skeptical about the WCF matching techniques.

“Obviously, they didn’t match them,” he said, before sarcastically adding: “They did? I guess they’re probably better than us.”

— Canwest News Service

Canada at the worlds

Sunday’s results

Canada 7 France 2

Canada 9 China 4

Today’s games

Canada vs. Czech Republic, 1 p.m. (TSN)

Canada vs. Germany, 6:30 p.m. (TSN)

STANDINGS W L

Canada (Martin) 3 0

Norway (Ulsrud) 3 0

Scotland (Murdoch) 2 1

U.S.A. (Shuster) 2 1

France (Dufour) 2 1

Czech Rep. (Snitil) 1 2

Denmark (Schmidt) 1 2

Finland (Kiiskinen) 1 2

Germany (Kapp) 1 2

Japan (Morozumi) 1 2

Switz. (Stoeckli) 1 2

China (Wang) 0 3