‘Miracle year’ in 1973 saw obscure team triumph
Little-known team from Saskatchewan scored Brier win and silver at worlds in Regina
Harvey Mazinke looks back on 1973 and calls it a “miracle year.”
His team, hardly known outside Saskatchewan at the time, won the Brier and then took home the silver medal at the world men’s curling championship.
Mazinke’s story dates back to 1964, when he played in his first Brier as third with Manitoba’s Bruce Hudson. Mazinke likely would have stayed with Hudson, and this would have been a different story, had he not taken a business opportunity in Saskatchewan the next year.
“I was in my mid-20s, and I had in my mind my curling career was over,” Mazinke says from his home in Kelowna.
After a couple of years, however, Regina curler Billy Martin’s second, George Achtymichuk, left curling to finish his teaching certificate, leaving an opening for another player on Martin’s team.
“Billy’s wife and my wife had been curling together in the Regina Club and were good friends,” Mazinke recalls when recounting the formation of his team, which also included lead Dan Klippenstein. “We went to a mixed curling bonspiel together and Billy said, ‘Why don’t you skip?’
“So I skipped in the mixed bonspiel, which we won in Regina. Then he said, ‘We’re short a player. How would you like to come join our team?’ I really walked into a great opportunity.
“Then George got his degree in teaching and he came back to our team. That was our team that played together for at least a dozen years.”
By 1973, their team had played in a few provincial finals but had never won. That year, however, the Mazinke foursome went undefeated through the Regina Curling Club, city and provincial playdowns.
“We had a nemesis, a very famous curler — Bob Pickering,” Mazinke says. “He was always in our way.
“We, some way or other, got Bob’s number that year. We beat Bob twice in the provincial finals, and that’s how we got to the Brier.”
The 1973 Brier, held in Edmonton, was a round robin event without a final game.
“We were not the Number 1-rated team,” Mazinke notes. “There were comments in the paper like we were too old or hadn’t moved around very much. We weren’t that wellknown around Western Canada but we were in Saskatchewan.”
Mazinke lost only one game, to Prince Edward Island, although two of the matches were tight wins, going to 14 ends.
Team Saskatchewan finished the round robin with a 9-1 record, with the next-closest team at 6-4. Mazinke’s team was so far ahead, CBC didn’t even air the final game, angering fans in Regina.
Mazinke said the stones at the Brier were mismatched and the ice was awful.
“We had nine-second ice for draw weight, which today is peel weight,” he says.
“It was very difficult ice to deal with, and my team certainly coped with it, probably better than anyone else, which is how we got through with only one loss.
“Then, wouldn’t you know it, instead of getting a trip overseas for the worlds, we came back to Regina.”
The 1973 world championship, then called the Air Canada Silver Broom, was held at Regina’s Exhibition Stadium.
The arena was built for hockey with cooling tubes 12 inches apart — unlike curling rinks, in which the tubes are eight inches apart. This caused variance in the ice temperature between the tubes.
Mazinke’s team went undefeated until the final, in which the Regina squad played Kjell Oscarius of Sweden.
The icemaker was supposed to be there at 7 a.m. to turn down the brine temperature and chill the ice. He slept in, however, and didn’t arrive until 10 a.m.
With the arena lights, the band practising and 4,500 fans crammed into the building, the ice was warm and wasn’t going to hold up through the final. Mazinke was leading 3-1 halfway through the match, at which point the draw weight became very difficult to determine.
Mazinke ran into trouble in the final end.
“There was a puddle of water in front of the rings about six feet in diameter,” he says. “I had to slide through that with a stone.
“The first time I released too soon … and the stone just died. The second one, I tried another draw, and I think they only had a little biter. It was about a half-inch in back of the house and this time I drove through the water, then I released and it wouldn’t stop sliding
“It ended up just hanging on the back and we were in shock and lost the game, which gave us the silver medal, of course. That was our story in ’73. It was a Cinderella year for us, no doubt about it.”
Mazinke attributes the season’s success to the consistent, tightknit group of four that the team was, as well as the way the curlers’ individual skills came together.
Mazinke calls Achtymichuk and Klippenstein “two of the best broom sweepers you’d ever find,” and Martin “a great finesse shotmaker.”
The skip says he “felt comfortable in my own skin, and I didn’t worry about pressure or making a difficult shot here or there.”
After the ’73 season, Mazinke’s team lost the 1974 provincial final to Larry McGrath before returning to the Brier in Fredericton in 1975.
Mazinke feels fortunate to have had the opportunity to give back to the game of curling. He was the president of the Canadian Curling Association in 1987 and 1988, and considers linking the organization with Labatt Saskatchewan, which became the Brier sponsor for 20 years, part of his legacy.
He was also instrumental in bringing in staff to take over many functions previously handled by delegates of the CCA, which created much more efficiency.
When Mazinke was the vice-chair of the CCA rules committee, he reorganized the rule book, bringing in the burnt-stone rule. Before that time, curlers could throw away a stone if they saw it was going to be detrimental.
The 1973 Mazinke team is part of the Saskatchewan Sports Hall of Fame, the Regina Sports Hall of Fame, and the CurlSask Legends of Curling.
Mazinke is a part of the Curling Canada Hall of Fame as a builder.
“It’s always a very nice honour,” he says, modestly, “and I appreciate it very much.”
There were comments in the paper like we were too old or hadn’t moved around very much.