A winning Wednesday for Gushue and his regular teammates
All four members of Brier championship rink are in playoff contention at Olympic mixed doubles trials
The results of two late games involving members of Brad Gushue’s rink from St. John’s were not available by The Telegram’s Wednesday-night press deadline, but no matter what happened, Wednesday had to be considered a very good day for Gushue and his regular teammates at the Canadian Olympic mixed doubles trials in Portage la Prairie.
Gushue, Mark Nichols, Brett Gallant and Geoff Walker — who are competing against each other in Portage la Prairie — played a total of seven games in Wednesday’s first three draws and won all of them.
Gushue and mixed doubles partner Val Sweeting picked up their first two wins of the trials to even their record at 2-2 and put themselves in playoff contention. Gushue and Sweeting, who downed John Epping and Sherry Middaugh and followed up with a win over Kaitlyn Lawes and John Morris, are tied for fourth place in their nine-team pool.
Leading that pool are Walker and Laura Crocker, who have won all five of their games, including Wednesday victories over Tyler and Nicole Stewart in early action and Chelsea Carey and Colin Hodgson in
the evening draw.
Heading into Wednesday’s late draw and their third game
of the day, Gallant and Jocelyn Peterman also were unbeaten at 4-0 and leading the other pool, having downed Shannon Birchard and Jason Gunnlaugson in the morning draw and continuing their run by downing Nancy Martin and Catlin Schneider.
Nichols and teammate Jennifer Jones had a bye Wednesday morning, then opened their day’s schedule with a win over former national mixed doubles champions Nancy and Wayne Tulk. That gave Jones and Nichols a 3-1 record heading into a night-time matchup against Jill Officer — who is normally Jones’s teammate — and Reid Carruthers.
Today sees the first headto-head meetings between members of Gushue’s Brier and world championship team, with Nichols/jones taking on Gallant/peterman and Gushue/sweeting facing Walker/crocker.
The winner of the tournament will represent Canada when mixed curling doubles makes its debut at the 2018 Pyeongchang Games next month.
The first- and second-place team in each pool will advance along with the next four teams in the overall standings. The playoffs begin Friday, while the final is scheduled for Sunday.