Hamblins play part in growth of curling worldwide
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Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 21/05/2021 (1448 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.
Just like in hockey, being Canadian means you no longer have an automatic pass to being the best in the world in the sport of curling.
Heck, if you’re a Canadian curling fan, a medal of any colour would suffice, not just gold.
When it comes to speaking about the growth of the game worldwide, and world championship contenders every year, mainly from Europe, but also increasingly from Asia that are challenging the Canadian hierarchy in the sport, there is no one better in the country to speak on this topic than the husband and wife curling coaching power couple, Lorne and Chris Hamblin from Morris.
The gap between Canada, the former undisputed powerhouse in curling, has been getting closer and closer in recent years as the rest of the world has by and large caught up to Canada, a point that was driven home once again by the recent Men’s and Women’s World Championships in Calgary.
Both men’s representative Brendan Botcher from Alberta and Manitoba’s Kerri Einarson failed to medal at worlds.
For Einarson, who got off to a horrible start at the world championships, stumbling to a 1-5 record, the pressure was on perhaps more than any team in recent years as she was in danger of placing out of the top six. The top six were guaranteed spots in the Beijing Olympics in February.
But to her eternal credit, Einarson and company rallied big time, eventually evening their record and qualified Canada for the Olympics.
Switzerland’s Silvana Tironzoni won the gold medal, her second straight world title.
In fact, it continues the domination of the Swiss on the world stage for the past decade or so as they have now won six of the last nine world titles, while Canada has only won two during the same time period.
It’s the same on the men’s side as this year’s world champion Niklas Edin from Sweden has won five of the last eight world titles.
Canadians have been assisting other countries in coaching and strategy for decades as their expertise has gone a long way to the recent success of the Swiss, Swedes and others of late.
Much of this coaching has been done on a piecemeal or short term contract basis, but the Hamblins were among the first to make a long-term commitment to coaching in another country.
Lorne and Chris Hamblin are two of only three Level IV curling coaches in the province. The other is former World Women’s champion, the legendary Connie Laliberte. There are only about a dozen or so Level IV coaches in all of Canada.
With their curling pedigree and involvement in curling in this province, the Swiss came calling and in 2009 the Hamblins agreed to become coaches in the Swiss national curling program. Some of the results we are seeing today and in recent years is because of the coaching of the Hamblins over a two-year period.
They coached multiple teams that went on to the world championships, in both men’s and women’s, which included coaching the Swiss men in their bronze-medal winning performance at the 2010 Winter Olympics in Vancouver.
Some of the coaches they coached during their two-year stint in Switzerland, where they were based in Berne, have carried forward as the Swiss have become such a dominant player on the world stage.
After Switzerland, the Hamblins accepted the call to help out the Chinese, who were endeavouring to develop and grow their program in the decade leading up to the 2022 Winter Olympics in Beijing next February.
This was a developing program, not as advanced as the Swiss, as they signed for a two-year stint as Chinese national coaches, relocating to China for much of that time. The purpose was to develop the teams that could advance to and be competitive at the World Championships and the Olympics.
They accomplished just that, coaching the Chinese men at both the 2012 and 2013 World Championships, finishing sixth both years, which qualified the Chinese for the 2014 Olympics at Sochi. The previous two years at worlds the Chinese had finished in 9th and 11th place.
After the 2013 season, and after the spending the better part of four years travelling the globe with the Swiss and Chinese national teams, they headed back home to the Morris area.
In an interview this week at the Morris Curling Club, which is home to the Cargill Curling Training Centre, which they manage, Chris said “I have mixed feelings about that,” when asked about the success of some of the other countries, sometimes at the expense of the Canadians. But it is the price that has to be paid to grow the game around the world, which they were instrumental in doing.
In 2002, Lorne was the head coach of the team that won the World Junior Men`s Curling championship. Their son David was the skip and another son Kevin was the second.
Lorne, president of the Manitoba Curling Association in 2004 and 2005 was also inducted into the Manitoba Curling Hall of Fame in 2015 for his decades of involvement in curling as a player, coach and builder.
Lorne says one of the reasons for the success of some other countries is that “they put more emphasis on training and practice whereas in Canada it’s the playing of games that is the emphasis.”
He believes that part of the problem for both Botcher and Einarson at the world championships this year is that they didn’t have enough down time in between events. Although this was an abnormal year, he says in general the Canadians teams should have more time to prepare from the Canadian championships leading up to the worlds.
Although they are back in Canada, Lorne and Chris continue to be involved with international curlers through state of the art Cargill Curling Training Centre, which is a highly technical curling centre, one of only two in Canada that is open year round.
During the season, all of the top teams in the world continue coming to Canada to compete in the Grand Slams and other events, and some of those stops include training in Morris as well as competing in the Dekalb Superspiel.
Some of the biggest names in the country including Jennifer Jones and Mike McEwen, among others have spent a lot of time training in Morris.
And although the facility is now idle due to the pandemic and the resultant restrictions, they are looking forward to getting back onto to the ice very shortly when restrictions are eased.
They had a bit of setback over the past week or two as the ice plant failed and all of the ice, including the painting had to be redone. Fortunately it was during this down time, as they brought in a temporary plant to make the ice while the existing plant is being repaired.
As such, they are ramping for a busy summer at the facility as teams are booking training time for June and July.
In August, several events are scheduled, beginning with the Dekalb Superspiel Aug. 6-9, the event that was cancelled last year.
So for anyone who was a hankering to rent some curling ice in the heat of the summer and perhaps get some pointers from two world class coaches, Chris and Lorne Hamblin are waiting to hear from you.