By Devin Heroux
Months removed from her second consecutive world title, in the August heat at her home near Beaumont, Alta., Canadian skip Rachel Homan started sharing the full extent of just how bad her eye infection was at the World Women's Curling Championship this past March.
In her very understated and cavalier way of sharing some pretty hefty stuff, Homan opened up to John Cullen on the latest Broom Brothers podcast about what she was enduring as she became the first Canadian skip since Sandra Schmirler to win back-to-back world titles.
Her eye infection was bad — more serious than anyone outside of her inner circle would have ever known throughout that golden performance in Korea.
“The stye was in my right eye, which is like my good eye. And it was so big it was pushing on my cornea. My eyesight was all distorted. I couldn't see out of my good eye. I couldn't see clearly at all,” Homan revealed.
“I was really scared before the Sweden game for sure, in all honesty. I was worried that I shouldn't be in the house.”
It was evident early on in the event that something was not right with Homan’s eye — it looked red and irritated, and it all started at the beginning of the world championships. She started wearing glasses during the game, something fans were not used to seeing from the five-time Scotties champion.
Those glasses, though, were of little help. Homan could kind of make out the releases of her teammates from the other end of the ice. But it was all very blurry.
“I got worried that something was really wrong with my eyes. They gave me their medication. We made sure that it was above board. It cleared up whatever it was. Wild. It's still there. It's small though,” Homan said.
In a lot of ways, it makes her championship win that much more impressive, considering the right-eye-dominant skip was not at full vision. To put a finer point to it all, it’s extremely difficult to throw a curling rock and call a game with 50 per cent vision.
Homan would go on to beat Switzerland's Team Tirinzoni for a second-straight world championship gold medal.
Being able to not only battle through the eye infection but thrive in the midst of it perfectly sums up Homan’s steely resolve in what was another extraordinary season for the team.
Team Homan racked up two more Grand Slam of Curling titles, another Scotties title, their second-straight world championship title — the team posted 75 wins compared to just eight losses.
This all comes in the wake of a 67-7 season in 2023-24.
When you add it all up, Homan has won 142 games compared to just 15 losses in the last two seasons, one of the — if not the greatest — stretches of curling we’ve ever seen.
But for as dominant as she’s been, Homan doesn’t really sit in the past, revel in all the winning, all that much. She’s always pushing for more, looking forward and trying to find ways to always improve.
The 36-year-old mother of three is more reflective and contemplative than maybe she’s ever been.
“What we've done the last couple of years is great. I think it's all a part of the journey. It's not about one achievement or one loss. You know you’re on the top of the world and then another moment you know you feel like a failure and you pick yourself up. Keep learning and keep trying to do better the next day,” she said.
“I'm thankful that my career has been as long as it has been, so that I've been able to take those losses and turn them into success. It's been an awesome ride, and hopefully we can continue.”
With the Olympics looming, Homan and her team are already on the ice, starting to ramp up for what they hope is a third consecutive banner season. It’s the one thing in Homan’s sterling career that’s been to this point, elusive: winning an Olympic medal.
In two previous trips — in 2018 with her four-person team and then these past Games in Beijing in 2022 playing mixed doubles with John Morris — Homan hasn’t been able to reach the playoffs.
She was and continues to be candid about how hard those experiences were, saying she felt like she had let the country down.
“I'm always going to want to do my best for Canada, and we gave it our all, and it wasn't good enough, and it does feel like you've let Canada down. It's a hard thing to go through,” Homan said.
“You want to bring that gold back for Canada.”
Homan is not only preparing for the Olympic season, but following the Games, she’ll lead one of six franchises into the inaugural Rock League seasons as a Canadian captain.
The prospect of a pro league — that’s mixed-gendered — is highly attractive to the skipper who obviously has her sights on leading her team to a lot of victories.
“Everyone involved is not just signing a paper and saying good luck. We're all signing a paper with the intent of what we can do to help. We're all invested in trying to push this forward and see where it can go,” she said.
“For me, as a little girl growing up, professional leagues for women wasn't really an option. You play sports because you love it, but all the guys get the money. So to have this option for girls, to train hard, to put fitness and athletic ability at the forefront and just really push, it's really cool to see.”
It’s the promise of equity — that women are going to be paid equally as the men in a pro curling league — that has Homan wanting to give her all, for right now and for all of those who will come after her.
“And it just never felt like the women were on the same level. And now we're getting there, and it's really cool to see and really cool to be a part of.”
First things first, however, and that’s making sure Homan, third Tracy Fleury, second Emma Miskew and lead Sarah Wilkes — as well as alternate Rachelle Brown — are as prepared as they can possibly be for this upcoming season.
As for a full-time coach, that remains a bit of a mystery for now. But it appears it won’t be for long.
To end the podcast, Homan hinted that they’ve found a coach for the upcoming season after a musical chairs act last year that included Jennifer Jones stepping behind the bench for certain stretches.
When directly asked by Cullen details around who the coach was, Homan was as coy as ever.
“That is a great question. I can tell you that we have a coach,” she said.
And when pressed on timelines as to when we’ll all know, Homan dodged again.
“I just got back from vacation. So my inbox is full and I haven't read anything yet," Homan said. "Yeah. I like the idea that you don't know who the coach is. I haven't checked my emails. I couldn't tell you.”
