Jacobs rink a band of brothers
SOCHI, Russia
Acouple of years ago, Canadian national team coach Rick Lang gave a presentation to a group of curlers, Brad Jacobs among them.
The theme of the presentation was “Taking the Next Step.”
Apparently, it had an impact on Jacobs.
“Talk about taking the next step,” Lang said Thursday at the Canadian curling teams’ pre-Olympic presser. “I wish I remembered what I said.
“They just started to believe in themselves and I think they’re taking the game to another level. You’re going to see teams with better fitness, better sweeping and more power because of them. They want to change the world of curling. They want to be the best ever. They’ve got big dreams.”
And they’ve got the talent to match. Twelve months ago, Jacobs and his team were a good, not great, rink. The likelihood of them redefining their sport seemed as remote as, say, a sheet of ice along the Black Sea. But, in short order, the good, not great, rink demolished the impossibly strong field at the Canadian Olympic qualifier in December after romping to their first Brier win last March.
They now enter the Olympics as the clear favourites and a gold medal in Sochi won’t exactly turn off the hype machine. Jacobs, the 28-yearold skip from Sault Ste. Marie, Ont., has been in the driver’s seat for the whole wild ride, but even he has trouble making sense of it all.
“I don’t know if it’s anything we expected but when you start curling, you start dreaming big,” he said. “It’s been a very quick rise to the top for us. We were more of a top-10 team, then we picked up (third) Ryan Fry and things happened. We’re four similar guys going for the same thing.”
And that’s to leave their mark on the game.
The homegrown rink from the Soo Curling Association may be revolutionizing their sport, but they also represent some of curling’s more endearing traditions. For starters, Jacobs and his front end of second E.J. Harnden and lead Ryan Harnden are first cousins who grew up together. They also curl out of the same club and have been together for six years.
But they also represent the newer, more corporate aspect of the sport. A year and a half ago, Jacobs decided to remake his rink and reached out to Fry, a self-described curling gypsy who’d played with 2006 Olympic champ Brad Gushue for four years. As it happened, the Winnipegger turned out to be the missing piece of their puzzle. Three months after leaving Gushue, Fry found himself living in the Sault and became the rink’s quasi-manager, as Jacobs and the two Harndens held down their day jobs.
“They’re my cousins, but we were crawling around together,” Jacobs of his relationship with the Harndens. “They’re like brothers to me and now Fry is as well. That chemistry has been the key to our success.”
That began to show almost immediately. Fry was added for the 2012-13 season and that March, the Jacobs foursome served notice to the curling world. After a lukewarm start to the Brier in Edmonton, they caught fire and beat, in order, Gushue, four-time world champion Glenn Howard and three-time Brier champion Jeff Stoughton on their way to the tankard.
At the Olympic qualifier, two months ago, they then went 8-0 against a field that included 2010 gold medallist Kevin Martin, Howard and Stoughton. Apparently, they’d taken the next step.