Team Homan punches Olympic ticket with victory at Canadian curling trials

CITYnews halifax / By Sportsnet Staff

HALIFAX — Rachel Homan and her world No. 1 team are going to the 2026 Olympic Games, and they qualified in emphatic fashion on Saturday afternoon. 

In the second of a best-of-three final to earn that berth, the defending world champions earned a 12-3 win over Nova Scotia’s Team Christina Black at the Montana’s Canadian Curling Trials in front of a full crowd at Scotiabank Centre.

The world No. 1 Homan Empire out of Ottawa — Homan, the skipper, third Tracy Fleury, and the front end of Emma Miskew and Sarah Wilkes — will be wearing the Maple Leaf in Milano Cortina this coming February.

For Homan, it’ll be a third straight Olympics after representing Canada in the women’s team event along with Miskew in 2018 and pairing up with John Morris in mixed doubles in 2022. For Fleury and Wilkes, it marks a debut on the biggest stage. All four will be looking for a first-ever Olympic medal.

To earn that opportunity, Team Homan emerged from a field of this country’s eight best women’s teams, needing just two of three games to win the final against the hometown favourite Team Black, winners of a bronze medal at the Scotties earlier this year.

It was tied 2-2 through two ends on Saturday until Homan blew it wide open in the third. A missed takeout from Nova Scotia third Jill Brothers saw Fleury stack a third rock in close, and with her last Homan navigated past a couple of guards — with a big assist from the brooms of Miskew and Wilkes — for a tap to score four and take a 6-2 lead.

Wikes and Miskew threw their arms in the air, and Homan took a big exhale while she fired off a straight-faced fist pump.

For any team to come back from that kind of deficit against the defending world champions, the skipper who’s won five Scotties titles, you just didn’t like their chances.

But what a run it was for Black, Brothers, Jenn Baxter, Marlee Powers and Karlee Everist out of the nearby Halifax Curling Club. The world No. 27 team walked onto the ice smiling and waving ahead of both finals games, and performed incredibly all week, dropping Canada’s second-ranked Kerri Einarson in the semifinal and finishing just a pair of wins away from representing this country at the Olympics. They were led by a 38-year-old skip with an infectious love of the game.

An end after scoring four, Homan locked in a perfect draw to sit shot rock and force Black to make a tough takeout for two. Black missed just wide to give up a steal of one, and before the break, Homan stole another when Black’s draw against four sailed long. It was 9-2 halfway through in a game that took just over two hours, and was required to go a minimum of eight ends as per Curling Canada’s rules.

Homan’s Team Canada will open the 2026 Olympic Games on Feb. 12 against Denmark at the Cortina Curling Olympic Stadium.