Gushue has no peer as Brier skip

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 30/03/2023 (1321 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Step aside, Ernie Richardson. Make room, Kevin Martin. Stand over there, Kevin Koe. Slide to the side, Randy Ferbey.

There’s now only one Canadian curling skip with five Brier titles, and that is Brad Gushue of St. John’s, N.L., who claimed the title as the only five-time winner in mid-March by beating Matt Dunstone of Manitoba at the 2023 Brier in London, Ont.

Ahead by one in the final end but facing two Dunstone counters in the house with his last rock, Gushue did what he does best: Precisely draw his rock to the four-foot ring, with the help of his sweepers, to score one and win the national championship again. He and his rink of third Mark Nichols, second E.J. Harnden and lead Geoff Walker will represent Canada at the world championship in Ottawa starting April 1.

“I thought I nailed it and the guys judged it perfectly,” Gushue told the Canadian Press of his final shot. “You just have to trust 25 or 30 years of work that you put in.”

There is still one more mountain for Gushue to climb. While he is the only skip to have won the Brier five times, Ferbey still lays claim to the most Brier titles overall — six. He won four as a skip and two as a third for Pat Ryan.

Gushue has had a storied career and his accomplishments are rather remarkable, considering he grew up in a province not known for curling excellence. The biggest names in the archives of Canadian curling come from Saskatchewan (Richardson), Manitoba (Ken Watson, Kerry Burtnyk, Jeff Stoughton) and Alberta (Hec Gervais, Ferbey, Koe, Brendan Bottcher).

How dominant has Gushue been? Five of the last seven Brier titles have been won by his team — three times representing Newfoundland/Labrador, once while wearing Team Canada jerseys (defending champion) and once as a wild-card entry in the Brier. Oh, and he won Olympic gold in 2006 in Italy and bronze in Beijing in 2022. There’s little reason to think he won’t make it six Brier crowns next year, as his team will return intact and face roughly the same competition he dealt with this year.

Now 43 years of age, Gushue is still in his prime as a curler. Glenn Howard, 60, is still curling competitively, so there’s no reason to think Gushue doesn’t have at least five or six years remaining to put that Brier championship record so far out of reach that no one will ever topple him from his curling throne.

OUT OF BOUNDS

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• Comedy guy Steve Burgess of Vancouver, tweeting during the U.S. blowout win over Canada in the World Baseball Classic: “If the USA scores four more runs against Canada they get custody of Windsor and a formal apology for the War of 1812.”

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• Headline at the onion.com: “New NCAA Streaming Service Lets Fans Watch Four Capital One Commercials At Same Time.”

• Headline at fark.com: “Thanks to Princeton, your printable NCAA bracket is nothing more than a placemat.”

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