VANCOUVER — Cold as the ice he curls on and absolutely focused, Canada’s Kevin Martin took a giant step forward in his quest for a gold medal in men’s curling at the 2010 Winter Olympics by winning his seventh game in a row and clinching the top seed for the semifinals.
Martin improved to 7-0 Sunday with a 6-4 win over Markus Eggler of Switzerland. The Canadian skip controlled the game from the start, scoring two points in the first end and never trailing.
“Don’t wake the Bear” chanted a group of Martin fans in the crowd, referring to his nickname.
But Martin has been very much awake at this tournament. In fact, he has been positively ruthless, curling at a lethal 94-per-cent efficiency.
Now he’s waiting to see who he will meet in the playoffs.
“We’re in the playoffs. It feels good. We got to that seven wins which is the trick and now hopefully we can keep everything rolling without slipping up going into the playoffs,” said a relaxed Martin after the game. “We’ve got a couple of more round-robin games and then we have to ramp it up and be ready for the semifinals.”
Martin said there’s no danger of the team letting up or losing focus.
“We’ve been in this position before and you can lose a game any time, so you’ve got to stay sharp and let the cards fall where they may,” he said. “We’ve got a couple of games yet to worry about. We want to keep the pedal down and keep it going.”
Part of the strategy is not worrying about what the other teams are up to. Martin doesn’t spend any time watching the other scores or standings.
“Today I went to the computer to actually find out the standings. I didn’t have a clue,” he said. “We need to worry about ourselves and getting the playoffs and see who we play.”
Thomas Ulsrud of Norway, who had been nipping at Martin’s heels, missed a golden opportunity to keep pace. He missed with his final shot in an extra end to bow out 8-7 to Niklas Edin of Sweden. With the loss, second-place Norway fell to 5-2.
“If somebody had told me at the start of the week, ’Hey, you’re going to be 5-2 after seven games,’ I’d probably take it,” said Ulsrud. “We played a good game so I’m not too concerned. If we keep playing like this we’re going to win more games.”
With the pace that Martin has been setting here, most teams would rather not finish fourth in the round-robin and face Canada in the semifinal. The winners of the two semifinal matches go directly to the gold medal game, while the losers battle for bronze.
“We’re going to try and win all our matches anyway and if we end up (ranked) two or three, we’ll be happy,” Ulsrud said.
Britain, Switzerland and Sweden are still very much in the playoff hunt as well.
All three teams are 4-3. Britain’s David Murdoch, the defending world champion, said it’s a shame he got off to a slow start at the tournament after defeating the United States 4-2 Sunday.
“That’s what we’ve done at quite a few championships. We give ourselves an uphill start and an uphill struggle and now we’re climbing the hill,” he said.
“Hopefully we can give ourselves a couple more wins and give ourselves a semifinal spot. Our fates in our own hands and that’s a good thing.”
Germany’s chances of making the playoff were dealt a serious blow when Andy Kapp was dumped by Denmark’s Johnny Frederiksen 9-5.