VANCOUVER — Canada’s Kevin Martin has achieved his first Olympic goal after his rink defeated Sweden and France on Thursday to improve to 4-0.
Martin’s first objective was to be no worse than 4-1 after five games. The second was to finish at least 7-2 at the end of the round robin.
“I really don’t think anyone is going to go through this undefeated,” Martin said. “We’ve hit the first one and now if we can go out and play well tomorrow (Friday against Denmark) we can get her a little further down the road.”
Martin is sitting atop the Olympic standings after dumping Niklas Edin of Sweden by a score of 7-3 and then cruising to a 12-5 win over France’s Thomas Dufour.
Martin, the four-time Brier champion, led from the first end en route to dumping Edin, the European men’s champion.
He was even more dominant against Dufour.
After scoring a single point in the first end, Dufour wrecked on a guard in the second to give Martin a steal of three.
After France scored a single point in the third, Martin made a simple hit in the fourth end to score five points and go up 9-2.
“The first four ends were strong,” Martin said in a major understatement. “We put them in a lot of trouble — a lot of well-placed rocks in the top eight and a lot of good angles.”
Both Martin and Britain’s David Murdoch were considered the heavy favourites for gold before competition began at the Vancouver Olympic Centre.
But the two teams seem to be heading in different directions.
Murdoch, the defending world champion, struggled out of the gate and missed his final shot in the 10th end, giving Markus Eggler of Switzerland a 4-3 victory.
And while he came back with a 9-6 win over Denmark in the evening draw the British champion finds himself in trouble early on in the competition with a 2-2 record.
“It’s getting that way,” said an obviously frustrated Murdoch. “Another loss and we’re on the back foot so it’s a win-win from there on. We can’t really drop any more. That’s two bad ones we’ve lost already.
“It’s not the start that we were looking for.”
Norway’s Thomas Ulsrud handed Switzerland its first loss Thursday evening, dropping Markus Eggler 7-4.
Norway, Switzerland and Sweden are tied with 3-1 records.
Sweden needed an extra end to beat China 6-5.
The United States is now 0-4 after John Shuster missed with his final shot in an extra end for the third game in a row on the way to losing 7-6 to Denmark. The Americans are virtually out of the playoffs unless they win their remaining five games.
“I’ve always said everything happens for a reason and for some reason this apparently is just not meant to be because if it was meant to be we’d be 3-1 right now instead of 0-4, having had shots to win all of those games,” grimaced Shuster.
“I’m just ultra-disappointed for all the hard work that my teammates and myself and all the people who sacrificed so much for us to get here for me to be missing these shots.”
Shuster said he and his teammates will now play for pride.
“We’re really going to out there and try to win every game we’re out here playing and even now we’d do it for the integrity of the competition because we play a couple of teams here and everybody else is pretty much still in it.”