Curlers recognized for touching gesture
Men share in World Fair Play Diploma after surprising friend at 2016 Brier
It was a moment that was so in keeping with the close-knit nature of the Canadian curling world.
At the 2016 Tim Hortons Brier in Ottawa, Team Canada’s Pat Simmons and Ontario’s Glenn Howard did a most generous thing. They planned for Craig Savill, who at the time was suffering from Hodgkin’s lymphoma, to throw lead rocks for Ontario in his hometown, in front of family and friends at TD Place Arena.
That act of supreme sportsmanship did not go unnoticed.
Savill, Howard and Simmons were last week named recipients of the World Fair Play Diploma by the International Fair Play Committee, to be presented at a ceremony in Brussels on Nov. 17. Due to scheduling conflicts in a critical 2017-18 season, none of the winners will attend the celebration. It is the first time curlers have been honoured by this organization.
“Obviously very unexpected,” said Simmons, a two-time Brier champ who, at the time, was curling out of the Glencoe Club. “We were just doing our thing and to get wind of this was neat. More so for our sport than any of us individually. It’s good recognition and of the many acts of sportsmanship that go on in the sport of curling, this was highlighted.”
The idea was that of Nolan Thiessen, who was lead with the Simmons foursome which also included third John Morris and second Carter Rycroft.
“We all wanted to do something for Craig,” Thiessen said. “We knew he was going to be out there. We knew how much he wanted to play in his hometown Brier. We’re all really good friends and I said, hey, we should get Craig to throw a few rocks in the game somehow. Both teams were more or less out of the event, we were playing out the string, and it made a lot of sense, especially the fact that we were playing Glenn.
“I ran the idea by my guys. They thought it was a good idea. We quietly told Glenn because we wanted it to be a surprise. Similarly, I told the floor director for TSN because sometimes TV doesn’t want to show lead rocks so I told them what our plan was.”
It became, in a way, the defining moment of that championship.
“It was pretty emotional for everybody,” Thiessen said. “It was just our sheet planning it, but then the murmur went through the stands and the rest of the teams stopped and watched Craig throw. Everybody in the stands gave him a standing ovation but all the players stopped their games. They knew it was something a lot more important in life than just one game.”
“It was a no-brainer, obviously,” said Simmons, who now skips a team out of Winnipeg’s Granite Curling Club. “He had played with Glenn, obviously, and also grew up playing with John. Friends on both sides. Why wouldn’t we do that, is more the question. For me, it was a highlight and it was neat to see him out there in front of home, family and support. Just a real cool moment for all of us.”
Savill joined Reid Carruthers’ squad as an alternate in the spring.
These types of feel-good stories occur in this sport more often than not, given the familiarity of the athletes. Simmons agreed, it was a quintessential curling thing.
“We tour around and see each other week in and week out,” he explained. “Even people not on your team become friends and you hate to see a good friend or a family member have to struggle through something like that and if you get a chance to support in any way, that’s what you do.
“A lot of sports wouldn’t be allowed to do something like that in a national championship. I was very happy to see that the rules were allowed to be bent. I think curling set a really good precedent in a sense that there was a bigger picture at work there and it didn’t affect the competition and only made it better by a long shot.”
The three curlers will be well represented in Belgium at the ceremony, considering the timing really couldn’t be worse. The Olympic pre-trials are in Summerside, P.E.I., on Nov. 6-12, followed the next week by a slam in Sault Ste. Marie.
The International Fair Play Committee was established in 1963. The list of past winners is a sporting who’s who, including hockey’s Wayne Gretzky, tennis stars Stefan Edberg and Pete Sampras, soccer legend Sir Bobby Charlton and track and field greats Sergey Bubka, Kipchoge Keino and Emil Zatopek.