Brad Gushue is ambidextrous
Canadian curling star has a hand for every task
EDMONTON — Spotted: Brad Gushue signing autographs with his left hand.
Gushue, of course, curls with his right hand.
So what's the deal?
"I mix it up," says the Canadian skip during a break in play at the world championship. "I eat with my left hand. I throw a baseball with my right hand. I curl with my right hand. Play golf right-handed."
The ambidextrous Gushue says whatever hand he started doing a task with, he stuck with.
"That's not to say I can go curl left-handed right now," he laughs. "But I'm sure if I trained a little bit with it I could be decent."
Gushue's right-handed game is somewhere above "decent" these days. The 36-year-old is playing some of the best curling of his lengthy career at the moment.
Less than three weeks ago, Gushue won his first ever Brier title after 14 appearances. Not only was it his first Canadian championship, he won it at home in St. John's with a raucous crowd behind him.
"I've been close so many times," Gushue says. "To finally win it and win it at home, you couldn't have asked for a better story."
Should Gushue capture the world championship in Edmonton, he'll become the first skip in the history of curling to win a world junior title, an Olympic title and a world title.
His team's third, Mark Nichols, would also accomplish the feat.
"Our goal here is to win, but it's for our team and to really cap off what's been a pretty magical few weeks," Gushue says.
"It's not for Mark and I to get our name in a record book or anything like that. That's bonus stuff."
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