CANADA’S LORDS OF THE RINGS
Men’s Olympic curling trials in Ottawa will feature a well-decorated field
Brad Jacobs has a unique perspective on the Canadian Olympic curling trials as the only skip to have never lost a game at the event.
Jacobs and his teammates from Sault Ste. Marie, Ont., have played in the trials once, in 2013 in Winnipeg, and they ran the table, going 8-0 to qualify for the Olympics in Sochi, Russia, where they claimed the gold medal.
On the eve of the 2017 trials in Ottawa, which start Saturday at the Canadian Tire Centre, Jacobs was the first person to admit it will be awfully difficult to duplicate the feat.
“If you were to play this event four, five or six times, you could have four, five or six different winners,” Jacobs said. “That’s how deep curling is in Canada. That’s how dominant I think our nation is at the game.”
Jacobs and his team including Ryan Fry, E.J. Harnden and Ryan Harnden are the defending champs, but not necessarily the favourites in a nine-team men’s field that rivals any in the history of the game.
Four teams include Olympic medallists (Brad Gushue, Kevin Koe and John Morris teams are the others), while others have laid claim to multiple national and world titles.
Even those teams that haven’t won international medals (Mike McEwen, Reid Carruthers, John Epping) are among the top teams on the world curling tour and have proven they can beat any team in the field.
It all adds up to what is expected to be an epic struggle for the right to represent Canada at the 2018 Olympic Winter Games in PyeongChang, South Korea.
“It’s a different animal,” Jacobs said. “Everybody forms their teams around this event, to make a four-year run at the Olympic trials and at the Olympics.
“Making it into this event is a really big deal for a lot of teams. When we played in it last time we really noticed there was a lot more tension out there. A couple of the guys who have played in several trials and also Briers said that playing in the Brier is a piece of cake compared to playing at the Olympic trials.”
The Jacobs rink is among the favourites, though likely not the oddsmakers’ top choice.
That would likely go to Gushue, who won his first Brier and world championship in 2017 and also has an Olympic gold medal from 2006. His third, Mark Nichols, was also on that 2006 Russ Howard-skipped team. Also including second Brett Gallant and lead Geoff Walker, the Gushue foursome is tops in the Canadian Team Ranking System standings this season.
“The most consistent team has definitely been Gushue over the last year and a half, two years,” said Carruthers, a Winnipeg skip who played second for Jeff Stoughton at the 2013 trials. “They would have to be the favourites in everyone’s books, but teams like Koe and Jacobs, in tournaments like this, they always rise to the top. Those would be the top three seeds going into this.”
While the teams skipped by Epping, Steve Laycock and Brendan Bottcher have considerably less big-game experience than the other six squads, they’re capable of winning and will be buoyed by a history of upsets at the Olympic trials (Mike Harris in 1997, Gushue in 2005).
Regardless, you can expect it to be intense after teams have geared four years of their lives toward this one moment.
A couple of the guys ... said that playing in the Brier is a piece of cake compared to playing at the Olympic trials.