Team Homan punched the Olympic ticket with a win at the Canadian Curling Trials

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

In the second of the best-of-three finals to clinch that berth, the defending world champion defeated Nova Scotia’s Team Christina Black 12-3 in front of a packed crowd at the Scotiabank Center at the Canadian Curling Trials in Montana.

The world No. 1 Human empire out of Ottawa — Human, captain, trio Tracy Fleury, and a front half of Emma Maschio and Sarah Wilkes — will be wearing the Maple Leaf at Milano Cortina this coming February.

For Homan, it will be her third consecutive Olympics after representing Canada in the women’s team event with Moscow in 2018 and teaming up with Joan Morris in mixed doubles in 2022. For Fleury and Wilkes, it will be a debut on the biggest stage. All four will be looking for their first Olympic medal.

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

It was tied 2-2 by two ends on Saturday until Homan blew it wide open in the third. A missed takeout from one of Nova Scotia’s third Jill Brothers saw Fleury close in on the third stone, and with his last homer he got past two guards – with big help from Muskie and Wilkes’ broms – to score four for a tap and take a 6-2 lead.

Wax and Muskie threw their hands in the air, and Homan let out a big breath as he fired a straight-faced uppercut pump.

For any team to come back from that kind of deficit against the defending world champions, the captain who has won five Scottish titles, you don’t fancy their chances.

But what a run it was for Blake, the brothers, Gene Baxter, Marley Powers and Carly Everest out of the nearby Halifax Curling Club. The world No. 27 took to the ice before both final games smiling and waving, and performed incredibly all week, beating Canada’s second-ranked Keri Anarsson in the semifinals and falling just one pair away from representing the country at the Olympics. They were led by a 38-year-old skipper with an infectious love of the game.

After scoring four one end, Homan locked in a perfect draw to sit the shot rock and force Black to make a hard takeout for two. Black just missed wide to give up a steal of one, and before the break, Homan stole another when Black’s draw went four long. The game was 9-2 at the halfway mark which took just over two hours, and was required by Curling Canada rules to go to at least eight ends.

Homan’s Team Canada will play at the 2026 Olympic Games on February 12 against Denmark at the Kartina Curling Olympic Stadium.