Feb 1, 2022
Getting to the podium no easy task for Team Jones
Jennifer Jones has pretty much done it all in curling, but she’s feeling like a rookie again as she prepares to head to Beijing for her second Olympics, Bob Weeks writes.
By Bob Weeks
Jennifer Jones has pretty much done it all in curling, from gold medals to world championships. Yet as she prepares to head to Beijing for her second Olympics, she feels like a raw rookie.
“I think we all feel like kids in a candy store, that it's our first time going to the Olympics,” she said of her team of Kaitlyn Lawes, Jocelyne Peterman, Dawn McEwen, and Lisa Weagle. “It's just so surreal to be going back.”
Jones, Lawes, and McEwen won gold together at the 2014 Olympics in Sochi. Weagle was part of the Canadian team skipped by Rachel Homan in 2018. Peterman is a first-time Olympian.
Lawes also won gold in 2018 in the Mixed Doubles, playing with John Morris.
Even with that wealth of experience, she is bubbling with anticipation.
“I am so excited to touch down in Beijing get to the Village with my girls,” Lawes said. “It's going to be like Christmas morning when we get there. Our suitcases with our Lululemon clothing are waiting for us and we've been seeing all the athletes trying on their clothes, so that to me is when it's really going to sink in that we are Team Canada at the Olympics.”
The team members and coaches will be jetting off from Toronto on Wednesday, taking the long route to China through Europe. They’ll play their first game a week later, taking on South Korea.
That will mark their first competitive game since they won the Canadian Curling Trials in mid-December. They’ve been hunkered down since then, first in their respective homes and more recently in Barrie, Ont., where they’ve been training and trying to limit outside contact to avoid catching COVID-19.
While some of their international opponents have been competing, Jones is taking the glass-half-full view of their situation.
“We're super grateful to be going,” she said. “We're never going to complain. It's different, but different doesn't necessarily mean bad. We’ve had the opportunity to do some really quality training, being together for so long and training every day and being able to work on some things that we wanted to work on. So, there's pros and cons to everything. We've really chosen to try to look at the positive side.”
Once the thrill settles down, there is work to do. The women’s field is extremely deep in talent and getting to the podium will be no easy feat.
Sweden’s Anna Hasselborg, Eve Muirhead of Great Britain, Switzerland’s Silvana Tirinzoni and Tabitha Peterson of the United States are among the favourites, but every team in the field is a legitimate contender to finish with a medal.
“I remember heading into Sochi, and everybody was saying it was the best field that had ever been assembled in women's curling,” Jones stated, and everybody is saying the same thing heading into Beijing. It's an outstanding field and every team is capable of winning.
“So yeah, it was a tough field back in Sochi. It's a tough field in Beijing and we're going have to play our very best in order to be on that podium.”
Since curling returned to the Olympics in 1998, Canadian women have won two gold, a silver and two bronze medals. But in PyeongChang in 2018, Homan’s squad came home empty-handed. It was a shock to Canadian curling fans but not so much to the players. The international competition has grown tougher and tougher, year after year.
Much of that is due to countries that never had so much as a curling rink 25 years ago, putting vast resources into the sport once it joined the Olympic family. Many of the world’s best teams train in Canada with Canadian coaches and play on a circuit primarily based in Canada. Their talent is such that Canada has won just twice in the past 12 women’s world championships.
While the level of play has grown internationally, the expectations of Canadian fans have remained the same. Curlers with the Maple Leaf on their uniforms are expected to win a medal.
“It's taken Canadian curling fans a little bit to realize how hard it is to actually stand on that podium,” said Jones, who went undefeated in Sochi in 2014. “It’s been trending for the last little, about the depth of the field, probably for like for 15 years so there's definitely an expectation for us to perform well and we can't guarantee the outcome.
“But I can guarantee to all of Canada that we are going to leave it all on the ice and not be scared to lose and we're going to just try our very best to win and try to do Canada proud.”