Canada’s Brad Gushue returns to Olympics 16 years later — with more than a gold medal on his mind

Opinion

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This article was published 09/02/2022 (1307 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

BEIJING At a moment of crisis in Canadian curling, maybe Brad Gushue is the right man for the job. The skip from Newfoundland knows a little something about quieting such noise.

When he arrived at the Turin Olympics way back in 2006, then a 25-year-old construction worker from Newfoundland who’d shocked the curling world by winning Canada’s Olympic trials weeks earlier, there was, then as now, considerable consternation around Canada’s performance at the five-ringed festival. Two go-rounds since curling was added to the Olympic program in 1998 hadn’t gone particularly well – at least, not in the gold-medal-or-bust view of many observers.

Mike Harris couldn’t get the deal done in Nagano. Kevin Martin stumbled in Salt Lake City. And there was skepticism about Gushue’s chances of reversing the trend. In the lead-up to the Olympic trials there were those who questioned Gushue’s choice to add then-49-year-old Russ Howard as a game-calling second. No less than a rival Jeff Stoughton told a reporter that Gushue had “no chance” in the trials, and that Howard’s insertion in the lineup would muck up team chemistry. And even after Gushue used the bulletin-board material to beat Stoughton 8-7 for the right to compete in Turin, some post-trials hiccups had the curling intelligentsia wondering if Canada’s Olympic selection process had produced a regrettable representative.

“We’ve read the papers, seen the reports,” Gushue said in the lead-up to Turin. “All of that is, for lack of a better way to describe it, a pile of crap.”

It’s one thing to say such a thing, of course. Gushue’s rink backed it up, winning gold in a romp to begin a string of three straight Games in which Canada claimed gold in the men’s game.

It’s taken the 41-year-old Gushue 16 years to return to the scene of that triumph. In the interim, two of his running mates have been swapped out. Mark Nichols, the trusty third who’s known Gushue since they were kids, is the lone Turin holdover. Second Brett Gallant and lead Geoff Walker were both teenagers watching on TV when Gushue and Nichols were winning gold, but they’ve been part of the rink for most of a decade. The 2006 gold medallists Howard and Jamie Korab have long since left the team. Now, as then, Gushue has heard the popular storyline around Canadian curling and offered a contrarian take.

“I don’t think the program is struggling at all,” Gushue said. “You look at the depth we have in Canada … On the men’s side we have six or seven of the top 10 teams in the world. I think we fail to give enough credit to the international teams. The expectations of having Canada come in here and win gold every time are unrealistic, and I think as opposed to issues with the program, it’s probably issues with expectations.”

Perhaps there’s something to that. Still, headlines in Pyeongchang weren’t about a lack of golds, but rather a lack of podiums in the men’s and women’s game – a dismal showing that’s since been repeated at the most recent world championship. But certainly credit is due to the consistency of the best international rinks. Sweden’s Niklas Edin, the reigning world champion skip and 2018 Olympic silver medallist, is the clear favourite here. United States skip John Shuster, whose foursome bounced back from a 2-4 start in Pyeongchang to win the gold medal, has been proven dangerous to count out. Britain’s Bruce Mouat, whose team won world championship silver in 2021, is a consistent force on the global pro circuit.

Which is not to say Gushue’s crew, which won the world championship in 2017 and its second Brier in 2020, hasn’t brought high expectations to China, where it opened this Olympic tournament with a 10-5 win over Denmark on Wednesday.

“They’re ready to go. Results will show that,” said Stoughton, the one-time rival who’s the team’s coach here. “I think (Gushue) was a pretty raw talent (in 2006). Obviously he had all the shots.

“The mental side of it, I believe, has improved quite a bit since that time. He’s matured. He’s got a family now. Life changes, and you change along with that and realize there’s more important things in life than curling.”

What’s more important than curling? Nichols said when he and his teammates look back on their careers in the decades to come, it’s not necessarily the on-ice performances that’ll be the topic of their best stories. Gushue and Nichols fondly recalled one of their favourite activities in Turin’s Olympic Village.

“Throwing paper airplanes, setting them on fire – doing stupid stuff that 20-year-olds do,” Gushue said. “We were idiots.”

Said Nichols: “They weren’t on fire for very long … We were just being goofballs. We had a high balcony, and we’d make paper airplanes and fire them out and see who could get their paper airplane to fly the farthest … You get one that catches a nice flight, it would go for a long time. A lot of hangtime.”

In other words, as much as gold is the goal, gold is no guarantee. However long Team Gushue hangs around here, its skip is hoping its members takes something home beyond the results. Which, if the approach in Turin is any guide, might not be a bad way of ensuring the national thirst for results doesn’t swallow a squad whole.

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“I think that’s what I want all of us to take from this experience, is come away with some memories, not just on the ice,” Gushue said. “We have no control over how that’s going to go – well, we have some control, but not full control. But we can control what we do in the village and how we spend our time together and what memories we make.

“We don’t want to lose sight of that. As much as we want to win, you want to enjoy the process as well.”

Which is not to say the Chinese aviation authorities ought to be on the lookout for flaming paper airplanes currently embarking from the athletes village.

Said Nichols: “We won’t be doing that again any time soon.”

Dave Feschuk is a Toronto-based sports columnist for the Star. Follow him on Twitter: @dfeschuk