Playin’ for the fun of it

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 21/01/2011 (5588 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

There is perhaps no one better positioned than Arnold Asham to understand the turmoil Jason Gunnlaugson went through in his failed Russian experiment this winter.

Asham had a ready answer Thursday when asked why he and a couple of other old-timers have formed a team with Gunnlaugson for this week’s MCA Bonspiel that has the talent to win everything up for grabs — but is ineligible to actually win the one thing that is most meaningful.

“This has nothing to do with getting to the (provincials). We’d just really like to get Jason curling with some confidence again,” Asham said Thursday as the 123rd renewal of the MCA Bonspiel got underway.

“That situation in Russia really knocked the crap out of him. It had to — and I know because I went through a similar situation.”

And so it is that the 2010-11 curling season — already one for the ages — takes one final twist for Gunnlaugson this week as the 26-year-old throws last rock for a team that includes curling’s most famous entrepreneur at lead, former world champion and hall of famer Garry Vandenberghe at third and Gunnlaugson’s father, Darryl, at second.

With most of the top talent in the province having already booked their berths to next month’s Manitoba men’s curling championship in Beausejour, a lineup like that would in normal circumstances be considered one of the favourites to win one of the six final provincial berths up for grabs at this year’s bonspiel.

But in a year where nothing has been normal for Gunnlaugson, neither is this team. While both Gunnlaugsons and Asham are eligible to curl at next month’s provincials, Vandenberghe is a B.C. resident and already curled in that province’s playdowns earlier this winter.

That makes Vandenberghe — and therefore the entire team — ineligible to actually win the biggest prize up for grabs this week.

That’s fine with Gunnlaugson, who said after everything he’s been through this year he’s just looking forward to having some laughs for a weekend with his dad, his uncle (Vandenberghe) and a friend in Asham.

“There’s more to curling,” says Gunnlaugson, “than winning prizes.”

Or national championships, for that matter.

Gunnlaugson, along with fellow Manitobans Justin Richter and Tyler Forrest, won the 2010 Russian men’s championship last November as part of a bold venture that saw them make international headlines earlier in the year when the Russian curling federation hired them to be that country’s national men’s curling team in the run-up to the 2014 Winter Olympics in Sochi.

While the Gunnlaugson team — curling with two Russian nationals alternating on the front end — struggled mightily on the fall cashspiel circuit, they won the ‘Russian Brier’ as expected and seemed bound to represent Russia at last month’s European championship and maybe even April’s world championship.

But no sooner had Gunnlaugson et al won the Russian title than they were summarily fired by the Russians, with no official explanation ever tendered. That left the Manitobans — two of whom had quit jobs here in Canada to curl for the Russians — with no team and no jobs.

That sounded awfully familiar to Asham. He was asked in the mid-1990s to help set up the Russian national curling program.

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“I went over there in 1995 and spent a lot of time working with them,” Asham said. “They were calling me the Czar of Russian curling. I was a lifetime member of the Russian curling association. I brought 10 of their girls over here to train. And then they completely screwed me.”

When it was all done, Asham was no longer the czar and the Russians signed a deal with a competitor to supply all their equipment.

“So yeah, I know exactly what Jason’s going through,” Asham says.

paul.wiecek@freepress.mb.ca

sombre start for mca bonspiel C6