Gold quest a ‘whisker’ short for both Gushue and Jones
BEIJING If Canada’s Brad Gushue could have pulled off the miracle shot, it would have capped a clutch comeback for the Canadian curling ages.
Down 4-3 with the hammer in the 10th end of his Olympic semifinal against Sweden’s Niklas Edin on Thursday, Gushue surveyed his last-rock options and determined he had, essentially, two. He could draw near the button for a single point to force an extra end. Or he could try the miracle shot — a 14foot runback double takeout that, executed to its full intent, would give him two points and the walkoff win.
Geoff Walker, Canada’s lead, figured even a world-class shotmaker like Gushue could unlock that complicated combination of a shot “probably one in 10” times.
Gushue, the 2006 Olympic gold medallist and a two-time world champion, gave himself slightly better odds.
“I’d say I make that shot one out of five times,” he said.
And while a more conservativeminded skip might have opted to take his chances in an extra end, Gushue and his crew were having none of that logic. The problem with taking one was that it would give Edin, the five-time world champion and the reigning Olympic silver medallist, the hammer in the 11th.
“We’ve played Niklas enough to know that when he has the hammer in the last end, your odds are not good,” said Gushue, who estimated Canada’s chances of stealing a point against Edin at somewhere between five and seven per cent.
In other words, Canada’s hope of playing for men’s curling gold came down to a choice between one lowpercentage play and an even lowerpercentage one. And, sadly, the math prevailed. Gushue took his home-run swing but missed his mark by “a whisker.” Longtime third Mark Nichols figured the difference between success and failure came down to “half a millimetre.” In a game of fractions, sadly, Edin’s rock counted for a gameclinching whole point.
Gushue’s miss secured a slightly less palatable bit of Canadian curling history. Canada’s 5-3 loss ensured that these Olympics will be the first since curling became an Olympic fixture in 1998 that Canada won’t play for at least one curling gold medal at a Games. On a day that saw Canada miss the playoffs in the women’s tournament for the second straight Olympics — Jennifer Jones was sent home in the draw shot tiebreaker — Canada’s medal possibilities were reduced to precisely one. Gushue will have to beat the United States for bronze on Friday to ensure Canada doesn’t go home from a Games without a curling medal for the first time since the sport’s 1998 reinclusion.
“At this point, winning the bronze is going to mean just as much as winning the gold,” Gushue said. “We haven’t been our best this week. If we can walk out of here with a bronze medal, I think we’d be pretty proud of ourselves. Sometimes it’s what you get out of the (subpar) weeks that shows the calibre of a team. So if we can come through probably the worst week we’ve had as a team and get a bronze medal, boy, I’d be pretty proud of us.”
For Jones, Thursday’s ouster amounted to a tough way to leave the Olympics. Though the Winnipeg skip ended the nine-game round robin to determine the four semifinalists on a high note, trouncing Denmark 10-4, the proceedings ended with three teams tied for the final two playoff berths. Switzerland, with an 8-1 record, stood alone as the No. 1 seed. Sweden was second at 7-2. Then Canada, Britain and Japan were in possession of identical 5-4 records. Since all three teams had 1-1 records against one another, the matter was decided by the results of the draw shot challenge — curling’s answer to separating logjams since it bid adieu to tiebreaking games at the 2018 Olympics in the name of the TV schedule.
The draw shot challenge has long been maligned among players for settling a curling standoff with what amounts to a skills competition, one that takes place before each round-robin game in which each team’s cumulative average distance from the button is calculated and ranked. Let’s just say Jones wasn’t shy about piling on the disgust.
“I’m never going to be of the opinion that the draw shot challenge should be how playoff teams are decided,” Jones said. “I’ve been pretty vocal before this.”
Jones, like a lot of curlers, preferred the old-fashioned way: A tiebreaking match.
“What we’ve always done,” Jones said. “But I think television is more important than that right now.”
Indeed, TV rights holders don’t appreciate unpredictability in their schedules. And Jones, who has done her share of TV work when she’s not competing, isn’t naive to that reality.
“If you’re asking me, I see it from both standpoints. I want the game to grow, because I love the game so much and I want it to grow all around the world. And I want every television network to cover it all around the world,” Jones said. “But it’s a slippery slope … I just don’t want to lose what makes our game so special. And part of the game is the strategy and the thinking, and thinking about things. And I feel like sometimes we’re just trying to play speed curling now.”
Jones, for all that, didn’t shy away from the truth about her rink’s Olympic ouster: Long before their tournament-worst performance in the draw shot challenge officially sent them home — a befuddling bit of underperformance for a team that won the same challenge at the Canadian Olympic trials and practised it religiously in its Olympic training camp in Barrie — the Jones rink squandered its best chance at the playoffs when it blew an 8-5 fifth-end lead to China in an 11-9 extra-end loss on Wednesday.
“That’s one I’d like to have over,” Jones said of the China match. “It’s too bad that (the draw shot challenge) happened. But we knew. We knew we had to win (against China) to control our fate, and we lost.”
As sure as curlers hate the draw shot challenge, to an athlete they love the idea of holding their fate in their hands. That explains why Gushue, with a last chance at gold on the line, went for the miracle shot.
“At the hog line I was ready to celebrate,” said Gushue. “I liked our chances of winning in our own hands. We took the chance and just missed.”