For Canadian curlers, the only feat more daunting than winning gold is qualifying

Team Canada is here, but Gushue, inexplicably to the world of curling, is not. He has been watching the games on television, yet again, from his home in St. John’s.

“Painfully,” he said.

Team Gushue, the team that he leads, is the reigning world champion, and most curling pundits consider him one of the best players on the planet — if not the best.

But for elite Canadian curlers on the men’s side, the only feat more daunting than winning Olympic gold is qualifying for the Olympics in the first place. The Canadian Olympic trials are a meat grinder. Consider Gushue, who has tried on three occasions to make it back to the Olympics since 2006 — and fallen short each time.

“Their Olympic trials are the most difficult event in the world,” said John Shuster, a four-time Olympian for the United States and a former bronze medalist. “If your goal is to compete at the Olympics — I mean, for me, it’s fortunate that I’m an American. If I was in Canada, there’s no way I would ever be going to my fourth Olympics.”

Canada, which is aiming for its fourth straight gold medal in men’s curling, typically packs more curling punch than a 10th-end peel weight. (It’s a curling thing.) After defeating Denmark on Wednesday in their final match of pool play, the Canadians secured a berth in the medal round, setting up a meeting against the United States in the semifinals Thursday.

The rest of the world may be chipping away at Canada’s dominance of the sport — look no further than the Canadian women, who failed to advance out of pool play for the first time in Olympic history — but the men still have remarkable depth.

The Curling News, a publication based in Toronto, has eight Canadian men’s teams ranked among its top 15 in the world, including three of the top four: teams skipped by Kevin Koe, Mike McEwan and Gushue. (Skips are the players who make the most important shots for their teams and orchestrate game plans.)

But every four years, that depth makes for a tricky challenge. Only one team can advance out of the Canadian trials to represent the country at the Olympics. At this year’s trials, which were attended by thousands of curling fanatics who turned out for the biggest, baddest bonspiel ahead of the Olympics, that spot went to Koe’s four-man squad, which outlasted McEwan and his teammates in the final. Gushue’s team lost to McEwan’s team in the semifinals.

Gushue said in a recent interview that he had simply been outplayed by McEwan — which is something that happens, given the level of play.

Just how cutthroat was the competition?

The team skipped by Brad Jacobs had a losing record in the preliminary round and was promptly eliminated, just four years after winning gold at the 2014 Winter Olympics.

“It’s a little bit of a crapshoot when it comes down to that one week,” Gushue said. “But that’s the way our system is. I benefited from it in 2006, and I think I probably got burned by it this time around.”

Making matters worse for Gushue, he had a second crack at making the Olympics three weeks later, this time at the mixed doubles trials alongside his partner, Val Sweeting — and they would have been Olympic favorites had they not lost to John Morris and Kaitlyn Lawes in the final.

Morris and Lawes seized their Olympic berth and went on to crush the field here in South Korea to win gold last week.

Gushue acknowledged that he was still reliving a couple of errant shots in his head.

“Oh, every day,” he said.

In many ways, though, Gushue knows he is fortunate. He got to experience the Olympics and all that winning a gold medal entailed. So many other great Canadian players have missed out on that since curling became an Olympic sport in 1998 — through no fault of their own, other than being Canadian and having failed to survive the trials.

The list includes legends like Randy Ferbey, a four-time world champion and the skip of the famous Ferbey Four; Jeff Stoughton, the owner of three national championships (at a tournament known as the Brier) and two world championships; and Glenn Howard, one of the most decorated curlers in the history of the sport. Howard, 55, won his fourth and most recent world championship in 2012.

“It’s horrible,” he said in a recent interview. “Are you kidding me? It’s the only thing missing from my résumé, and to me, the Olympics are the greatest sporting spectacle on Earth.”

Howard came closest to qualifying for the Olympics in December 2009, ahead of the 2010 games in Vancouver — only to fall one victory short when he lost to a team skipped by Kevin Martin in the final. (Big surprise: Martin’s team went on to win gold.)

Howard was almost inconsolable. He said it took him “a year or two” to get over the loss.

“Every time I would get to the trials,” Howard said, “I would think, ‘Well, this is my chance. I’ve got to do it now. Who knows if I’ll ever get back again?’ ”

At his age, Howard knows that his dream of competing at the Olympics is probably over. But he is here in Gangneung as the coach of the women’s team from Britain, and he is relishing the experience. Stoughton, too, made an Olympics appearance as the coach of Canada’s mixed doubles team.

“It’s the proverbial silver lining,” Howard said in an interview before the start of the games.

As for Gushue, he said he would still consider his season a success if his team can win either the Brier in March or world championship in April, or both. But he still remembers the joy of competing at the Olympics and all the opportunities that followed. He was a presenter at awards shows. He met interesting people. He visited neat places.

“And it’s disappointing, because those opportunities don’t necessarily come with a world championship,” he said. “They only come with the Olympics.”

This article originally appeared in The New York Times.

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For Canadian curlers, the only feat more daunting than winning gold is qualifying

The Team Gushue Highway was named in his honor. Now, instead of curling in the final rounds at the Pyeongchang Games, he can drive on it. Or hang out at Team Gushue Sports Complex.

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