CNS-UPDATE-OLY-CURL-WOMEN-ALL

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 17/02/2010 (5944 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

VANCOUVER — On Monday — the eve of their Olympic debut — Cheryl Bernard’s Canadian women’s curling team headed to the UBC Thunderbird Arena to take in the Switzerland-Canada women’s hockey game.

The noise that accompanied each Canadian goal simply blew the curlers away.

“The crowd was just fantastic,” recalled Team Canada lead Cori Bartel. “So we kind of thought, maybe it’ll be like that.”

Maybe? Make that definitely.

When Bernard’s last rock in the 10th end ground to a halt in the four-foot to give Team Canada a gritty 5-4 win over Switzerland’s Mirjam Ott on Tuesday afternoon at the Vancouver Olympic Centre, it got the kind of pop from the pro-Canadian crowd that left the home players shaking their heads in wonder afterwards.

Never mind the victory over one of the gold-medal favourites and a two-time Olympic silver medallist. How about that crowd?

“It was really great,” said Canadian vice-skip Susan O’Connor. “Someone asked me if that was the loudest crowd we’ve ever played in front of, and I was like, uh, yeah. The whole week will be an experience that will never be replicated. It’s pretty awesome.”

It took some getting used to, though. Fans unaccustomed to curling etiquette yelled at inappropriate times, and even O’Connor was picked up on the TV broadcast muttering “jackass” when a fan yelled just as second Carolyn Darbyshire was about to let go of her rock.

“It’s just people who don’t know curling etiquette, right?” said O’Connor. “Their hearts were in the right place. They’re probably thinking that they’re cheering us on, and you just don’t hear that normally. We’ll just have to get used to it.”

“Oh my God, I have a pounding headache — it’s the adrenalin and having to yell so loud,” added Bernard with a laugh. “It’s a little weird to get used to that. I’ve never heard that before in my life, except at a (Calgary) Flames game.”

Bernard earned it with a smartly called game that featured a defensive start, a terrific shot in the ninth end when she hit and rolled frozen onto a Swiss stone to force Ott to draw for a single, and then the game-winning in-turn draw to the four-foot — the same shot Canadian men’s skip Kevin Martin had to make earlier in the day to beat Norway.

As Team Canada men’s vice-skip John Morris put that one, “I don’t think he’s missed too many of those in his career.”

Well, in fact, there was one, and the man Canadian skip against whom Martin (with different teammates then) missed it back in the 2002 Winter Olympic gold-medal game, Pal Trulsen, was sitting right behind him Tuesday morning at the Vancouver Olympic Centre. This time, there was no problem. Playing in front of perhaps the liveliest crowd ever assembled for a curling game, Martin made the draw for a 7-6 extra-end win over Norway’s Thomas Ulsrud to open the Olympic men’s tournament.

The Canadian men added a 9-4 win over Germany in the late draw.

— Canwest News Service