U.S. Wins First Curling Medal

After Beating Britain, Team's Bronze Is 'Like Winning the Gold'

The U.S. curling team takes advantage of having the last shot as skip Pete Fenson, middle, Shawn Rojeski, left, and Joe Polo win a bronze medal. (By Stephen Munday -- Getty Images)

PINEROLO, Italy, Feb. 24 -- Pete Fenson wanted the curling bronze medal to come down to the final shot, and he was ready to take it.

The U.S. skip bent his rock into the target area, where it came to rest inside of Britain's best hope and clinched the Americans' first Olympic curling medal.

Only then did the usually stone-faced Fenson break into a grin and raise his broom following an 8-6 victory on Friday.

"Our job's done here," he said. "It's always nice to come to a world event and perform well. It adds to the credibility for us. . . . Hopefully it will have a great impact in the States."

A gentlemanly sport with etiquette about when and how to celebrate, the Olympic tournament has witnessed more than the usual amount of fist-pumping, cheerleading and even a thrown broom. But Fenson, a Minnesota pizzeria owner who was sarcastically dubbed "Hollywood" by his teammates, has remained stoic in steering the U.S. team, rarely showing as much as a smile.

"On the ice, he's nerves of steel," American second Joe Polo said. "He has fun out there, but he just likes to stay as focused as he can."

The object of Fenson's focus was an international medal slump that, the U.S. curlers believe, limited the sport's appeal in their homeland. In addition to three Olympic shutouts, the American men had not medaled at the world championships in almost three decades.

"The drought's finally over," said U.S. national team coach Ed Lukowich, a former world champion. "Bronze, for the U.S., is like winning the gold."

While the Olympic medal raises the team's profile for non-curlers back home -- and in the United States, that's pretty much everybody -- the Americans say they actually had their coming out party at last year's world championships. Though they didn't medal, they finished in a six-way tie for first place before losing a tiebreaker that kept them out of the semifinals.

"We didn't surprise anybody out there," U.S. lead John Shuster said, pointing to the ice at the Olympic venue that lies about 45 miles outside of Turin. "That's for sure."

The Americans shared the podium with two more traditional curling powers, gold medal-winning Canada and Finland, which settled for silver after losing, 10-4, on Friday evening.

"It's massively disappointing," said British skip David Murdoch, whose team is also from Scotland, the birthplace of curling.