(by Larry Wood) Kevin Martin just keeps piling up the skipping laurels in the sport of curling at the highest levels.
Photo: The Kevin Martin team won its record fourth Canada
Cup
Martin has won an Olympic gold medal, a silver medal, one world title, four Briers, more cash bonspiels than he can count. And, Sunday afternoon at the Cranbrook RecPlex, he and his team of John Morris, Marc Kennedy and Ben Hebert added a record fourth Capital One Canada Cup title (for the skip), defeating long time adversary Glenn Howard of Coldwater, Ont., 7-4 in the championship final.
The big carrot that went with this victory, among other things, was the initial berth in the eight-team Tim Hortons Olympic Curling Trials slated for Winnipeg’s MTS Centre two years hence.
“We talked about that all week,” said Martin afterward. “It’s nice to get it out of the way. But like John (Morris) was saying, ‘now what do we do for two years?’
“This year is already set but next year, absolutely, we’ll have to have a team meeting and decide what we’re going to do and this will have a bearing on it, for sure.”
Added Morris, who enjoyed a 90-per-cent outing in the final: “It’s all good. It’s good that the pressure’s off to really get there (Olympic trials) in the next couple of years. I think we can just re-focus on a couple of things for the next two years rather than playing tons. We’ll make sure we’re prepared properly and our training is up to par.
“Hey, we’re excited as heck. Once you get a taste of that Olympics in Vancouver you want to get back there. Now we’re on our way and we want to be the hardest-working team over the next three years.
“We have to work harder than we’ve ever worked before. We have to find a way (to get back to the Olympics). We’ve always been a motivated bunch, and I think we have a lot of big events still to come. It’s just the motivation to win Briers, to win Grand Slams, to be the top money-winner — those are the things that will motivate us, and we always have them. We can’t slack off; now’s the time to really get ’er done.”
The Martin team also won $26,000, plus entries to next year’s Canada Cup at Moose Jaw and the 2013 Continental Cup at Penticton, B.C.