Canada's curlers need focus as world takes aim

VANCOUVER (Reuters) - The world is gunning for Canada's curlers.

So the trick for the highly touted Canucks when Olympic competition starts on Tuesday will be keeping focused amid twin pressures: living up to No. 1 world rankings and performing for an anxious and well-versed home crowd clamoring for gold.

In the lead-up, the teams of veteran men's skip Kevin Martin and women's captain Cheryl Bernard have taken pains to hammer home the point that they can perform under pressure.

Their rivals are betting they can.

"Usually with curling Canada is the favorite going in. They've got the most curlers in the world and the most teams. Certainly there's pressure on them but they are used to it -- Kevin's been here before," U.S. team member Jeff Isaacson said after a training session in Richmond, British Columbia, on Saturday.

Still, his young team, ranked fourth in the world, and the others are far from conceding the gold.

"No, certainly we don't go anywhere thinking that -- we've come here to win. We've had a long training year and we've played all the events that the other guys did," Isaacson said.

In men's play -- with the sport of brooms, rocks and pinpoint precision on ice gaining more attention in Vancouver -- the field chasing Canada is tight. Any one of the teams could emerge as contenders, said Norway's skip, Thomas Ulsrud.

All the teams have adopted more aggressive styles in recent years, with riskier rock-placement strategies, and that lends itself to exciting Olympic action, he said.

"Canada is way up there, and after Canada, it's Scotland, Norway, Switzerland and even Sweden -- they won the Europeans this year. So, it's going to be a hell of a race for medals," Ulsrud said.

Martin, 43, first qualified for the Olympics in 1992 when curling was still a demonstration event. He won a silver medal in Salt Lake City in 2002, but missed the 2006 Games.

Bernard, also 43, is making her first Olympic appearance and hopes to take the crown back from 2006 winner Sweden, led by Anette Norberg, who has eight world championship medals.

She must also fend off the newest threat -- the Chinese squad skipped by Wang Bingyu, 25. That rink beat Sweden last March to become the first team from an Asian country to win a world championship.

"It may be easy to say or hard to believe, but we don't look at it as pressure -- we look at it as support," Bernard told Reuters. "To be able to play on your own soil and have all the comforts of home is really an advantage. So we're looking at it as a good thing."

(Editing by Frank Pingue)