EDMONTON - Marc Kennedy was standing on the hog line, perched almost on his toes.

All the hours spent practising. All the sweat and mental gymnastics vowed and devoted to this great chess game on ice. Undefeated. Unblemished.

Last rock. One shot to win gold.

“One hit to win the Olympics,” recalled St. Albert’s Kennedy, the second for the Kevin Martin-skipped curling team.

“I was trying to let it sink in. But it was like a blur,” he said of all the emotions being released.

“You know exactly what the circumstances are. One wide-open hit. But from the time that rock left Kevin’s hand to the time it took

out Norway’s last rock, you just don’t have

time to let it sink in. Right then it was impossible.

“All the time we spent to get there. The emotions …

A Saturday night, the Vancouver Olympic Centre house full, a raucous crowd — particularly for curling — had just broken into a spontaneous version of O Canada when third John Morris was in the hack.

“It put shivers down my spine.”

The scoreboard showed a safe 6-3 lead over Thomas Ulsrud of Norway, the same country that had literally and coincidently slid past Martin and Canada eight years ago at the 2002 Winter Olympics in Salt Lake City.

But until Morris put down the broom and Martin slid down the ice, Kennedy’s mind wouldn’t turn over into the what-if department.

The crowd was already on its feet, flags unfurled and waving.

Kennedy stood to one side of Martin. Lead Ben Hebert stood on the other side. Sentinels in waiting, their brooms at the ready.

“I can remember a whole bunch of shots now,” said Kennedy of dozens upon dozens of clutch shots throughout the week.

Shots that decided matches. Delicate freezes, thundering triple-takeouts, preposterously wafer-thin buried curls that seemed impossible to thread through the slender ports.

But not then.

Now it was just the one shot, though it wouldn’t be until much later that even this one shot would reverberate in Kennedy’s mind the way it does now.

“We curl 100 games a year. I can remember lots of other shots. All the details. But still curling is curling.

“The Olympics, however, were all about the outside stuff. The athletes village. Singing the national anthem. Hanging out with other athletes. The end of the week. The last night.

“But not then, not with the emotions of all the events happening around you.”

When Martin’s rock made dead, solid perfect contact, Hebert ran forward and embraced Morris in a herculean bear hug. Kennedy, with his wide white grin, had dropped his broom and was racing the other way toward Martin.

Euphoria enveloped them in a still hazy but delicious embrace.

“It wasn’t really until we got to the podium that we were more in the moment. I think that’s when we really got to enjoy what we had just accomplished.”

Since then, Kennedy and Martin and Co.’s rink have gone through another undefeated Alberta Provincial championship and won the 2010 Players Championship, defeating Brad Gushue in an extra end. Now they will get set to try to win a third straight Brier.

“The target from Day 1, from the time we got together four years ago, was to win as many finals as possible,” said Kennedy, who graduated from the University of Alberta with a marketing degree.

“We’ve won two Briers, won one world championship and heartbreakingly lost another.”

Kennedy, a franchise owner for M&M Meat Shop, said losing the last world championship to Scotland’s David Murdoch was actually “in hindsight, a good loss.”

“We had gone through two Briers undefeated. We were on such a high of winning that we never had a big loss and we didn’t realize how quickly it can go away.

“In retrospect, that loss might have been why we won the Olympics because it made everyone’s drive and motivation higher.

“We did everything with a little more desperation.

“Once again, at the Olympics we were undefeated — just like we had been winning our first nine games at the 2009 World Championship in Moncton. So we knew how that could change and it’s something we might not have known or done if we hadn’t lost that world final.”

With the Olympic victory, Kennedy said, “we’re more recognizable. Curling, in this country, gets so much exposure anyway, but Kevin has more people than ever coming up to him.

“There’s also more of a responsibility in the public,” added Kennedy, who is married, with a two-year-old daughter and another child on the way.

“We make a lot of appearances, speak at schools. It’s more of a role-model mentality that we’ve taken on.

“We love that. I know I love that especially when we speak at schools. Sharing my experiences and helping kids make choices.

“I tell them that we have a pretty good message to get across. That if you dream of doing something, if you make the sacrifices along the way, then you can do it. Anyone can do it. If I can inspire just one or two kids, then I feel like I’ve done my job.”

For now, anyway. Because for now, it’s still one shot at a time.

cstock@edmontonjournal.com

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