Getting to the podium no easy task for Team Jones

TSN Senior Reporter

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Jennifer Jones has pretty much done it all in curling, from gold medals to world championships. Yet as she prepares to head to Beijing for her second Olympics, she feels like a raw rookie. 

“I think we all feel like kids in a candy store, that it's our first time going to the Olympics,” she said of her team of Kaitlyn Lawes, Jocelyne Peterman, Dawn McEwen, and Lisa Weagle. “It's just so surreal to be going back.”

Jones, Lawes, and McEwen won gold together at the 2014 Olympics in Sochi. Weagle was part of the Canadian team skipped by Rachel Homan in 2018. Peterman is a first-time Olympian.

Lawes also won gold in 2018 in the Mixed Doubles, playing with John Morris.

Even with that wealth of experience, she is bubbling with anticipation.

“I am so excited to touch down in Beijing get to the Village with my girls,” Lawes said. “It's going to be like Christmas morning when we get there. Our suitcases with our Lululemon clothing are waiting for us and we've been seeing all the athletes trying on their clothes, so that to me is when it's really going to sink in that we are Team Canada at the Olympics.”

The team members and coaches will be jetting off from Toronto on Wednesday, taking the long route to China through Europe. They’ll play their first game a week later, taking on South Korea.

That will mark their first competitive game since they won the Canadian Curling Trials in mid-December. They’ve been hunkered down since then, first in their respective homes and more recently in Barrie, Ont., where they’ve been training and trying to limit outside contact to avoid catching COVID-19.

While some of their international opponents have been competing, Jones is taking the glass-half-full view of