CORTINA D’AMPEZZO, Italy — Kevin Koe won’t have the luxury of easing into his first men’s world curling championship.
The Edmonton skip will make his tournament debut Saturday against American Pete Fenson, the 2006 Olympic bronze medallist.
“We expect the competition to be very strong,” Koe said. “Most of the teams have world championship experience so I think it will be difficult to win.”
Koe, 35, and his team of third Blake MacDonald, second Carter Rycroft, lead Nolan Thiessen and alternate Jamie King earned the world championship berth with a thrilling 6-5, extra-end victory over Glenn Howard in last month’s Tim Hortons Brier.
Olympic gold medallist Kevin Martin of Edmonton was a silver medallist at the 2009 world championship but didn’t play in the Brier, which started less than a week after the Vancouver Games ended.
After years of playing in the shadow of Martin and fellow Edmonton skip Randy Ferbey, Koe is glad he finally has a chance to compete for a world title.
“It’s been a long time coming for this team just to get to a Canadian championship, let alone to win it and have the chance to represent Canada,” he said. “We are thrilled for this chance to represent our country and are looking forward to the challenge ahead of us.”
It will be a big challenge. The 12-team field includes five rinks that competed at the Olympics in February.
Thomas Ulsrud, who lost to Martin in the Olympic final, will skip a Norwegian team that made headlines in Vancouver with their loud, multi-coloured pants. And he’s promised to sport even more outlandish attire in Cortina.
Other Olympic rinks competing in Italy include Germany’s Andreas Kapp, France’s Thomas Dufour, China’s Fengchun Wang and Ulrik Schmidt of Denmark.
Scotland comes in as the defending champion after David Murdoch beat Martin in last year’s final in Moncton, N.B. But Murdoch’s team was eliminated in the semifinals of the Scottish championship as former world champion Warwick Smith captured the berth.
Still, that hasn’t changed Koe’s outlook heading into the tournament.
“We expect to play well and our goal is to win,” he said. “I am viewing this as a great opportunity for this team.
“While nothing can take away our Brier victory, it would be an unbelievable feeling to cap it off with a win at the world championship.”
Koe also knows facing an international field will be different from a typical Canadian event.
“If anything, I would guess that some of the teams typically aren’t as aggressive as most Canadian teams,” he said. “We are not familiar with most of the teams, so it will be hard to guess their strategy.”
But Koe remains determined to play his game.
“The only reason we would adjust the way we play is if ice conditions dictate it,” he said. “If the ice is good, we will just worry about playing our game, which is a fairly aggressive gameplan.”
The 2010 Capital One World Men’s Curling Championship runs through April 11 at Cortina’s Olympic stadium, which was used for the 1956 Winter Games before curling was included on the Olympic program. TSN will carry the semifinals April 10 at the final the following day.