Gushue looking to capture elusive second world curling championship
CANADIAN SKIPPER HAS WON THREE SILVERS AND AN OLYMPIC BRONZE SINCE HIS 2017 TITLE
The pressure is off. As Brad Gushue and his teammates flew to Switzerland this week for the world men’s curling championship, they no longer had to bear the weight of their country’s gold-medal drought.
Rachel Homan and her teammates won the world women’s championship last Sunday in Sydney, N.S., taking down four-time defending champion Silvana Tirinzoni of Switzerland in the final, giving Canada its first gold medal in men’s or women’s play since 2018.
True, Canada has still not won a gold medal on the men’s side since Gushue did it in 2017, but things don’t seem as dire now as they did even a week ago.
“We have a world championship,” Gushue said. “If anything, that takes the pressure off a little bit.”
Not that Gushue was really feeling pressure anyway.
Of course, he wants to win a second world title after taking home silver medals at the 2018, 2022 and 2023 world championships and a bronze at the 2022 Olympics, but he’s always been philosophical about the unpredictability of one-game finals.
“Canadian curling fans, at least the ones that are watching on a regular basis, are fully understanding of the world of curling right now and how challenging it is,” Gushue said. “I spoke very highly of Rachel Homan and what her team has done this year and that would not have changed if they had happened to lose at the end of last week.
“They’ve had a remarkable season and you can’t judge a whole season on a world championship final. That’s why, even looking back at our history at the worlds, we’ve lost three finals. Those are pretty incredible runs just to get to those games and then we came up against a hot team or we had a poor game. We have to take things on the whole.”
Gushue, Mark Nichols, E.J. Harnden and Geoff Walker won the Brier earlier this month in Regina, beating Saskatchewan’s Mike Mcewen in the final.
Gushue, Nichols and Walker have won the Brier six times, all since 2017, and are among the most decorated men’s curlers in Canadian history.
Losses to Sweden’s Niklas Edin (2018, 2022) and Scotland’s Bruce Mouat (2023) in world finals can’t do much to diminish their accomplishments.
“I use the analogy of Jack Nicklaus where you want to be in position on the back nine of a major golf tournament and sometimes you go out and you play well and you earn it and sometimes people play poorly and they give it to you,” Gushue said. “And it can work the other way as well.”
The way Gushue sees it, all he and his teammates can do is try to get back into that same position again.
“If we can put a game together like we’re capable of playing, we’ll give ourselves a real good chance,” Gushue said before leaving for Schaffhausen, where the world championship begins Saturday. “To win these championships, you need a little bit of luck and a little bit of timing. The last few worlds, we haven’t had that in the last game of the week.”
This year, six-time champion Edin isn’t the favourite. Nor is defending champion Mouat, nor even Gushue.
This year it’s Joel Retornaz of Italy, whose team has occupied the No. 1 spot in the world rankings all season, having won two Grand Slam events in Canada against top competition.
Retornaz is a prime example of why this event is so much harder for Canada to win than it was decade or more ago.
“The top teams in other countries are much better than they were 10 or 20 years ago,” Gushue said. “You don’t have look farther than Joel Retornaz out of Italy. That’s a country that was not even thought of as a playoff contender and now, all of a sudden, they have the No. 1 team in the world and a team that has won three Grand Slams in the last couple years.”
Canada opens the tournament Saturday afternoon (early morning in Canada) against Lukas Klima of Czechia and takes on Germany’s Marc Muskatewitz in the evening. On Sunday, Gushue will go up against defending champion Scotland in a game that will likely play a big role in determining which teams clinch automatic berths in the semifinals next weekend.
It will be a rematch of last year’s gold-medal game, which Mouat won 9-3 in eight ends.