Shuster, U.S. curlers come up gold
PYEONGCHANG, South Korea – It didn’t matter if you never curled. It didn’t matter if you had never watched curling, much less knew anything about strategy or the power of the Swedish team the United States was trying to beat to win its first-ever gold medal.
What connects all of us who get suckered into emotionally investing in these quirky sports that pop up once every four years at the Olympics are the moments of agony and opportunity written on faces and shouted in fist pumps.
And in the latter stages of a gold-medal game that was tied, 5-5, one of those
moments occurred, as easily identifiable as a crucial field goal pulled to the left in the fourth quarter of a Super Bowl or a missed wide-open threepointer to win an NBA Finals game.
After his final throw in the eighth end, the best player in the world could only slump over and roll his eyes. Under immense pressure thanks to some good strategy by the U.S. team, Sweden’s Niklas Edin had just made the mistake of his career, the one that he knew would cost him a gold medal.
“If it curls 3 centimeters more, it’s probably good for (limiting the damage),” Edin said. “But when I missed it, for sure, I knew he was going to make that double and I knew we were going to lose.”
The question was whether Superior’s John Shuster knew it, too.
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Eight years ago, Shuster was humiliated. The skipper of the U.S team, ostensibly the player USA Curling had built its hopes around, Shuster absolutely, unequivocally fell on his face at the Vancouver Games.
Curling may not have a massive, year-round following in the U.S., but finishing in last place had made him the easy target of jokes and memes. His social media accounts were a mess. His Wikipedia page had been edited with fictional items that ranged from funny (“He missed 3 final shots that could have been made by a one armed, one legged, brainless monkey.”) to cruel (“Shuster said he draws inspiration from Bill Buckner, Brad Lidge, Scott Norwood, and the city of Cleveland.”) to downright tasteless (“In 2008, Shuster attempted to commit suicide. Unsurprisingly to those who know him and have watched him play, he failed at the attempt.”)
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For all the skill it takes to compete at the highest levels of curling, it would be hard for the common fan to look at Shuster as an elite athlete. Even down 30 pounds from the 2014 Olympics, when he struggled again and was later told that USA Curling was going to move on and find new talent, he looks more like someone you’d find working at a Dick’s Sporting Goods (which he actually does outside of curling) than competing in the Olympics.
This is the sport, after all, that people sit at home every four years and say they could be good, at too. These are, by and large, regular guys who hold real jobs but find a way to spend several hours a day training for the World Curling Tour and the Olympics.
And even in that context, where they’ve had some good results here and there, they were basically an afterthought in these Olympics. The truth is, as much as Shuster had been cast aside, he was still the best this country could produce and proved it after joining up with Tyler George and Madison’s Matt Hamilton (two other rejects from USA Curling’s high performance program) along with John Landsteiner, who curled with Shuster in 2014.
“It’s no secret that the Olympics has extra meaning for John having been there a few times and not having it go the way you would have liked,” said George. “But we never thought of it in those terms with this team because from the moment we put this team together it’s a different type of squad.”
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On television, they were instantly endearing. From Shuster, the semi-familiar face, to Hamilton with his moustache and tattoo sleeve, they looked like the everyman team. They were easy to root for.
But just a handful of days ago, they still looked like Olympic losers; 2010 and 2014 all over again. Last Sunday, they lost to Japan in the morning and Norway in the afternoon, dropping to 2-4 in round-robin play. Any medal, much less a gold, seemed impossible.
On the verge of elimination, they managed to regroup the next day and stun Canada, which had won the last three gold medals in men’s curling. Then they beat the Swiss and Great Britain, coming all the way back to earn a spot in the semifinals and a rematch with Canada.
The U.S. won that one, too, 5-3, with Shuster clinching it on the final rock in the 10th frame with a picture-perfect shot.
“On tour sometimes they don’t play as well all the time,” Edin said. “They’re
a bit up-and-down, but when they play well, they really get good team spirit going.
“They had nothing to lose and we had everything to lose.”
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That manifested itself throughout the finals. The Swedes made uncharacteristic mistakes. The Americans made some, too, but had recovered well enough to be tied, 5-5, going into the eighth with the advantage of the hammer (the last stone) in two of the final three ends.
By putting five stones in the “house,” which looks like a bullseye, the U.S. had set up a potentially big moment. But with Edin, the No. 1 ranked player in the world, getting the last shots for Sweden, nothing was guaranteed.
Edin was hoping to put his shot in a place where the best the U.S. could do is get a point, or, if all went according to plan, maybe Sweden could steal one by having the stone closest to the center of the house. Though that’s where Edin’s shot stopped, he knew he had put it in a vulnerable spot.
If Shuster could execute, he could knock out that stone and give the U.S. a point. If he could hit it just the right way, though, it would knock out a stone Sweden had earlier placed in the house and give the U.S. multiple points. At this level of curling, and at that point in the game, it was basically one shot for the gold medal from a guy who was once derided as a choker.
“The level of difficulty of that shot compared to shots we’d made was incredibly less difficult,” Shuster said. “I can’t tell you how un-nervous I was.”
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You don’t have to know anything about curling to understand the sounds that exploded moments later from the U.S. crowd, or the high-fives to his teammates or the almost flabbergasted smile on Shuster’s face as the scoreboard went from 5-5 to 10-5.
When Shuster got cut from the national team after Sochi, he didn’t complain or wallow in self-pity. He regrouped, more determined than ever to prove they had made the wrong decision. From the embarrassment of Vancouver to gold in Pyeongchang, it had been almost an impossible journey.
But finally, here he was, delivering a moment for his country that everyone — curling fan or not — could find joy in.