Brad Gushue says he and Kerri Einarson were “flying by the seat of their pants” during the Home Hardware Canadian mixed doubles curling championship, which concluded Thursday night in Calgary.
That may be so, but now Gushue and Einarson will be flying to Scotland after taking the national title with a 9-6 win over the Manitoba duo of Kadriana Sahaidak and Colton Lott in Thursday’s gold-medal final.
“We don’t have the (mixed doubles) experience that some of these teams that we’ve played have,” said Gushue, who was partnered with Einarson for the first time. “We’re just kind of relying on our execution. We’re probably making some mistakes as far as strategy and timing.
“We’re just flying by the seat of our pants, really. Just making stuff up as we go.”
On Thursday, they made up some winning — and historical — stuff, jumping to an early 7-1 lead en route to their third straight victory in the Page playoffs in Calgary. It’s the first time two full-time skips in four-player competition have combined to win a Canadian mixed doubles title.
Einarson who is also the reigning Canadian women’s champion, and Gushue, the four-time Brier and two-time world men’s champion, won $50,000. That's the biggest cash prize ever offered at a mixed doubles event. They also earned the right to represent Canada at the 2021 world mixed doubles championship, May 17-23 in Aberdeen, Scotland.
For Einarson, it will be a busy May; in the early part of the month, she will be skipping her Manitoba-based team at the women’s world championship in Calgary before heading to Scotland.
“Wow, it’s crazy,” said Einarson. “I never thought I would win a mixed doubles title in the same year (as a Scotties), and it feels absolutely amazing.
This won’t be the first world championship for Gushue. He skipped world junior men’s (2001) and world men’s (2017) champions and of course won Olympic gold in 2006. And he will become one of just three curlers who have represented Canada at a world juniors, a world championship and a world mixed doubles championship. The others are Brett Gallant, his second on his St. John’s-based men’s team, and Gallant’s fiancé and mixed doubles teammate Jocelyn Peterman.
Gushue, who also won a world men’s bronze medal in 2018, was supposed to have represented Canada at the 2020 world men’s championship, but that was cancelled due to the COVID-19 pandemic.
It was a shared disappointment for him and Einarsion, who had won the 2020 Scotties Canadian women’s title, but also saw what would have been an opportunity to represent Canada disappear because of the pandemic,
Now she’ll get to do it twice in less than a month.
“I was probably more disappointed for Kerri and her team (because of what happened in 2020), and then to see them come back and win the Scotties, and then for (women’s) worlds to be part of the bubble, and then to win this — it just seems appropriate with them having missed the opportunity last year,” said Gushue. “I’m super excited for her.”
The mixed doubles event — as have all Canadian curling championships played this year — was held inside a bubbleatmosphere inside the WinSport facility in Calgary, necessitated because of COVID-related restrictions,
It meant an extended stay inside the bubble for Gushue, who earlier this month had led his men’s team in a quest for their fourth Brier Canadian men’s championship in five years, but saw it fall short — they didn’t make it to the Page playoffs.
“The last year has been a challenge for everybody, and to come here and have a disappointing performance at the Brier, and then follow it up with a good performance here, it kind of makes up for a lot of the crappy stuff that’s happened in the last year,” said Gushue. “I had a ton of fun this week; I really enjoyed playing with Kerri, and even off the ice, telling stories, teasing each other, laughing. It’s been a ton of fun.”
The upcoming world mixed doubles championship has something extra at stake. In Aberdeen, the top seven finishing countries will secure spots in the 2022 Winter Olympics mixed doubles competition in Beijing.
Doing so wouldn't necessarily mean Gushue and Einarson would represent Canada in 2022 — that will be decided in a national Trials — but Gushue says he's more than ready for the additional challenge that awaits in Aberdeen.
“When you go to the Olympics, you understand the pressure of having the Maple Leaf on your back,” said Gushue. “That’s far greater than I think anybody’s going to face at a mixed doubles world championship.
“I’ve certainly dealt with it and done OK.”
Einarson and Gushue had to win twice Thursday to claim the title; earlier in the day, they prevailed 7-6 over Danielle Schmiemann and John Morris of Alberta in a semifinal that came down to the last rock of extra-end, with Einarson making a clutch draw.
In the final, Sahaidak and Lott owned last-rock advantage, having defeated Schmiemann and Morris in a Wednesday game between the first and second Page playoff seeds, a result that moved the young Manitobans straight to the championship game.
But in the opening end of the final, an early chance to score four went awry when an attempted double takeout by Sahaidak didn’t come off as planned. That led to a steal of one for Einarson and Gushue.
Sahaidak and Lott scored one in the second, but Einarson-Gushue followed top with two in the third and a steal of four more in the fourth for a lead that proved insurmountable, even in a mixed doubles format where big-score ends happen more frequently than in regular competition.
While the Einarson-Gushue partnership is a new one, they do have some previous mixed doubles experience. For example, Gushue partnered with Val Sweeting in the 2018 Canadian mixed doubles Olympic trials and went all the way to the final before losing to Morris and Kaitlyn Lawes. However, he and Einarson don’t spend a lot of time in the mixed discipline.
“I think there’s a bonus of playing lots and having experience at mixed doubles,” Gushue said. “But I think the fact that we are really good shooters we can make up for some of those inefficiencies that we have from not playing as much (mixed doubles).
“I feel like if we played this regularly, we could get to another level.”
Which, in a way, is what they did in Calgary over the past week … and hope to do in Scotland later this spring.
With files from Postmedia and Curling Canada
