HALIFAX — Rachel Homan held her arms out by her sides as a red and white Team Canada jacket was placed over her shoulders, and then the skip slipped it on, zipped it up and popped the collar with a smile on her face and tears in her eyes.
Minutes later, Homan, Tracy Fleury, Emma Miskew and Sarah Wilkes slid down the ice hand in hand with their arms in the air while more than 7,000 fans at the Scotiabank Centre cheered.
The world No. 1 team is going to represent Canada at the 2026 Olympic Games, and they qualified in emphatic fashion on Saturday afternoon, led by their skipper, who wouldn’t have had it any other way, who curled a sensational 95 per cent.
The team’s coach saw that coming, as Heather Nedohin said of Homan: “It was in her eyes.”
In the second game of a best-of-three final to earn that Olympic berth, the defending and reigning world champions earned a 12-3 win over Nova Scotia’s Team Christina Black at the Montana’s Canadian Curling Trials, the result that darn near everyone expected from the team that is tops on the planet.
The Homan Empire out of Ottawa will be wearing the Maple Leaf in Milano Cortina this coming February.
When it was over and done, Homan hugged two of her kids and her husband rink side, then wiped tears from her cheek.
“We couldn’t be happier,” the 36-year-old Homan said with a grin later, while her two eldest, five-year-old Ryatt and three-year-old Bowyn, crushed donuts nearby, wearing “Homan Empire” sweatshirts.
“There’s not words to describe putting that Maple Leaf on your back at the Olympics,” Homan added, with the Olympic Trials gold medal dangling from her neck. “With these three girls and our support team and Heather and (alternate) Rachelle (Brown), we feel like we can take on the world and with confidence. It’s going to be an uphill battle there, just like it was this week. And we’re going to be prepared for it.”
“Oh yeah, just unbelievable,” added a smiling Fleury, whose 5-year-old daughter, Nina, hugged her leg. “It really is a dream come true.”
A first-time dream come true for Fleury and Wilkes, the lead, and a second for Miskew. For Homan, it’ll be a third straight Olympics after representing Canada in the women’s team event along with Miskew in 2018 and teaming up with John Morris in mixed doubles in 2022.
“That just seems crazy,” Homan said, of qualifying for her third straight Games. “I mean, it doesn’t change anything. It’s the hardest tournament you’ll ever play in, and we’re excited to be going together with this team.”
This team that added Fleury back in 2022 with this goal firmly in mind. At the last Trials, Fleury had a shot for the win and missed it in heartbreaking fashion to finish runner-up.
“I’d say there was a lot of uncertainty four years ago about my future in the sport,” said Fleury, who cried tears of joy while O Canada played shortly after they clinched the Olympic berth. “But then Rachel called, and I got this amazing opportunity to join this incredible team. Just really thankful for that.”
This team earned the opportunity to compete at the 2026 Games after emerging from a field of this country’s eight best women’s teams, after competing for an entire week. They ended it as early as they could, winning the first two in a best-of-three 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.
“Rachel’s shot for four was amazing,” Miskew said. “It’s wasn’t an easy shot by any means.”
After they nailed it, Wilkes 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.
“She was incredible — I don’t think she missed anything, actually,” Fleury said of Homan.
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 all week, and dropped Canada’s second-ranked Kerri Einarson in the semifinal before 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.
“I learned to believe in us even more,” Black said, when it was over. “I think I learned even more, we’re ready to do this, we can win one of these championships, and we’ll be ready for the Scotties.”
Black added that Canada is set up well to bring home gold in women’s curling next February. “Obviously, I’m playing, I want to win, but they’re the best team we can send to the Olympics,” she said. “They deserve this more than anyone.”
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 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.
“We definitely want to go represent Canada well, bring home a gold medal,” Fleury said. “We feel prepared.”
“You dream of going back, and until you get in that moment where you can say that you’re going, you don’t believe it’s actually going to happen,” Miskew added.
Homan, Fleury, Miskew and Wilkes can now say it: They’re going to the Olympics.
“Pretty surreal,” the skipper said, with a smile.