Gushue looking for three-peat at Brier

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This article was published 02/03/2019 (2647 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

BRANDON — Brad Gushue senses the stares; he knows he’s a walking bull’s-eye.

This is precisely the position he’d craved to be in during that long stretch of Brier futility, from his debut in 2003 to yet another defeat in the Canadian men’s final in 2016 — the third time he’d have to settle for a silver medal.

But then he finally won. And then won again. 

“If you’re the team to beat, it means you’ve done something,” Gushue said in a chat at Westoba Place this weekend. “The first number of years I came here, it was always the Kevin Martins, the Glenn Howards, the Randy Ferbeys. I wanted to be that team, because they had won the year before or had won a couple of times before.

“Certainly, having won two in a row, that’s a pretty big target on our back, which I don’t think is any different than what we had last year. The target was really big last year and I thought we really played well, we really embraced (it) and, hopefully, we can do that again this week.”

Gushue and his teammates out of St. John’s, N.L., have a shot at making some history during the nine-day event in Brandon. They can join Ferbey’s remarkable Edmonton foursome as the only squads to capture three consecutive Brier titles.

Gushue, with third Mark Nichols,second Brett Gallant and Geoff Walker, are donning the Maple Leaf jackets as Team Canada here this week in the 16-team national championship, which began Saturday and culminates with the final on Sunday, March 10.

But carving out a place in the record books is not top of mind for the 38-year-old skip. He just wants to win — period.

“I haven’t (thought much about the ‘three-peat’) but you guys keep asking me about it,” Gushue said, to laughs. “I don’t have that on my goals list. It would be a nice accolade to have, but it would be nice because we would have won this week. Really, that’s all it’s about. You don’t celebrate three-peats, you celebrate the championship that week, and that’s what we want to have Sunday night — an opportunity to play for that moment and to win the Brier.”

Gushue and his curling cohorts had that golden opportunity in 2017 in their hometown and made the absolute most of it, downing Kevin Koe of Calgary in the championship game. Indeed, 14 years was a charm for Gushue, who became just the first Newfoundland skip to hoist the Tankard trophy since Jack MacDuff in 1976.

A year later, they returned to the Brier as Team Canada and ended the week in Regina standing atop the podium once again, defeating Brendan Bottcher of Edmonton in the final.

Now, they’re proudly wearing the Red and White as one of the Brier favourites.

“It’s nice to be back here wearing the Maple Leaf and not have to go through provincials. We’re going to enjoy it,” he said. “When I first got to see (the Team Canada jersey), it gives you little chills, a sense of accomplishment and pride. It’s always cool. I’ve had the honour of doing it a few times now and it doesn’t get old. I still want to do it a few more times.”

But a three-peat won’t come easy.

Team Canada survived a fright Saturday night, as Gushue drew to the button with his last rock of the 10th end to post a 7-6 victory over Ontario’s Scott McDonald.

Critical to the game was a measurement in the seventh end. McDonald already had one, and umpires had to measure a pair of opposing stones five times before determining it was too close to call.

So the rocks cancelled each other out, and McDonald settled for a single to pull even 5-5.

The teams traded singles, setting the stage for Gushue’s perfect draw.

Gushue has represented the country on a couple of grand stages, winning a world junior title in 2001 in Ogden, Utah, and seizing a world men’s championship in 2017 after a perfect 13-0 run in Edmonton.

No international victory, however, was more memorable than an Olympic gold-medal win in 2006 in Turin, Italy. During that miraculous run, he tossed fourth stones, while Russ Howard delivered third rocks as the team’s skip.

The curling legend Howard, now a commentator for TSN, used to talk about the intrinsic value of being just that — a perennial champion.

Gushue said now he truly gets it.

“Against certain teams, absolutely (there’s an intimidation factor). Some of the more experienced teams like Kevin Koe and Brad Jacobs, I don’t think it’s going to give us any advantage. But some of the teams that maybe are here for the first time or aren’t used to the atmosphere, playing in a Brier, it might be one point on the board for us, it might be two,” he said.

“There’s times in the last couple of years where we’ve felt that, and not so much because we had the Maple Leaf but because we had a number of years of playing really, really well, over and over, and it forces teams to play their best to beat us.”

Team Canada is in an eight-team pool with Koe (Alberta), McDonald of Ontario, Stuart Thompson of Nova Scotia, Jim Cotter of British Columbia, Jamie Koe of Northwest Territories, Terry Odishaw of New Brunswick and David St. Louis of Nunavut.

Coming off a pair of hectic curling seasons — Briers, world championships, Olympic trials, mixed-doubles events — Gushue and crew purposely played fewer events during the 2018-19 competitive season. They trimmed four World Curling Tour events off their usual schedule in the fall, down to eight from a dozen.

But they still had a super campaign, qualifying for the playoffs in all eight events, making three finals and winning the first Grand Slam of the season, the Princess Auto Elite 10 in Chatham, Ont., in late September.

Gushue, a business owner and father to two busy daughters, maintains the effort to conserve some energy for the stretch run to the Brandon Brier should prove beneficial not only now, but over the next three seasons when the grind of another Olympic cycle really kicks in.  

“We played more in January with the intent to be ready for this. I feel like we’re ready, I feel like we’re throwing it well, which was kind of our issue in the fall when I thought technically we got a little bit out of whack. But we got that straightened out, I like how everybody’s throwing it and hopefully we can throw like that all week,” he said.

“(The plan) was to take it a little lighter this year with the intention of ramping it up over the next couple of years towards 2022. Scaling it back, I think, is going to pay dividends in the next couple of years.”

jason.bell@freepress.mb.ca

Twitter: @WFPJasonBell