GUSHUE COMES UNGLUED IN BID FOR GOLD
Canadian skip never got close to Sweden in the worlds final
The idea was that you could beat him once, but could you beat him twice?
Niklas Edin rolled the dice and did it twice. Snake eyes for the Canadian Brad Gushue.
Edin, the Swedish skip, is now thrice a world curing champion, matching the record of his national coach and mentor Peja Lindholm. Gushue bounced back from round robin losses against the U.S. and Scotland to win playoff games, but couldn’t do it again against Sweden, losing 7-3.
Edin went through the now-13team worlds with an 11-1 record while Gushue was 9-3, losing to the three teams that he would meet in the playoffs.
Gushue beat Bruce Mouat of Scotland 9-5 in one semifinal while Edin needed an extra end to dispatch Korea 9-8. There was hope, but nope. Edin is a guy who suffered the indignity of losing the gold-medal game at the Olympics to John Shuster of the U.S., giving up five in one end.
A silver medal at the men’s worlds, even one achieved in the United States with Shuster in the building, wasn’t going to replace the Olympic gold. But beating Gushue, the Canadian curler Edin six weeks earlier praised as the best in world, was worthy.
“I think we’ve been spoiled in the last two years at performing well in big events and we didn’t do it this week,” Gushue said.
“We had flashes of it, but we weren’t able to sustain it for any more than a couple of games. We gave it our best, but certainly Niklas was a little bit better this week.
“When he’s going good, he’s really good.”
At last year’s world men’s curling championship in Edmonton, Gushue ran the table with a 13-0 record, beating Edin in the final. Gushue, who shot 91 per cent in the final last year, broke up a lowscoring game with a pair in the ninth end to take a 4-2 lead.
His settling for silver was perhaps not as devastating as what happened to Edin at the Olympics.
“We have to keep this in perspective. We had a bad week and we won the silver medal at the world championship. It’s not going to define us. It’s not going to change our lives,” Gushue said.
Second Brett Gallant was set to leave Las Vegas Monday to attend his grandfather’s funeral and third Mark Nichols lost his mother not long before he left Newfoundland as well.
But the way Canada went into the game, they’d certainly built up their expectations.
“It would mean more to win this thing this year,” Nichols said Saturday evening.
But it was not to be. “When you get down 4-0 and 5-0, you are not going to come back against Niklas’ team,” Gushue said.
“As bad as it is to get your ass kicked, it’s certainly easier than to lose on last rock.”
It ended up a shake-handsafter-eight 7-3 win for Edin.
At least Gushue, Nichols, Gallant and Geoff Walker are coming home with something, unlike Rachel Homan and Kevin Koe, who returned with zilch from the Pyeongchang Olympics as Canada failed to win a medal in either men’s or women’s events for the first time in history.
Gushue was hoping to make history of his own.
If he’d won, he would have joined Ernie Richardson of Regina, Don Duiguid of Winnipeg, Ron Northcott of Calgary and Randy Ferbey of Edmonton as Canadian teams to win back-toback world championships — and Richardson was in the house.
The Canadians who flew down and bought most of the tickets in Vegas managed to make history.
The event set a new U.S. curling attendance record with 74,829. The 2016 Continental Cup recorded a total of 62,498, last year’s hit 52,715 and the inaugural edition drew 52,215.
Organizing committee head Jon Killoran announced after the sixth end that next year’s Continental Cup would return to the Nevada metropolis for a fourth time.
Las Vegas will rock again.
When you get down 4-0 and 5-0, you are not going to come back against Niklas’ team.
BRAD GUSHUE, Team Canada skip