Curling reform leaves
Martin happy, for now
Adam Daifallah
National Post
But the thing Martin
seems happiest about is curling's progress toward becoming a more profitable,
professional sport.
A two-time Canadian
curling champion and the 2002 Olympic silver medallist, Martin has been the
vanguard of a player-led revolt of sorts against the Canadian curling
establishment over the last three years.
Several elite teams
that desired a pro-style tour signed onto the Grand Slam of Curling, a series
of four elite, big-money bonspiels modelled after golf's major championships.
Teams were required to
sign an exclusivity contract, agreeing to forgo participation in the national
championship, the Brier. That led to a donnybrook with the Canadian Curling
Association (CCA), the sport's governing body.
Curling fans were
disappointed that the country's best players weren't playing in the Brier, and
the CCA wasn't happy either. But at the end of the summer, a deal was struck
allowing players to compete in both, and there is peace in the curling world
for now.
Martin, stopping in at
the National Post to promote the second Grand Slam event this year, the M&M
Meat Shops Masters of Curling, which gets under way this morning, says the
mini-strike was necessary for the development of the sport.
"We had to. I'm a
private enterprise mind, so I don't like the union thing, but that's kind of
what we ended up being -- not because we wanted to, but because we had
to," Martin said. "You can't imagine how hard it was for a lot of us
to sit at home and watch somebody win what we always went for -- the Brier --
and we're watching this guy win it without having to play any of the top teams,
year after year, it's just killing us."
The idea behind the
Grand Slam was that curling needed to evolve beyond one big event a year and
become more lucrative. The players wanted to force the CCA's hand into offering
more benefits for the players, including a bigger cut of the financial pie.
Some changes have
occurred as a result of the spat.
Brier teams are now
going to get compensation, including the ability to wear sponsor crests and
extra money if they qualify for the playoffs.
Other issues, such as
how teams qualify for provincial championships, are still outstanding.
One of the
consequences of the now-resolved dispute has been that some of the top teams
haven't played each other.
Martin, for example,
hasn't played a competitive game against Randy Ferbey, the three-time defending
Brier champion, outside of a skins games format since the 2001 Olympic trials.
Ferbey didn't
originally sign on to the Grand Slam, but is playing this year now that the
fight is over. This weekend, the two teams might finally square off.
"He hasn't played
the Tour much, otherwise we'd play him," Martin said of Ferbey. "He
has never played the big events. Middaugh hasn't played him either, neither has
[Jeff]
With the dispute over,
Martin has no regrets.
"The top teams
all stood together for the growth of the game, rather than their own personal
benefit. That was good to see.
"That's something
that when we're all 60, sitting around watching some young kids playing the
sport making half a million dollars we can have a drink and say 'we did good.'
And that's what it's going to be like, too."
Martin's eventual goal
is for the Brier to be one of the four Grand Slam majors, like golf's U.S.
Open.
That idea is likely to
be resisted heavily at the CCA, which sees the national championship as a cut
above the rest.
But if the game
continues to evolve down the road Martin and his allies envision, it just might
happen.