Alberta claims Brier, share of all-time lead

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This article was published 13/03/2016 (3781 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

OTTAWA — Take one step to the right Manitoba — you’ve now got company at the top of the Canadian curling world.

A record Manitoba has held for as long as anyone can remember — most Brier championships — is no longer its alone following a 9-5 victory Sunday by Alberta’s Kevin Koe over Newfoundland’s Brad Gushue in the final of the 2016 Tim Hortons Brier.

The victory was the 27th Canadian men’s curling championship for Alberta, finally pulling it into a tie with Manitoba after a chase that has spanned decades and had Alberta close serious ground over the past 15 years.

Koe’s win Sunday night was the ninth Brier title for Alberta since 2001. Manitoba has won just once — Jeff Stoughton in 2011 — during that same period.

The Alberta victory was also a monumental one personally for Koe, who has now won three titles in five trips to the Brier.

Even more impressive: two of Koe’s three wins, including Sunday’s, came via a 3 vs. 4 game that has traditionally been regarded as the graveyard of Brier dreams.

(True story: Curling Canada once put a heart-rate monitor on Koe during a Grand Slam event to see what was going on inside the big man. “He flatlined,” said a source. “He’s exactly the same from the first end to the 10th end.”)

With three Brier titles as a skip, Koe joins the company of such all-time greats as Stoughton, Matt Baldwin and Ken Watson.

“It’s a pretty special feeling whenever you can win a Brier, especially one this tough,” Koe said post-game. “There were so many good teams here, we had an awesome week.”

The Alberta win also marked the third Brier title for lead Ben Hebert, second Brent Laing and third Marc Kennedy.

Koe’s victory turned on a wild seventh end, during which there were 12 rocks in play at one point — with 10 of those in the house and almost all of them clustered around the four-foot.

With Alberta clinging to a 4-3 lead and staring at the prospect of giving up a game-tying steal, Koe used the last rock of the end to surgically remove a Gushue counter from the cluster and score a decisive three-ender.

“It wasn’t looking good early in that end,” said Koe. “But we had the angles right for the second half of the end. And that was the big turning point.”

It was a bitter pill to swallow for Gushue, who dominated this winter’s cashspiel circuit and seemed poised to win his home province its first Brier since 1976, in what was his 13th Brier appearance.

“It’s very disappointing,” said Gushue. “But I think we can take some consolation in the fact they played really good. I don’t think we necessarily came out here and lost it. I thought we went for it in the first couples ends for sure, taking our chance to get our deuce.

“And it didn’t happen. We dug ourselves a little bit of a hole. But credit has to go to Kevin and his group. They played a phenomenal game.”

Alberta outshot Newfoundland 94-91 in the final. Laing shot 100 per cent, as did Newfoundland lead Geoff Walker.

No other province is even in the conversation for supremacy in Canadian men’s curling. After the record of 27 Manitoba now shares with Alberta, Ontario is a distant third with just 10.

If you’re looking for some small consolation in Winnipeg this morning, Manitoba still holds a narrow lead over Alberta in top-three finishes at the Brier (55-53).

With the victory, Koe will now represent Canada at the world men’s curling championship in Basel, Switzerland, next month.

And his foursome also picked up a substantial payday Sunday night: $225,000 in total, which includes $144,000 in Sport Canada funding over the next two years.

Newfoundland earned $61,000 with the second-place finish.

paul.wiecek@freepress.mb.caTwitter: @PaulWiecek