Mixed doubles not a guarantee

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 23/11/2016 (3483 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

No one in the history of Manitoba curling was better under pressure than Jeff Stoughton.

And that makes him the perfect person to save Canada’s curling program this winter from what would be its most humiliating international embarrassment ever.

Stoughton — who won a mind-boggling 11 of the 12 provincial men’s finals he appeared in during a two-decade career — is the man Curling Canada has entrusted with this country’s mixed doubles curling program now that it has been approved as an official Winter Olympics medal sport, beginning in 2018 in South Korea.

A two-time Canadian mixed champion before he went on to become a three-time Canadian and two-time world men’s champion, Stoughton looks on paper to be the right man for the job.

But curling is played on ice, not paper; the problem for Stoughton is that the same Canadians who have dominated men’s and women’s curling internationally since the day someone figured out you could slide a rock on a frozen river happen to be really, really lousy at mixed doubles curling, where teams are comprised of one man and one woman.

How bad? I told you already. Really bad. Just one Canadian team — ever — climbed onto the medal podium at the world-championship level; a bronze won way back in 2009 by Winnipeggers Sean Grassie and Alli Flaxey.

Since then, nada.

To place Canada’s international mixed doubles struggles in context, it’s worth noting the lonely bronze won by Grassie and Flaxey gives Canada the same number of medals in mixed doubles as such curling powerhouses as Spain, France, Austria and Czech Republic. That would be great international company to be keeping if we were talking about fencing. Curling, not so much.

The result of all that anemic performance internationally is that after inventing the mixed doubles discipline here in Canada and then lobbying aggressively — and, ultimately, successfully —  to have it added to the Olympics as a third medal for curling, this country finds itself in serious jeopardy of being on the outside looking in when it debuts in Pyeongchang.

How much jeopardy? I told you already. Serious jeopardy. Stoughton figures Canada needs to finish at least fourth at the 2017 world mixed doubles championship in Lethbridge, Alta., in late April in order to guarantee a spot among the eight nations competing in South Korea.

So, how difficult would that be? Well, if this were men’s or women’s curling we were talking about, a fourth-place finish would be of little concern. But in the first year for Olympic qualifying in mixed doubles last winter, Canada finished fifth at the worlds. Aside from the Grassie bronze in 2009, Canada has finished in the top four just one other time at the world tournament.

So yeah, hardly a gimme.

To put all this into context for you non-curling fans out there, an Olympic curling event without the participation of Canada would be at least as shocking as an Olympic hockey event without Canada.

Death, taxes and Canadians kicking ass at hockey and curling — you cannot count on much these days, but you’d think you could still bank on that.

You want pressure?

All those last-rock draws to the four-foot Stoughton made in his career pale in comparison to the pressure he’s feeling right now to make sure one mixed doubles team — any team — emerges from the Canadian wilderness this winter with enough skill to get Canada to South Korea.

“Yeah, there’s some pressure we’re feeling for sure,” Stoughton said Wednesday.

“The nerves are definitely there right now and they will be there in Lethbridge, too.”

While Curling Canada has invested heavily in mixed doubles since the IOC announced last year it had been accepted as a full medal sport, the problem remains the same as it’s always been — our curlers simply don’t take it as seriously as those in Europe, where most of the best mixed doubles teams are made up of people who compete in that and nothing else.

That’s a very different approach than here, where the overwhelming majority of curlers competing in mixed doubles are still devoted first to their men’s and women’s teams, making time for the handful of mixed doubles events in this country only when it fits into their schedules.

Which is never, sometimes.

Winnipeg’s Reid Carruthers who, along with Rachel Homan second Joanne Courtney, has the fifth-ranked mixed doubles team in the country, says he hasn’t played mixed this year and doesn’t expect to do so until he and Courtney compete next April in Saskatoon at the Canadian mixed doubles championship, where the team that will have to try to deliver the Maple Leaf to the Olympics later that same month in Lethbridge will be determined.

Carruthers said he and Courtney are already pre-qualified for the national championship and they just cannot fit any more into busy schedules. He has already competed in seven events with his men’s team.

“It’s just really hard to find the time,” he said.

It’s a similar story across the country. The top-ranked mixed doubles team in the country right now is John Morris and Homan, both of whom also compete heavily in men’s and women’s schedules, respectively.

Ditto other high-ranking pairs such as Jennifer Jones and Brent Laing, Mike and Dawn McEwen and Kaitlyn Lawes and Marc Kennedy.

The problem with trying to do it all is that mixed doubles is such a different game: a team throws just five rocks an end instead of eight; there’s no broom to throw at; you have to jump up and sweep the same rock you throw; and the strategy is completely different, beginning with the decision on who you choose on your team to throw the first and last rocks and who throws the other three rocks in the middle.

It’s curling, sure, but of a very specialized type.

The countries that have already had success at mixed doubles curling internationally are a mixed bag. There is a traditional curling powerhouse in Switzerland, which leads all nations with five world mixed doubles titles. Then there is Russia, which is competitive internationally but whose two world mixed doubles titles stand among the few times that country’s curlers have ever hit paydirt.

And then there is Hungary, a country that is all but invisible in the men’s and women’s games, but which has won two gold and one silver in mixed doubles curling over the years.

If only our curlers were as good as the Hungarians, said no Canadian ever. Until now.

Don’t laugh — Canada has a berth in the Olympics riding on being able to prove it. 

paul.wiecek@freepress.mb.ca

Twitter: @PaulWiecek