Men's curling team settles for silver

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As the alternate member of Canada's Olympic men's curling team, Ken Tralnberg got his chance to throw a few rocks at the 2002 games in Salt Lake City. When he wasn't in the lineup, the Dene man originally from northern Saskatchewan was supposed to have the best seat in the house to watch his Kevin Martin rink take on the world and bring home the gold.

In the final against Paal Trulsen's Norwegian rink on Feb. 22, that's almost how it unfolded. With the score tied and Kevin Martin holding the hammer in the final end, all the Canadian skip had to do was make his last rock stop a bit closer to the centre of the circles than the closest Norwegian rock.

It looked like a lock. Martin had made shots that were much more challenging all through the Olympic tournament. But the Canadian skip's last shot, an out-turn draw, was just a touch too heavy and settled an inch off target, leaving the Norwegians with a shocking 6-5 gold medal win. Trulsen later said he was already resigned to the fact that he would be taking home silver as the Canadian skip prepared to make the last shot.

Martin, interviewed on CBC television minutes after that final rock was thrown, was visibly distraught, although he handled himself admirably. He and his teammates had obviously recovered by the time they had their picture taken with their Olympic medals for their hometown newspaper, the Edmonton Journal. All five members of the rink were smiling broadly in that photo which appeared on the front page on the last Saturday of the games.

For Tralnberg, the Olympic experience was golden enough, despite the disappointing end.

"On Sunday (the day of the closing ceremonies) I must have posed for a thousand photos," he said. "We went out walking and the kids would see us and whisper 'He's got a medal.' I asked them if they wanted to see it and then they'd want to touch it and hold it and mothers would ask me if they could take a picture with their kids and the medal. The reaction was really helping me heal."

The team flew back home on Feb. 25. Back at work on Feb. 26, the Olympian spent the day giving his co-workers and others throughout the downtown Edmonton office building a chance to see and touch the silver medal. One woman said she would be calling her mother in Ireland that night to tell her she had actually met an Olympian and touched a medal. Tralnberg seemed to enjoy being able to share something like that almost as much as actually winning an Olympic medal.

He sat down at his suburban St. Albert home for an interview with Windspeaker that evening, answering questions between phone calls as he arranged yet another curling trip, this time to London, Ont. and the World Curling Tour Championship. The Martin rink was preparing to compete on the fledgling professional curling tour at the Grand Slam of Curling.

He admitted he's still trying to process so much of the experience but said he fondly remembers the performances of Robbie Robertson and Sadie Buck, both with connections to the Six Nations of the Grand River First Nation in Ontario, during the opening ceremonies.

"I clearly do remember that Robbie Robertson's piece as just so chilling. And he's so good," he said.

The pro-Native political message in the performance struck a chord with the Dene man.

"I associated his message with the message Midnight Oil had at the Sydney games. They spoke about the Aborigines and it was their land and it was time to give it back. And because of who I am, and my background and history, and being sensitive to those kinds of messages, it was very loud and clear," he said. "I thought of my grandma in northern Saskatchewan and then I thought, 'What the hell am I doing here.' I was absolutely moved by the enormity of the people they had carry in the flag, too. Lech Walesa, Desmond Tutu, Stephen Speilberg. I know what those people represented. It was amazing."

Tralnberg brought home a Canadian flag from Salt Lake City. It's the flag he and teammate Don Walchk carried into the Rice-Eccles Olympic Stadium for the opening and closing ceremonies.

"Our driver said that we were on NBC for a significant amount of time which means over two billion people saw us," he said, awestruck that fully one-third of the world's population had been watching him on television. "So I wrote down the side of it 'Salt Lake City Olympics opening and closing ceremonies.' I'm not quite sure what I'm going to do with it yet."

The team stayed in the Olympic village for the first four days and then they moved into a small house in the nearby city of Ogden.

"We did that for one reason. To focus. To go there to curl, not to celebrate our Olympic experience. All of us felt an enormous responsibility to represent the country," he said.

While family and friends and the fellow athletes who didn't stay in the village were billeted out in some of the region's finest homes, the five curlers were perfectly at home in the modest house they rented.

"We were in there all together and we were all quite comfortable," he said. "What we were looking for was an environment that was conducive to us curling well and being comfortable around each other and not having outside factors."

The shock of the loss was still front and centre, despite the warm reception he's receiving back home.

"The wound's still open as we speak. I think we're stunned by where the rock stopped and because of where the rock stopped we lost the medal," he said. "But not executing the shot is the shocking part. I swept with him and timed rocks with him all week and I swear he could hit the button, the button not the four-foot, more than 90 times out of 100. Just for fun! Having us lose that way is hard. People at work today were just so thrilled to see me, and so proud, but I'm not proud. I will be someday."

He said the entire team was off its game in the final.

"We were pretty flat. At least 20 per cent below our average for the entire week," he said.

But the world got a chance to see is sport and lots of it and that can only be good for curling, he said.

"The coverage that curling got there was so positive for the health of the game around the world. Jay Leno joked about it several nights, about curling."

It was good to be a part of the Canadian team in Salt Lake. The Canadian team members were in many ways, the darlings of the games.

"Canadians were the highlight. NBC did a thing on Canadians one night that I couldn't believe. All they talked about was how Canadians were cool. Canadians had the cool dress. Canadians were polite. Canadians were winning some things."

He looked surprised when asked if he wanted to try and get back to the 2006 games in Italy.

"I was incredibly honored for them to give me the faith and, you know, pick me. To get back is one hell of a mountain to climb. I can't imagine . . . but you never know. I didn't imagine this," he said.

As the alternate, he had to play a certain amount to qualify for a medal. He was inserted into the line-up in two cases where Canada scored enough late in the game to persuade the other team they couldn't catch up. In curling, when teams reach that point they shake hands and concede the game.

"The minimum requirement was that I had to play one end, two rocks. I played an end against Finland and they quit. Then I played against France and they quit," he said. "The boys stated joking, they said, 'Why don't we just put you in right off the bat and everybody'll just quit.'"

Some media reports said Martin blew it. His teammates won't entertain that notion, even for a moment.

"I think our skip was the only reason we were in that game in the tenth end. He made incredible shots," he said. "If he doesn't do that there wouldn't have been a mention about the final rock in the tenth end."