SCHAFFHAUSEN, SWITZERLAND — On Tuesday morning, three members of Canada’s Team Gushue earned both a win and a new milestone at the 2024 LGT World Men’s Curling Championship.
Skip Brad Gushue, vice-skip Mark Nichols, and lead Geoff Walker earned their 50th victory at the world men’s championship after defeating New Zealand’s Team Anton Hood (0-5) at IWC Arena. The trio is competing at their fifth world championship together, having won gold in 2017 and silver on three other occasions.
“It’s pretty cool; I wasn’t even aware of it,” Gushue said. “When you hear it’s 50, it means you’ve been here a lot, and it means you’ve won a lot. Fifty is a lot of games, so we’ve done something right. At the end of the day, we want to win on Sunday instead of focusing on 50 today.”
The team from St. John’s, N.L., rounded out by second E.J. Harnden – who joined the team in 2022 – alternate Kyle Doering, coach Caleb Flaxey and national coach Jeff Stoughton took advantage of some mid-game steals to win 7-4 over the Kiwis in nine ends.
“That’s a pretty good record to have,” Walker said. “You get here once and try to win as many games as you can, and it’s a dream come true, so to be able to do that this many times and faster than anybody is pretty special.”
The trio earned the 50 wins over 61 games.
Canada is in lockstep with the Scottish and Italian teams at second overall, with four wins and one loss. Sweden remains the lone undefeated team in the 13-team field, with a 5-0 record.
While the score was close in the first half of the game, Canada continued forcing New Zealand into difficult situations and eventually broke through with steals of one in the fifth and two in the sixth.
In the fifth end, Team Gushue dictated play to the centre, and New Zealand continued running back guards to little avail. It left Team Hood with a draw to the button to score one, but the Kiwis rubbed a Canadian stone sitting on the top of the button and gave up one.
In the sixth end, Canada continued applying pressure, leaving New Zealand facing three Canada stones. While they were open, New Zealand had no natural angle to score. Team Hood tried the hit but left Canada with a deuce.
From there, Canada controlled the scoreboard, forcing New Zealand to one in the seventh, scoring two in eight and forcing to one in the ninth.
“Anton made some really good shots in the second and fourth ends to take away multiple-point ends for us. Both were really good shots. I still had a chance in the fourth end and didn’t execute it well, but he made two great shots to keep it close,” Gushue said.
Team Gushue is preparing to take on the Americans skipped by John Shuster (3-2) later today at 1 p.m. ET. The United States will be playing the second of back-to-back games on Tuesday after playing Italy later this afternoon in Switzerland.
It continues the team’s upward progression as it reaches the middle point of the event, but Walker knows the team will need to continue that trend in a game against the United States, which is a playoff calibre team.
“There’s a lot of good out there and I think we’re playing pretty solid,” Walker said. “There’s always things you can clean up and I think there’s always one shot each game that every one of us would like back, but I’m liking what we’re seeing so far.
“We’ll have to come out strong tonight and try and get a hammer; that’s going to be the big thing.”
There were two other games on the ice during the morning draw. Team Lukas Klima of Czechia (3-3) bested South Korea’s Team Jongduk Park (0-6) by a score of 10-6. Also, a 10-4 decision went in favour of Switzerland’s Team Yannick Schwaller (3-2) over Japan’s Team Shinya Abe (1-5).
After the round-robin wraps up Friday evening, the third through sixth-ranked teams compete in playoff qualification games (3 vs. 6; 4 vs. 5), with the winners advancing to the semifinals. The semifinal winners play in the gold-medal game, and the losers play for the bronze.
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TSN/RDS, the official broadcast partner of Curling Canada’s Season of Champions, will provide live coverage of Canada’s round robin and all playoff games. Click here for the broadcast schedule.
Non-Canadian round-robin games are available through World Curling’s streaming platform, The Curling Channel.
