Two losses tops.
“Two might be too many,” said Randy Ferbey. “You might have three teams at 6-1.
“Two bad games and you might not get a playoff game. Heck you might not even have to play two bad games. You may have two great games played against you.”
Kevin Martin agrees.
“Four and three could leave you on the outside looking in and going home,” he said.
“You have to start at 4-0 or no worse than 3-1,” adds Martin. “There are going to be a lot of close games.”
These men know of what they speak.
Four years ago in Halifax the question was whether Randy Ferbey or Kevin Martin would win the Tim Hortons Roar of the Rings and proceed to the Olympic Winter Games in Torino, Italy.
One or the other.
Ferbey, under the system in place at the time, had qualified over and over and over again by winning Briers and world championships and Martin was the big money winner on the World Curling Tour.
You could have received monster odds on a bet that neither of them would make it to the playoffs much less that both would end up with losing records, both at 4-5.
“The intensity and expectations and the pressure are so different from the Brier,” said Jeff Stoughton, 5-4 in his first two trials and the loser of the final to Brad Gushue after going 7-2 in Halifax.
“Maybe there's just too much pressure,” said Ferbey of being favored going in like Martin and Howard would be off their success these past two years.
“When you start losing, you don't know how to get out of the thing,” added the skip who lost to Martin in his first game in Halifax.
“You have to start at 4-0 or no worse than 3-1,” said Martin. “There are going to be a lot of close games.”
Wayne Middaugh had the dominating team headed into the trials in Regina four years previous, qualifying for the trials several times over as Ferbey would during the following Olympic quadrennial.
He was 2-7. Won the world championship the next year.
Mike Harris was supposedly a field-filler in Brandon four year before that.
He went to the Nagano 1998 Olympics.
“Favorites don't win this thing,” saif Ferbey.
Russ Howard was 8-10 in his two trials skipping his own team before hooking up with Brad Gushue.
“Wayne Middaugh being 5-13 at the trials just doesn't make sense,” said Ferbey of Middaugh going 3-6, 2-7 when his team was at the top.
“Curling is a funny sport. You may be No. 1 or No. 2 but what people don't realize is that No. 3 and No. 4 are real close,” said Ferbey.
Colleen Jones dominated women's curling. The most successful Canadian women's skip in history with five Scotties and two world titles, she needed her CBC credentials to get into the building four years ago at the Olympics after going 3-6 in home town Halifax.
Maybe she put it best at the time.
“When you've been so great for so long like Randy's team, there's a target on your back. Ferbey had a massive target on his back. No we have the target. They have a full landing strip.”
Jason Gunnlaugson of Winnipeg, the young gun in with all those the household names in the men's event said there's a reason for spit happening at this event.
“There's a lot less pressure on the teams not so heavily favored,” he said.
He suggests there's more pressure on more teams this year than ever before.
“There are a lot of guys who are in it for the last time and have been obsessing about it for years.”
Ferbey is 50. Glenn Howard is 47. Stoughton is 46.
On the women's side Cheryl Bernard is 43 and Shannon Kleibrink is 41.
It's a different event than any other in curling. You even cover it different. The story each day is the human drama of a big time, big name curler who has had maybe his last Olympic dream crash and burn.
