Gushue on a mission for Brier berth
Brad Gushue’s on- i ce face plant — and the resulting concussion — made national headlines in 2015 when the Olympic champion needed seven stitches to close a gaping wound over his swollen right eye.
But the pride of St. John’s, N. L., suffered an injury of a more subtle kind last spring. His left hip and groin simply quit on him after more than two decades of sliding out of the hack.
The overuse affliction — Gushue says his body just suddenly shouted ‘ No’ — sidelined the 36- year- old skip for eight months until his triumphant return over the weekend at the Canadian Open in North Battleford, Sask.
Officially, Gushue made 100 per cent of his shots in an 8-3 final victory over Sweden’s Niklas Edin to collect his seventh career Grand Slam of Curling title.
“I think they were a little generous in the scoring, to be honest,” Gushue told Postmedia Tuesday. “But it was nice to get back out there. As the week went on, I got more and more comfortable and more and more confident.”
It’s true. Even the biggest names in the roaring game can feel like beginners, especially after extended time away.
Throughout his career, Gushue never missed a game due to injury until the face plant. Since then, he has sat out 47.
“Going into this week, I didn’t have a lot of confidence,” he said. “I really wasn’t seeing results in practice. My focus in practice has been on the physical side rather than making shots.”
Building strength in the hip is the priority as Gushue tries to ease his body into the awkward posture required to throw the rock.
“Once I started playing again and the focus turned to making shots instead of trying to get comfortable, it started to come back to me pretty quick,” Gushue said. “I’m looking forward to getting back to 100 per cent on the ice and feeling like myself.”
In spite of the skip’s lengthy absence, Team Gushue resides in first place in the World Curling Tour’s Order of Merit. Mark Nichols, Geoff Walker and Brett Gallant — with an assist from spares Charley Thomas, Adam Spencer and Pat Simmons — just kept on winning with the man the team is named after on the sidelines.
Although he tried to downplay it, the internal pressure mounted in recent months for Gushue to return with the provincial playdowns looming. On the line: the right to represent Newfoundland and Labrador at the 2017 Tim Hortons Brier in St. John’s.
Remember, every school in the province shut down in 2006 so students could witness Gushue’s historic Olympic victory on television.
“The biggest part of the injury for me was not knowing when I would get back,” Gushue said. “There was no definitive timeline. If you break your leg, there’s a timeline for it to recover. This was just going to take as long as it would take.
“It made for a lot of stress in my life.”
With much of that stress relieved thanks to his performance in North Battleford, Gushue figures he should feel 100 per cent in time for the first national men’s curling championship to be played in his province since 1972.
To put that in perspective, Gushue was born in 1980.
“Not to put the cart before the horse, because we’ve got to get through our provincials first before the Brier, but to not even have that opportunity to qualify would have been devastating,” Gushue said. “But fortunately now I’m on the right side of it.
“The buzz here is incredible. I think it’s going to be unlike any Brier in recent memory. St. John’s is a smaller city. It’s not Calgary. It’s not Ottawa. It’s the biggest thing we’ve had here as far as sporting events, probably ever.”
Just i magine t he party on George Street — which claims to have more bars and pubs per square foot than any other road in North America — should Gushue and his mates hoist the Tankard for the first time on home ice.
NOTES: In constant pursuit of shaving fractions of a second off her run times, Canadian bobsled star Kaillie Humphries switched things up over the weekend by placing Melissa Lotholz in the back of her sled instead of Cynthia Appiah. Lotholz, 24, responded by helping the twotime Olympic champion win gold at a World Cup stop in Altenberg, Germany. “Pushing in my sled is different,” said the 31- year- old Humphries. “There are different pressures when they are in my sled to perform. We are always going out to win.” . . . Heptathlete Brianne Theisen-Eaton’s first major item on the post-retirement to-do list: attending the Golden Globes with her husband, retired American decathlete Ashton Eaton. The Olympic power couple posed for pictures with Matt Damon, but Theisen- Eaton called the highlight of the evening meeting Sunny Pawar from the movie Lion.