Hometown hero Gushue takes aim at Brier

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This article was published 03/03/2017 (3439 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

ST. JOHN’S, N.L. — Brad Gushue could have walked home after making a few deliveries Friday at Mile One Centre.

He lives just eight minutes away.

Granted, that would have been a rather unpleasant stroll for even the most hearty Newfoundlander. By noon Friday, the wind whipped off the Atlantic Ocean at nearly 100 km/h. One vengeful gust catapulted a large shipping container into the St. John’s harbour and a tugboat had to retrieve it.

After throwing rocks during a practice session on each of the four curling sheets at the downtown arena, Gushue escaped the stinging wind chill by manoeuvring through the short skywalk to a nearby hotel where he, like all 2017 Brier competitors, is staying this week.

Segregation from family and friends during the pressure-cooker of a Canadian men’s curling championship is standard operating procedure.

But despite 13 previous appearances by Gushue at the granddaddy of Canadian rockfests, there’s nothing routine about this year’s rendition. He’s packing the weight of The Rock on his shoulders.

If the 36-year-old married dad of two daughters is feeling the jitters, he’s doing a masterful job keeping them behind cover.

“It feels great to be here. We’ve certainly felt the love the last few weeks,” said Gushue, whose crew of third Mark Nichols, second Brett Gallant and lead Geoff Walker captured yet another Newfoundland-Labrador title by defeating the Adam Boland team 6-2 in late January at Bally Haly Golf and Curling Club, Gushue’s home club.

It was Gushue’s 11th straight provincial title, and 14th in 15 years.

“For us, it certainly would be nice to win (the Brier), I’m not going to lie. But at the end of this week, we really want to just embrace this opportunity that we have. It could, arguably, be a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity — a full house that is going to be cheering for us. We certainly want to put on a good show,” said Gushue, who lost the Brier final a year ago to Alberta’s Kevin Koe in Ottawa.

“If we win, it’s icing on the cake.”

The Brier has been staged in St. John’s — Canada’s most easterly city and the place Gushue was born and raised — just once before, and that was 45 years ago.

Newfoundland-Labrador hasn’t just been starved of hosting the event, but the region hasn’t had a Canadian champion since Jack MacDuff’s improbable triumph in Regina in 1976.

Gushue’s quest to change all that starts today at 12:30 p.m. (CT) against Alberta’s Brendan Bottcher.

He’s got an Olympic gold medal, courtesy of a monster victory in 2006 in Turin over the alphabet man, Markku Uusipaavalniemi of Finland. But he’s 0-for-a baker’s dozen at Briers, a fact, he maintains, deserves some qualifying.

“The amount of times we’ve played in it is a little overblown,” he said. “For us, we kind of cut our teeth playing at a Brier, whereas Manitoba you get to the provincials and you’re playing (Jeff) Stoughton or (Kerry) Burtnyk and you cut your teeth there. The first number of times I played in a Brier, we weren’t ready to win.

“After years and years of going through that… once you finally break through that, you’re ready to win. It’s really only the last five or six where I really feel we’ve come in here and had a truly legitimate chance of winning.”

Indeed, Gushue is included in a cluster of six teams with the pedigree to win a pass to the world men’s curling championship next month in Edmonton.

Bank on one of either Gushue, reigning Brier and world champion Kevin Koe, 2014 Olympic gold medallist Brad Jacobs of Northern Ontario, former Canadian champions John Morris of British Columbia and Ontario’s Glenn Howard, or Manitoba hotshot Mike McEwen, a playoff team a year ago and a Top-5 team in the World Curling Tour’s order of merit, wearing the maple leaf in the Alberta capital, from April 1 to 9.

Admittedly, the Newfoundland-Labrador skip is not at his best physically. He’s been hobbled by painful hip and groin injuries this season that sidelined him until early December.

If the national playdowns were slated for anywhere else he would have wisely stepped away to heal up, rejoining the team in the fall for the push to the Canadian Olympic Trials in December.

“After a lot of hard work and many therapy sessions, I can get out there and play.

“Am I 100 per cent? Absolutely not. If the Brier wasn’t here, I may not have played at all this year. This was enough motivation to pull out every stop and to see every expert to see this thing going in the right direction,” he said.

“It’s not going to fully get better until after the season when I can start strengthening it.”

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Gushue played a pivotal role in helping his hometown win the favour of Curling Canada in late 2015 and land the event. He sent out a tweet a couple of years before that, challenging the community to step up and fight for the right to host the nearly 10-day party.

Later, Newfoundland-Labrador curling fans were asked to put down deposits on weekly event passes to really beef up the effort by the local bid comittee — and 2,200 passes were sold.

“We’re very appreciative of the support St. John’s and Newfoundland has given this event,” Gushue said. “I’m excited for the week. I hope they’re enthusiastic and loud.

“It’s definitely going to be different than a normal Brier because when it’s out west you get a lot of people that have seen many Briers before. Here, it’s going to be probably 90 per cent new fans to the Brier. I certainly hope they’re excited and cheer hard. I don’t care if they cheer for misses or makes, I just want them to be loud.”

jason.bell@freepress.mb.ca@WFPJasonBell