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This article was published 07/01/2018 (2981 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

PORTAGE LA PRAIRIE — “Surreal” — that’s how Kaitlyn Lawes described it Sunday as she pondered the whirlwind that has been her life for the last month.

Surreal seems as good a word as any to describe the remarkable journey of a woman who a month ago didn’t even have a mixed doubles curling team and this morning has her ticket booked to Korea to represent Canada next month in Pyeongchang at a little bonspiel called the 2018 Winter Olympics.

Lawes and her mixed doubles curling partner, John Morris, defeated Brad Gushue and Val Sweeting 8-6 Sunday afternoon in the final of the first Mixed Doubles Curling Trials.

“It’s surreal. Honestly. I’m in shock,” said Lawes. “We had a couple of tough losses and a couple of tough games we had to grind out. But what an amazing journey to be able to come out on top of such an incredible field…

“And what an honour to be able to get back to an Olympics and represent our country.”

It will be the second consecutive appearance at the Winter Olympics for Lawes, who won gold in Sochi in 2014 as third for Jennifer Jones.

Morris is also a previous Olympian, winning gold in Vancouver in 2010 as third for Kevin Martin.

Lawes becomes the fifth Olympian from Manitoba headed to Korea next month. She joins Winnipeg speed skater Heather McLean — who over the weekend was named a provisional member of Canada’s long track team in Korea — and three women’s hockey players — Ste. Anne’s Bailey Bram and Jocelyn Larocque and Mallard’s Brigette Lacquette.

Morris was also born in Winnipeg — his father, Earle, skipped the 1980 Manitoba men’s champion — but he moved at the age of two and said Sunday he considers Ottawa his hometown.

Still…

“The last time I was in the Olympics in 2010, Winnipeg was claiming me,” Morris laughed. “So I don’t mind if they claim me again.”

Sunday’s final turned on the fourth end. With Lawes/Morris lying three counters on the back four-foot, Sweeting attempted to draw into the pocket with her team’s final stone but was heavy and her rock chipped off and into the open. That left Lawes with a quiet tap with the final rock of the end for a four-ender.

A steal of two the next end had Lawes/Morris holding a 7-3 stranglehold on the scoreboard.

Sweeting and Gushue weren’t done yet. A deuce in the sixth end got them within two and then a steal in the seventh end had Lawes/Morris clinging to a 7-6 lead coming home with the hammer.

They never needed that last rock. With Lawes/Morris lying shot, Sweeting rolled out with her team’s final rock. The two teams shook hands and Morris lifted Lawes into the air.

It was a wacky ending to a wacky event.

If you can name me another discipline at the Olympics, summer or winter, in which someone can slap together a team, practice together once — “For a half hour, at the Granite,” Morris laughed Sunday — and then qualify for the Olympics, I’d love to hear about it.

And yet as slapdash as that sounds, Morris and Lawes were actually the experienced veterans against Gushue, who was the least experienced mixed doubles curler in the 18-team event.

Gushue had played mixed doubles just twice in his entire life before he got to Portage and got on a run that carried him and Sweeting all the way to the final.

Put it all together and it is testimony to just how new mixed doubles curling really is — and just how casually this country’s top curlers have treated it. Or at least they did until now.

With mixed doubles making its debut as a full Olympic medal event in Korea, a fringe off-shoot of curling is going to get unprecedented exposure worldwide.

What people are going to discover is that mixed doubles is a bit goofy — curlers chasing after rocks they’ve just thrown to sweep them — and a bit boring — every end is played almost identically, a game of angles and taps with all the rocks clustered around the four-foot.

But the world is also going to discover mixed doubles is also a ton of fun. No lead is safe in mixed doubles — ever. Consider Sunday’s final — Lawes and Morris authored a four-ender and stole two more and still almost lost.

That kind of thing just doesn’t happen in the team game. You like lead changes and tons of rocks in play? Mixed doubles is going to be your thing.

Four years from now, mixed doubles is going to also be a thing for a lot of elite curlers in this country who until now have treated it as an afterthought, something you do in your spare time when your team isn’t curling.

You read it here — four years from now, this idea that you can just slap together a team a month in advance — or grab a guy who’s played only twice before — and qualify for the Winter Olympics will be preposterous.

Team curling was also quaint back in 1998 when it made its debut in Nagano as a full Olympic medal sport. Nagano changed everything and team curling has never been the same since.

Take it to the bank — Pyeongchang is going to do the same for mixed doubles and there are going to be mixed doubles specialists in the next quadrennial. I asked Morris after Sunday’s final if the rumours are true he’s seriously considering giving up team curling entirely and becoming a full-time mixed doubles curler for the next Olympic quadrennial.

“For sure. I love mixed doubles and the good thing about mixed doubles is that it’s not as tough a schedule as team curling,” said Morris.

Morris was already among the most aggressive mixed doubles players in Canada. He teamed up with Ottawa’s Rachel Homan early on in this past quadrennial and the two were the second ranked team in the country in the discipline until last month at the Roar of the Rings in Ottawa, where Homan and her women’s team won the right to represent Canada in Pyeongchang in women’s team curling.

That forced Homan to withdraw from the mixed doubles trials and left Morris looking around for a new partner in Lawes, who had no team at all in the mixed doubles trials and was available after her Jones foursome failed to qualify for Korea.

Calls were quickly made, a partnership was quickly formed and at the age of 29, Lawes is headed to her second consecutive Winter Olympics in the most unexpected of ways.

From Portage to Pyeongchang. It’s not the customary route. But it will do, quite nicely.

paul.wiecek@freepress.mb.ca

Twitter: @PaulWiecek