PICKERING -- Two curling events remain for the Glenn Howard foursome in the 2007-08 season, but vice and Pickering resident Richard Hart will only be on the ice for one.
The Howard rink, which makes its curling home out of the Coldwater and District Curling Club, near Orillia, will compete in the Bear Mountain Arena Classic in Victoria, B.C. and the Tylenol Players Championship in St. John’s, Nfld. -- both part of the World Curling Tour -- next month.
Hart, however, will bypass the Victoria event and join teammates Howard, Craig Savill and Brent Laing to finish the season in Canada’s easternmost city from April 15 to 20.
Quite simply, the wear and tear of a long and ultra-competitive curling season -- including a close 5-4 Brier final loss by the Ontario rink to Alberta’s Kevin Martin rink in Winnipeg last Sunday -- has taken its toll on the 38-year-old, who’s been curling alongside Howard for the past eight years.
“I’ve taken too much time (off work) already, because it’s already been a long season, so I’ll be unable to make that one,” says Hart, noting he and his teammates agreed that, if they qualified for the Brier, he would take one of the two remaining events off.
“It’s complicated juggling work, family and curling; it’s unreal.”
The memory of Alberta skip Martin drawing to the button with the final rock in the 10th end for the Brier win is still fresh in his mind, denying the Howard rink the chance at a repeat Canadian championship and an opportunity for a second consecutive world championship.
There’s disappointment, yes, but Hart says it’s tempered with satisfaction with the foursome’s never-say-die character as it relates to the Ontario team’s courageous run through the page playoff game (a 9-7 win over B.C’s Bob Ursel) and the semifinal (a 8-7 victory over Saskatchewan’s Pat Simmons) in order for a shot at a Brier repeat.
“Absolutely. There’s always disappointment when you make it to the Brier final and lose it,” says Hart. “But, I’m pretty proud of making it back to the provincials and then making it to the (Brier) finals. It’s tough to lose it on the last shot, but that’s the way it goes. We fought hard right to the end and I’m so proud of that.”
Hart concedes the troublesome ice conditions at the Brier final proved difficult for both teams to handle, but he was unwilling to call the ice at Winnipeg’s MTS Centre the prime factor in the loss -- a factor, but not the only one.
“It was, for sure, a source of frustration,” acknowledges Howard. “It does occasionally happen in curling. It was fairly major to have the curling change (for the final), but we had to make the proper adjustments to keep playing at the same level. It created a lot of doubt and frustration on both sides. The ice conditions added one more factor into the mix and it worked against us this time.
“It was a contributing factor for sure but, at the end of the day, it’s a coin flip between the two teams. They’re a good team and we feel we’re a pretty good team. We’re two teams that meet all the time and it’s 50-50 who will win.”
A Brier victory would have also guaranteed the Howard rink a spot in the Olympic trials for the 2010 Olympic Winter Games in Vancouver-Whistler. Those trials are expected to take place in Edmonton in December, 2009. Hart notes, however, that his rink still has a great opportunity to be one of the four men’s teams to earn a bye into the trials.
“We have one-and-a-half years to claim that spot and we would have to virtually fall down not to get a spot,” says Hart, who already owns an Olympic silver medal from the 1998 Games in Nagano, Japan.
The Howard rink is one of 16 teams expected to compete at the Tylenol Players Championship in St. John’s, the wrap-up event to the World Curling Tour. With $100,00 in prize money, the Howard foursome seeks to improve on the $95,795 they’ve earned on the tour this season.