Early St. John’s Slam Stuff

ST. JOHN’S—The gloom of a most soggy November continues (a rainfall record was set earlier this week) but unaffected locals are descending on the Mary Brown Centre in droves for the biggest ice show of the year.

Tuesday afternoon saw a packed house greet the all-conquering Team Gushue. Grand Slam emcee Robbie Doherty apparently accepted our challenge to pronounce Gushue’s name correctly…

… but he claims the eruption of sustained shrieks and crowd applause left him half-deafened.

“I don’t even know what the hell I said,” offered Doherty. “I couldn’t hear myself think let alone speak.”

(One of our Bluesky followers declared that Doherty got it right.)

Gushue defeated new European champion Marc Muskatewitz 6-2 and faces a new-look Reid Carruthers on Wednesday afternoon.

Carruthers officially welcomed Gushue’s 2024 worlds alternate Kyle Doering on board earlier this week, after longtime Carruthers second Derek Samagalski abruptly hung up his boots.

This latest men’s lineup drama was enough to drive TCN columnist Mike Fournier to start writing again.

A glance at the day one results shows a mixture of won/loss results among the teams that played in last week’s Europeans.

These teams had to presumably fly from Finland over the Atlantic and over their destination—to land in Montreal or Toronto—before flying a few hours east again.

That’s a grind.

On the fist day, Brad Jacobs thumped Sweden’s Niklas Edin; the German and Norwegian medallists lost as did a re-tooled Schwaller squad; and Italy’s Stefania Constantini also lost, 11-8 to Korea’s Ha Seoung-Youn.

However, men’s Euro silver medallist Bruce Mouat won his opening match, as did Sweden’s Anna Hasselborg, along with Italy’s Joel Retornaz and Euro women’s champ Silvana Tirinzoni.

So who knows what jet lag really means.

(Tirinzoni then lost this morning to Kaitlyn Lawes, while Hasselborg won again to move to 2-0 in her pool.)

Some photo thoughts for you…

• Perhaps Niklas Edin is tired because he’s also coaching Japan’s Sayaka Yoshimura on the women’s draws.

• Lawes is back on the ice shortly after giving birth to her second child, Ella.

That’s superhuman. As in Superhoman, my new term for curling athletes who leap back into competition mere weeks or even days after giving birth.

(For those counting, Rachel Homan has done that three times now. It’s all rather Homanesque.)

Let’s face it, guys. Women are stronger.

• Christina Black of Halifax is competing in her first Tier 1 Grand Slam event. Welcome aboard.

It’s been a bit rough to start. Team Black lost 11-3 to the rejigged Kerri Einarson foursome on Tuesday and faces the Homan juggernaut today.

That’s quite a face third Jill Brothers is dropping (below). Someone should do a “caption this” post inviting feedback.

Perhaps Brothers was reacting to news of her next opponent?

Japan’s Team Momoha Tabata won their first-ever Tier 1 match this morning, 6-4 over Switzerland’s Xenia Schwaller.

Tabata and Co. gave the crowd a solemn bow at the start of their match, but let loose a bit after the win.

Great smiles on that young crew. And sweet uniform colours, too. As faithful readers know, anything not black and blue is much appreciated.

• Finally, here’s a “what?” image of Xenia Schwaller during her loss to Tabata.

Just because Slam shooter Anil Mungal snapped a gooder.

To anyone visiting the island, by the way, the local way to say “what” or “huh” is “wha.”

Wha?

Just drop the T.

It’s a wonderful ting.