Gushue ready and rested for Olympic run

TSN Senior Reporter

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COVID-19 has created some unusual arrangements for the Canadian men’s curling team as they prepare for the Beijing Olympics.

For the past three weeks, the squad skipped by Brad Gushue has been holed up in a house in Vancouver hoping to combine training and Omicron variant avoidance. The four team members and four support staff have done little other than travel to the rink to practice and then back to the house to do, well, not much.

The rental home has a pool table, there have been regular card games and the PS4 video terminal has been put to good use. So, too has the hot tub and there’s also a make-shift gym in the garage. If you’re on social media, you’ve probably seen lots of their posts -- they’ve been particularly prominent on TikTok.

“It is a bit of a long time to be eight guys in the same house,” admitted Brett Gallant, the team’s second. “Luckily, we’re pretty familiar with everyone and we know how to get along with each other and if we want a little quiet time to ourselves, we can take it.”

The time in the isolation frat house is coming to an end. The team will leave Friday and fly to Tokyo where they will change planes and head for Beijing, arriving early in the morning on Feb. 6. That will give them a couple of days to recover before their first game on Feb. 9.

For Gushue and third Mark Nichols, who played on the Canadian team at the 2006 Games in Turin, Italy, the relaxed pace is welcome. It represents a vast difference compared from their last experience when they were run ragged between winning the Canadian Curling Trials and departing for the Olympics.

“It's night and day, to be quite honest,” said Gushue. “I think our preparation in 2006 was very chaotic, very busy