Fry wants lasting legacy

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 03/03/2015 (4154 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

CALGARY — He’s won the Brier and Olympic gold in back-to-back years.

For most curlers, that would be plenty — and then some.

Winnipeg’s Ryan Fry isn’t most curlers. So having already won the two biggest things you can win if you’re a male curler in this country, Fry has set his sights on a new and, get this, even loftier goal.

“We want our team to have a legacy,” Fry said at the Brier Monday after a 9-4 thrashing of Northwest Territories improved his Northern Ontario team to 4-0.

“I’ve dreamed about winning the Brier and Olympics since I was a little kid. But to go down in history as one of the best players on one of the best teams ever, you have to win multiple championships and be a No. 1-ranked team for a series of years.

“The Howards, the Ferbeys, the Martins, the Stoughtons — the guys synonymous with this sport did it over and over again for years. And we want to be that next team to be like that — and do it now that curling has taken its jump and the level of competition is higher and the physical fitness is higher and the money and sponsorship is better.

“Everything in this sport is getting bigger and to be that team that was part of that original push and stayed on top for years, that’d be very special.”

The Jacobs team, of course, will forever be remembered for being the first in curling to take physical fitness to a level more commonly associated with the other Olympic sports. Sure, some curlers have been in the gym for years, but no teams were doing it at the level of the Jacobs foursome when they burst on to the scene in 2013, winning the Brier that year, the Trials the following winter and finally Olympic gold in Sochi last February.

Until now, that is. With all their success the last few years, the ripped biceps and lithe bodies that were once synonymous with the Jacobs team are now a common sight in men’s and women’s curling teams around the world.

But while they no longer enjoy the same fitness edge over their competition they once did, Fry insists his squad’s edge hasn’t been entirely erased yet.

“I guarantee you there’s still nobody who works at the game as hard as we do. There’s teams who say they’re in the gym four or five days a week. We’re there every day of the week and we’re training the right way,” says Fry.

“We definitely go into every game knowing we put more into it than the other players. Sometimes you get rewarded for that and sometimes you don’t. We’ve been fortunate the last two seasons that we’ve gotten very heavily rewarded for it.

“But you still need the breaks and you still need to play well and you need luck — you need all those things to win a championship. But we know we can knock one of those variables out of the park just by doing all the work we can possibly do.”

— — —

The 2017 Canadian Curling Trials will be held in Ottawa, Curling Canada announced Monday.

The Trials, at which Canada’s representatives in men’s and women’s curling for the 2018 Winter Olympics in Pyeongchang, South Korea, will be determined, will be held Dec. 2-10, 2017 at Ottawa’s Canadian Tire Centre.

The pre-Trials, at which the final participating teams for the Trials will be determined, will be held Nov. 6-12, 2017 at Credit Union Place in Summerside, P.E.I.

‘We want our team to have a legacy’

The decision to put the 2017 Trials in Ottawa means the nation’s capital will play host to major curling events in back-to-back years. Next year’s Brier is also being held in Ottawa.

The decision to host two major curling events in a city that is not exactly known as a curling hotbed is curious. The 2001 Brier was the last major curling event to be held in Ottawa and was widely considered a disappointment, attracting just 154,136 spectators at a time Briers in Edmonton, Calgary and Saskatoon were attracting a quarter-million fans and more.

— — —

In a weird twist to the proceedings, Team Ontario filed a protest over the behaviour of Team Northern Ontario during a 7-3 Northern Ontario win Monday.

Winnipeg Free Press | Newsletter

Mike McIntyre | On Sports

Thursdays

Keep up to date on sports with Mike McIntyre's weekly newsletter.

Sign up for Mike McIntyre | On Sports

Sign Up

I agree to the Terms and Conditions, Cookie and Privacy Policies, and CASL agreement.

TSN cameras caught at least one instance in which an Ontario thrower had his foot struck by a brush belonging to a Northern Ontario sweeper.

Sources later said Northern Ontario felt throwers from Ontario were leaving knee prints on the ice.

Curling Canada said it would investigate, but had no further comment Monday night.

paul.wiecek@freepress.mb.ca Twitter: @PaulWiecek