CBC.CA – Torino 2006 – Curling – Headlines – Olympic curling champion living on welfare
Rhona Martin told Scotland’s Daily Mirror that she has been through “the worst year of my life.” (Photo: Mike Finn Kelcey/Getty Images)
Last Updated: Thu Jan 12 19:33:14 EST 2006
CBC Sports
What a difference four years can make.
In 2002 Scottish skip Rhona Martin became a hero in Great Britain with her thrilling last-rock victory over Switzerland’s Luzia Ebnoether in the Olympic women’s curling gold medal match.
Now, a month before she heads to Turin, Italy, to defend her crown at the 2006 Winter Olympics, Martin is scraping by on government assistance.
Martin recently revealed her struggles to a Scottish newspaper. The 39-year-old said that, after her husband Keith’s computer business went bad, she was pressured by debt collectors to sell the family home in Dunlop, Ayrshire and moved into government housing.
“”The (Department of Social Security) pays part of my rent,” Martin told the Daily Mirror. “If it wasn’t for funding from the Scottish Institute of Sport and SportScotland , I wouldn’t be going to Turin.”
Martin also confirmed that she is no longer with her husband of 15 years.
“We are living apart,” she said. ‘Our marriage has irretrievably broken down because of financial problems.”
It’s been quite a reversal of fortunes for Martin, who rose to prominence with her defeat of heavily favoured Kelley Law of Canada in the semifinals in Salt Lake City. By the time Martin took to the ice for the final against Ebnoether, she had achieved cult hero status in Great Britain.
Martin even garnered legions of supporters in England, where curling is not nearly as popular as it is in Scotland.
“It’s been quite a phenomenon, really,” Robert Kelly, a spokesman for the British Curling Association told CBC Sports Online. “Curling was on quite late in the evening. It was about midnight or after that, in fact, by the time the game finished. We got an audience of 6.3 million that stayed up to watch the curling final. Now there are only five million people in Scotland, so clearly they weren’t all Scots.”
Martin maintained a measure of celebrity after winning Olympic gold, making occasional appearances on British television shows. She has been credited by many with raising her sport’s profile south of the Scottish border.
“I think before (the 2002 Olympics), if you’d gone to Birmingham or Liverpool or London and stopped a man in the street and said, ‘Have you heard of curling, do you know what it is?’, a lot of them would have had no idea at all,” says Kelly. “Whereas now a fair number of them would actually know who Rhona is.”
Even if she can recapture her past glory in Turin, Martin will likely return home to the same troubles with which she left. She even considered quitting curling before her 10-year-old son and 13-year-old daughter protested.
“It’s only because of the children that I went on,” Martin told the Daily Mirror. “They were desperate for me to go to another Olympics.”
“I want to go to another Olympics and win another curling competition,” she said. “But when I come back from Turin, it’s going to be harder.
“Lottery support stops when I step off the plane.”
Copyright © CBC 2006
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