After two games, Canada’s Team Rachel Homan is fortunate to be 1-1 at the Winter Olympics.
The schedule to start couldn’t have been much easier for Homan and her teammates, Tracy Fleury, Emma Miskew and Sarah Wilkes, as they faced Denmark and the USA, teams that Homan had a 15-3 record against all-time before the Olympics.
But yet, the team, across the board, hasn’t played to anywhere near expectations.
Among the 10 countries competing, here’s how Homan’s team ranks compared to every player at each position through two games:
Lead – Wilkes: 10th, shooting 76.5 per cent
Second – Miskew: ninth, shooting 76.5 per cent
Third – Fleury: eighth, shooting 75.7 per cent
Skip – Homan: sixth, shooting 74.3 per cent
If this is the level Canada is going to play at all week, they won’t be able to medal, or even make the playoffs, and Homan knows it.
“Just not making the shots we normally make,” Homan told CBC Olympics after losing 9-8 to the U.S. on Friday. “I think the ice was fairly consistent. We just need to play better than that.”
On both occasions, Homan wasn’t great.
For Homan, this isn’t something new on the Olympic stage. This is the third Olympics in a row she’s wearing the Maple Leaf. In 2018, she wore it while playing with Miskew in the women’s discipline, while in 2022, she played with John Morris in the mixed doubles competition.
-
-
Women’s Olympic curling standings, schedule, results
Team Rachel Homan will try to get Canada back on the Olympic podium for the first time since 2014 this month in Italy. Follow all the action with Sportsnet.
In 2018, she averaged 78 per cent across nine games, and in 2022 (albeit a different style of play for mixed doubles) shot 72 per cent in nine games as well.
Both times, Homan failed to reach the playoffs.
Now, in her third Olympics, the pressure to not only medal, but win, couldn’t be higher for Homan. It’s for good reason, because when she’s on her game, no one in the world can compare to her right now.
Even though Homan’s team lost to the Americans – marking the first time in women’s Olympic curling that Canada has lost to the USA – they showed fight and even had a chance to force an extra end. Obviously, it’s a difficult loss, especially since they couldn’t make many shots, but their attitude stayed positive the whole time.
That was important because going forward, they will need to shoot better (obviously), but even if they can’t seem to find elite form, keeping their positive attitude will help them stay in games where they could potentially earn a miss from another team to steal a game.
It was a busy day for the two Canadian teams as, combined, they played in all three draws; here are the full results from Friday.
Women’s results from Friday, Feb 13. (Full scores and standings)
Draw 3
Sweden 6, Denmark 5
Switzerland 7, China 5
U.S. 9, Canada 8
Korea 9, Great Britain 3
Men’s results from Friday, Feb 13. (Full scores and standings)
Draw 3
Canada 6, U.S. 3
Italy 9, Great Britain 7
Norway 8, China 6 (EE)
Switzerland 7, Czechia 6
Draw 4
Switzerland 9, China 7
Norway 7, Czechia 4
Germany 6, Italy 5
Canada 8, Sweden 6
Jacobs is playing out of his mind
The last time a Canadian men’s team won the gold medal at the Olympics, it was Brad Jacobs in 2014. That was also the first and only time representing the country, until now.
12 years later, Jacobs is getting the chance to play on the biggest stage, and it’s clear he’s got one thing on his mind: bring the gold back to Canada.
Even with all the distractions in the Sweden game on Friday, Jacobs played incredibly and was the best player on the team, making timely shots at each end, while calling a great game.
Through three games, only Switzerland’s Benoit Schwarz-van Berkel has shot better than him amongst all fourth-stone throwers. Berkel sits at 91.8 per cent, while Jacobs sits at 90.8 per cent.
In Canada’s first game of the day on Friday, they faced off against the U.S., and until the fourth end, there wasn’t really much happening.
The American skip, Daniel Casper, made a great draw, which the team celebrated as if Jacobs had no chance to score. He took that personally and dialled up a beautiful hit through a tight port to score two points, wiping the smiles off the U.S. team’s faces.
During the eighth end of that game, Jacobs knew he was in the zone and wanted to put pressure on the U.S. to possibly get a steal, while his teammates wanted to play it safe and force for one.
After a long talk, Jacobs convinced the team of his way and backed it up by making two great shots. Casper had nothing but a long-angled runback on the outside with his last and ended up giving Canada a steal of two to take a 6-2 lead.
-
-
Men’s Olympic curling standings, schedule, results
Team Brad Jacobs will aim to get Canada back on top of the Olympic podium for men’s curling for the first time since 2014 this month in Italy. Follow all the action with Sportsnet.
Jacobs, though, isn’t letting himself get ahead of anything.
“I just think we’ve done a really good job of detaching ourselves from the results and just focusing on the things that need to be focused on in order to execute,” Jacobs said, per the Canadian Olympic Committee. “We’ve been saying for quite a while now, the importance of staying loose and playing free, and I think what you’re seeing is us executing on that, which allows us to make a lot of shots.”
Coming into the Olympics, Jacobs wasn’t playing great. At the last Grand Slam of Curling event in January, he had a disappointing show, finishing 1-4.
Now, he looks like nobody will stop him.
Drama makes curling better
Listen, at the end of the day, no matter how you feel about drama occurring in curling, we can all agree Friday has to be the most entertaining day of curling we’ve seen in a long time.
It had everything. Upsets, near-fights and even crowd drama.
Every four years, people rave about curling being a sport they love to watch, but it’s only for those couple of weeks with the backing of the Olympic games that the viewership of curling is at that level.
In 2026, curling is starting to pick up steam as a worldwide sport. So much so, even a professional curling league is launching in April by Nic Sulsky, CEO of The Curling Group.
So, all this drama is only a good thing for the sport of curling to keep growing.
Isn’t the saying, ‘all publicity is good publicity’?
Olympic curling continues on Saturday, starting at 3:05 a.m. ET/ 12:05 a.m. PT. Canada’s Team Homan will take on Great Britain at that time before facing Switzerland at 1:05 p.m. ET/10:05 a.m. PT.
Jacobs’ Team will go against Switzerland in their lone match of the day at 8:05 a.m. ET/ 5:05 a.m. PT.
Each team will play nine round-robin games, and the top four teams will advance to the semifinals.
