Brad Gushue reflects on memoir, retirement and new roles in curling, Digi Mart USA News (Toronto, Canada): A few weeks before Brad Gushue flew into Toronto to talk about his frank new memoir, his publicist sent an apologetic email: the former champion had not done any curling since taking a final, teary bow at the Brier last March, and his last few seasons had been plagued with injuries. As a result, he would not be able to throw any rocks for a Globe and Mail photo shoot following the interview.
As Gushue, 46, stood in the chill of a Toronto curling pad waiting for a photographer to set up lights, he admitted the issue was more emotional than physical. After more than two decades as one of the world’s top curlers, he was not ready to confront what he suspected would be his own fading skill.
As a teenager, he had won a number of golf competitions before giving up the game for curling, but when he hits the links now, the frustration is intense.
“I should be able to do this and I can’t,” he said. He described how he expects to make the runback shot as he normally would, then misses and goes home frustrated.
“If you’re going to go back and not play at that [top] level, you’re probably going to have some resentment toward the game. So, it’s probably better just to stay away.”
That relentless drive was a superpower for Gushue, pronounced “Goo-zhou,” ever since he burst out of his hometown of St. John’s in the early 2000s as a brash twentysomething from a province not then known for its curling talent.
In his new memoir, Gushue: The Making of a Champion, written with journalist Stephen Brunt, he acknowledges that the approach came at significant cost. “A few more rocks, a few more practices, a few more reps,” he writes.
“That has always been my mentality, and sometimes back then there were times when I needed an intervention, needed someone to tell me to stop.”
Asked where that obsessiveness now goes, he replied, “Don’t know.” He says he has plenty of things on the go and is too busy, but nothing qualifies as a “new North Star in my life.” “I know realistically I’m not going to find something like that, but if I can find something that I can have a little bit of passion with, that’s great.
But then the other side of me says there’s something out there that you can devote your life to. So, there’s that battle.” He points to his head and shakes it.
“I’m a mess up here.”
The memoir offers a forthright, emotional and revealing look back at his more than 20 years in the spotlight, including behind-the-scenes accounts of his anxious thoughts during his greatest triumphs, such as Team Gushue’s gold-medal win at the 2006 Turin Winter Olympics. He reveals that during the tournament, his family kept him in the dark about a health battle his mother was waging so that he would not be distracted.
Still, news from home leaked through: teammate Jamie Korab learned at an Internet café that Newfoundland and Labrador Premier Danny Williams had closed the schools so children across the province could watch the gold-medal game. Feeling the weight of expectations, Gushue barely slept before delivering a dominant performance that won Canada its first Olympic gold in men’s curling.
The team received a thunderous airport welcome on its return, but the joy soon soured. Gushue writes that he went back to the gym three days later, fearful that if he did not repeat his triumph, “people would dismiss me as a fluke, a one-off.” At 25, he said, he did not feel he had earned the win or suffered enough to deserve it.
“I couldn’t enjoy the success. It came too easy, to be quite honest.” It took another 11 years for him to finally win his first Brier.
Hardships followed. In the spring of 2007, Gushue and teammate Mark Nichols decided Korab was not sufficiently focused and cut him loose.
Many people across the province, and even at his home curling club, took sides, with many angrily criticizing Gushue for what they saw as disloyalty, and he received hate mail. The episode left him scarred and withdrawn.
“I became a much different person,” he says. “I’m very cautious in certain social settings.”
Gushue said he had grown up admiring Mike Keenan, the gruff hockey coach known as Iron Mike who won the Stanley Cup with the New York Rangers, and believed pushing people was the essence of coaching. “I thought that was normal.
So, I took that mentality and approach into curling.” After his mentor, Toby McDonald, who had been part of the rink that won Newfoundland’s first Brier in 1976, delivered hard truths about the bruising effects of his leadership style, Gushue changed, though not overnight. “I’d spent 15 years being an asshole and all of a sudden I have to be patient and empathetic and work with people,” he says.
He became a more understanding boss, both with his curling teams and in the businesses he operates on the side. Like many athletes in Olympic sports other than hockey, basketball, baseball and soccer, he made a life in curling but could not make a living from it alone.
He does consulting and speaking engagements and currently co-owns a pair of Orangetheory Fitness franchises.
Gushue was named director of high performance for USA Curling last spring. Some Canadians saw the move as a snub.
“I could see how people would be disappointed,” he says. “The political environment right now makes things much messier.” He notes there are very few jobs in curling, and this one is fully remote, allowing him to keep living in St.
John’s with his wife and two daughters. “This is an administrative job.
This is me allocating funds to the program and figuring out the best way to spend it, how the athletes should be training. You will not see me waving any flags or standing on the sidelines.”
He also does play-by-play for the Grand Slam of Curling broadcasts on Sportsnet and CBC. His first broadcast last month was humbling.
“Man, oh man, I was so stressed. I was more nervous than a Brier final.” He added: “Being 46 years old and starting something from the ground level is tough when you’ve been the best in the world at something else for a long time.
Still, if I can get past the initial anxiety, I think it’s something that I could love to do.”
