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Broomgate: A Curling Scandal, Episode 3: The Chess Master

Host: John Cullen

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GLENN HOWARD: When I put my curling shoes on and I step on the ice to play in a competition, I feel at peace. I feel like this is where I need to be, and I haven't lost that.

JOHN CULLEN: This is the voice of an absolute curling legend, member of the Curling Hall of Fame, four time world champion and the Wizard of Winter, Glenn Howard.

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GLENN HOWARD: I love to compete. I love to win. I hate to lose.

JOHN CULLEN: But sometimes, he does lose. And in 2014, he lost a game that would resonate with him for years to come.

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GLENN HOWARD: I distinctly remember the situation we were. We were playing on the outside cheap.

JOHN CULLEN: It was a game against another high ranking curler named Reid Carruthers, who had made the switch to the new Hardline brooms. This would be the first time that Glenn Howard saw the Hardline ice pad in action with his own eyes.

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GLENN HOWARD: I was seeing shots that were being made that in my mind, out of the hand, should not have been made.

JOHN CULLEN: And for Glenn, there was one moment in particular when it dawned on him that something was up with these brooms.

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GLENN HOWARD: We were playing Reid Carruthers, and I came around a corner guard, and probably the rock curled about three and a half to four feet. I dead buried it.

JOHN CULLEN: Dead buried means the rock lands right behind a guard rock. It's now Reid's turn, and the strategy dictates he throw a shot down the exact same path as Glenn.

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GLENN HOWARD: And Reid tried to follow me to freeze, and I came a little deep. He tried to follow me to freeze. He threw at length his best same broom, threw it light, and his front end swept it all the way down the sheet. It ended up top 12, so I had to go another six to eight feet, and it didn't curl an inch. It literally curled like micro four feet his curl one inch.

JOHN CULLEN: That's a whole lot of curling jargon. But what you need to understand is four feet, it's a lot more than one inch. Usually, if a rock travels down the same path as an opponent's stone, it'll react more or less the same as the stone that came before it. This, this was a stark difference.

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GLENN HOWARD: What the hell just happened? I said something is completely wrong here. I'm missing something here. What? What just happened? It just defied all logic. Reid was using Hardline, Hardline brooms, and that's why we thought there's something different here. Was it their sweeping? Was it the ice condition? What was it? But we knew that there's these new Hardline brooms that had just come out, and something's wrong. I think that whole rest of that season, 14 15, you know, Mike's winning seven, eight point spiels, Reid's kicking, but there wasn't… I don't know who else had Hardline at the time. You just didn't see the teams winning that much. Like it was like… And they were making shots that probably shouldn't have been made. I think the torque started to go through the curling world. I think people started, well, all these people just thought it was the Hardline broom.

JOHN CULLEN: Glenn's been playing the game for 50 years. He knows the ice. He knows what broom should be able to do. And in his gut, he knew something wasn't right about the ice pad, but he couldn't articulate what exactly. It would take someone else, a curling savant, to understand the full power of these brooms. And what he would learn would set off a curling arms race. This is Broomgate, the story of how a broom almost killed curling.

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JOHN CULLEN: So here we go. This is the curling club of the best curler in the world.

JOHN CULLEN: The rock isn't just the object that curlers sweep down the ice. The rock is where one of curling’s smartest players, Brad Gushue, calls home. The province of Newfoundland is lovingly called the Rock because of its geography on the easternmost point of Canada, and the fact that so much of its coastline is made up of dramatic rock face.

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JOHN CULLEN: A little brick building right here.

JOHN CULLEN: They say you're not a true curling journalist until you travel to Newfoundland to interview Brad. So here I am at the St. John's Curling Club, a nondescript brick building just outside downtown St. John's, to meet the man himself.

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JOHN CULLEN: Okay, we're going to start super easy. Tell me about how you started curling.

BRAD GUSHUE: I actually started watching when I was nine and asked my parents to sign me up. And I said, here, I'll pay for it. You just got to drive me down every day. And I immediately quit hockey and focussed, focussed on curling.

JOHN CULLEN: You and I have the same story. I also was like a hockey guy. And then once I found curling, I was like, okay, I don't need hockey.

BRAD GUSHUE: A funny story with my dad. When I told my mom I wanted to quit hockey and stick with curling, she's like, well, you got to tell your father. So when dad came home from work, I told him, and he was so pissed off, to be quite honest. He threw the bag of hockey equipment down the basement stairs, went back to work. So I was like, oh, that didn't go well. But he was just disappointed that I didn't tell him like a week before he went out and spent like $1000 on brand new equipment. So. But he's, yeah, he's been my biggest supporter. So it turned out well.

JOHN CULLEN: Turned out well is what we in the business might refer to as an understatement. Brad is one of the most decorated athletes in Canada and one of the most successful curlers of all time. Olympics, he's been there twice. He just won bronze in 2022, and he won the gold back in 2006. He was so excited he tried valiantly to call his mom on a Nokia flip phone from the ice immediately after his victory.

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BRAD GUSHUE: Mom, answer the phone.

ANNOUNCER: Maureen, if you're listening, Brad’s trying to get through.

JOHN CULLEN: He also holds the record for the most Brier appearances, the Brier being our national championship, and he's won more Briers than any other skip in history. He's got a world championship, two World Junior golds and 15 Grand Slam titles. He's so good that here in Newfoundland, they named a highway after him.

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BRAD GUSHUE: I've really devoted a lot of time to it.

JOHN CULLEN: Yeah, my entire life.

BRAD GUSHUE: Yeah. I didn't want to go that far, but it's been a lot of it for sure.

JOHN CULLEN: Yeah.

JOHN CULLEN: One of the parts of curling most people will tell you they love is the social aspect of it. For many curlers, even those at the professional level, the curling club lounge, the drinks and the camaraderie among players are as important to the game as the game itself. But Brad has a different view.

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BRAD GUSHUE: I have a reputation of not being a big partier and not the most social when I'm out on tour. I think, you know, my perspective of it is I'm leaving my wife and my kids at home and my businesses and, you know, I'm not going away to get drunk every weekend. I'm going away to make our team better and potentially, you know, win some money and win some championships.

JOHN CULLEN: And that clear head and maybe that lack of a hangover has led to Brad's other reputation, that he plays the game like a chess grandmaster.

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BRAD GUSHUE: With chess, you have fixed moves for all the pieces. In curling, there's an infinite number of situations that can happen. Like you'd have best intentions of playing this, but early on in your career, you're likely going to miss that. And then you got to figure it out again. So, you know, I love that part of it, the athleticism combined with the thinking part of it. But certainly, when I was a teenager and in my 20s, you know, they would turn the lights off on me to get me to go home. So I, you know, I work hard. I always try and find ways to improve. So I'm curious. Yeah. Just that curiosity I think has led me to kind of evolve and try different things and do different things.

JOHN CULLEN: That curiosity meant that Brad was also paying close attention to what his competitors were doing. And back in 2015, while the rest of the curling world was just reveling in Mike McEwan's successful season, Brad saw things with a more critical eye.

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BRAD GUSHUE: And really, as the year went on and Mike was having a ton of success against us, you know, there were times when we were like, Holy cow, these guys are dialed in. They're really good. And I'm watching it again from an analytical perspective, you know, so it was frustrating. I couldn't figure out what they were doing. We had a very dominant season. I think we won 101 games in that season, and I think we only lost 19. We lost 11 of those games to two teams, which was Reid Carruthers and Mike McEwen.

JOHN CULLEN: I checked these stats, and Brad didn't win a single game against Reid that year, and Team Carruthers wasn't even ranked in the top 10.

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JOHN CULLEN: And so I'm curious because I've heard this from a few people and you sort of touched on it. But so you said you lost 19 games. 11 of them were to Mike and Reid. Mike's one of the top teams in the world at the time. So you losing to Mike is probably not… it doesn't twig you as much. But was losing to Reid, that was really like what kind of guy. You were like, we're just better than them, and it makes no sense we're losing.

BRAD GUSHUE: Yeah, and no disrespect to Reid. I think Reid's a great guy, great curler, and they were a good team. They were not the level of our team at that time.

JOHN CULLEN: So Brad the chess player, the analytical guy, he looks at Reid's team and he looks at Mike's team, and he realizes that the only thing that was different about those teams from one year to the next was their brooms. So Brad decided to get some for himself.

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BRAD GUSHUE: We didn't even sign a deal with Hardline. We didn't ask for any money. We just said, you know what, send us the brooms and we'll use them.

JOHN CULLEN: Brad got the Hardline brooms during the off season, the time of year where most of Canada is just too hot and it's almost impossible to make good ice. So he and his team hopped on a plane to Korea, where they were invited to work with some of their up and coming curling teams.

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BRAD GUSHUE: So we get off the plane and they told us, you're going to play a spiel against our Korean teams. We hadn't thrown in months, we hadn't used the brooms. And anyway, we go out there, play with these brooms, not knowing what we were doing, and we get the shit kicked out of us in just about, you know, every game. And we were like, why are we getting absolutely destroyed?

JOHN CULLEN: Because of the Olympics, curling is now pretty popular in countries other than Canada, including South Korea. But in 2014, Brad would have been ranked almost 50 spots ahead of every South Korean team. Brad losing to them is not only surprising, but kind of embarrassing.

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BRAD GUSHUE: We were missing shots, like hitting guards that weren't in play because we'd go down and sweep it, and we didn't pack the rock and we hadn't figured the whole thing out.

JOHN CULLEN: It was starting to dawn on Brad that these Hardline brooms were different. He didn't know how, but he knew something was off. And after his time with the Korean teams was done, Brad and his team stuck around for a weeklong training camp.

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BRAD GUSHUE: We started to toy around with it and we realized, okay, we can make this thing back off the sheet, you know, if we sweep it properly.

JOHN CULLEN: In curling, the rocks, well, they curl. If you mapped a rock from the thrower, letting it go until it stops, it would form an arc. When Brad says they were making the rocks back off the sheet, that means the rocks stopped curling. The brooms were so powerful that instead of curling towards the centre as they usually would, they would hold the rock straight. And sometimes, they would even go completely against the direction of the curl.

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BRAD GUSHUE: And then we started to think, okay, what happens if we go to the other side? And then we were like, oh my God, we can make it go off the sheet on the other side. Then we were like, you know what, what if we just had two people on one side? We tried that. And what if we had one person on one side? And what we realized is the one person had just as much effect as the two people. But then by having one on each side, we could actually manipulate it one way or the other. And it became almost like a joystick going down the ice. And we made them every single time.

JOHN CULLEN: Every single time. Brad figured out that by experimenting with where and how the sweepers swept the rock, they were basically in total control. And for Brad, that didn't sit well with him. He'd worked his whole life perfecting his skill, figuring out the game and how best to play it, and leaning into his abilities as a shooter. Sweepers were supposed to be there to help the thrower make the shot, not make the shot for them. Brad knew the broom he held in his hands was too good, and he wondered how Mike and Reid didn't have that same revelation.

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BRAD GUSHUE: When we went to Korea and we realized the impact that these brooms could have and what could actually be done, the thought crossed our mind where they were aware of this and they hid it.

JOHN CULLEN: End after end, Brad and his team were taken aback by what they could do to a rock when they swept with one broom.

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BRAD GUSHUE: How could they not be aware of it I guess is the question that I have. Again, I think Mike and Reid are very intelligent, very skilled players. The fact that they weren't aware of it, I have a hard time grasping that, because all you got to do is put the broom in front of the rock and the rock starts going whatever direction you want.

JOHN CULLEN: Was there ever a thought in your mind that they were cheating?

BRAD GUSHUE: I would never go as far as saying it was cheating because there was nothing, nothing in the rules that stopped them from doing that. So, you know, good on them for doing it and taking advantage of it, you know? So I don't accuse them of cheating or want to accuse them of cheating, but I feel like they knew the impact that those brooms had in that year, and they didn't showcase the whole, the whole thing to try and keep it under wraps.

JOHN CULLEN: Right there on the Korean ice, Brad and his team had to decide what to do next.

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BRAD GUSHUE: Do we kind of hide this and bring it out at a bigger event, or do we showcase it to everybody and let them know that, you know, this is happening?

JOHN CULLEN: Brad had options. His first option, he could save this knowledge for months and use the broom to his advantage and a likely victory at curling’s biggest tournament, the Brier.

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BRAD GUSHUE: We had that discussion in the middle of the ice out in Korea when we were there, and we decided to go a different route.

JOHN CULLEN: The second option, alert the head of Curling Canada about banning the brooms.

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BRAD GUSHUE: We wanted these brooms to be banned. And when he told us there's no discussion of it, go use them, it was okay, okay, we'll go use them and we'll showcase to everybody that they're too strong.

JOHN CULLEN: And so they went with their third option, showcase the power of these brooms at the first event of the 2015 16 curling season, live on national television.

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BRAD GUSHUE: If everybody can't figure it out in the first week what's happening, they're idiots.

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ANNOUNCER: It is the Pinty’s Grand Slam of Curling on Sportsnet, and they are fired up for the first event of 2015 2016. It's the tour challenge in Paradise, Newfoundland and Labrador.

JOHN CULLEN: Here we are again at that pivotal game in Newfoundland in 2015 that started this whole debacle. It's where Brad and his team unveiled everything they had learned in Korea about the ice pad.

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BRAD GUSHUE: We're not going to tell everybody, but we're going to show you. We're going to show you the impact that these could have.

JOHN CULLEN: Including the one sweeper technique.

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UNIDENTIFIED SPEAKER: What do you think of that, Kev?

KEVIN MARTIN: Well, I think the inside sweeper certainly should be on the inside of the curl of the rock, and I've always thought that. Now, to not have the other person out front cleaning in a frosty situation doesn't make a lot of sense.

JOHN CULLEN: It was a showcase that shocked the whole curling community, including the poster boy of Hardline brooms, Mike McEwen.

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MIKE MCEWEN: I think my first reaction to seeing that was much like the Telecasters. What are they doing? They can't carry a rock like that. Like this is so silly.

JOHN CULLEN: Sweeping with two wasn't just to keep the rock straight, but it was also to help the rock go further. By simply removing one of those sweepers, the thought was the rock just wasn't going to go as far, taking away one of the main things sweepers were supposed to be doing.

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MIKE MCEWEN: Like they're obviously leaving stuff on the table because they're not sweeping with two. They're not going to carry rocks as far, etc., etc. That was my initial reaction. And then he started winning and then winning.

JOHN CULLEN: Mike McEwen had no inkling that Brad had been testing brooms and sweeping techniques. He found out about it the exact same time that everyone else did.

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MIKE MCEWEN: Whatever Brad's doing is figured out. There's something here that we're not understanding. And the one sweeper was obviously because we were counteracting what we were trying to do with two sweepers, and we didn't know that at the time. I mean, we didn't even know we could carve rocks. We just swept for distance and to hold it straight. We were dummies. I mean, I feel silly about it, but we really took it, you know, as far as the broom being better, we took like such a small advantage of that.

JOHN CULLEN: So that weekend at the Games in Newfoundland, Mike says his eyes were opened up.

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MIKE MCEWEN: Whoa! Like screwy stuff's happening. Like we got to explore this more. Our belief system was just, yeah, exploded. Mines exploded. We knew at that point that there was just so much more to sweeping that we didn't understand.

JOHN CULLEN: And it was all happening so fast. It's easy to look back and say, well, why couldn't we have just banned the ice pad? It might have solved a lot of problems. It's also easy to say, who cares? Some fans still insist we should just let every athlete take steroids and let God sort them out. Why not let the Super Brooms run wild? But the fact of the matter is most curlers just didn't know enough. And here's where we come back to veteran curler Glenn Howard. When he saw what Brad was doing with one sweeper, it confirmed everything he'd been suspecting the year before.

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JOHN CULLEN: What was your initial reaction when you saw him using one sweeper?

GLENN HOWARD: What in the heck is going on? I've been around the game enough, watch the ice I'm on. I know what that rock should react like for the most part. Never going to be perfect, and it was reacting completely different than what I expected. That's what I saw.

JOHN CULLEN: Rich Hart, Glenn's team mate, is known for being a fiery competitor. Seeing the one sweeper technique, it made him view Mike McEwen's winning season very differently.

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RICH HART: Looking back now, it's just like they must have been laughing to themselves, you know? How long is it going to take these guys to figure this out? You know, that's all I can imagine, right? Like a kid in a candy store. How long? How long is this going to go on for?

JOHN CULLEN: Rich thinks Mike and his team not only understood that the fabric of the ice pad was better, but that they were actually aware that using one sweeper made them even more powerful even before Brad showed the world during that fateful game in Paradise, Newfoundland.

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RICH HART: Probably midway in the season where I thought they were being very coy with their sweeping calls, they were trying not to reveal what they were doing. So they weren't yelling down the ice, you know, you know, carve it! Carve it!

JOHN CULLEN: And to make matters worse, Rich thought Mike was being motivated by money.

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RICH HART: It was an awkward thing because he wasn't just representing curling. He had some franchise or ownership stake in the broom. So it felt like he was representing the manufacturer. I don't care about them. The only thing we care about right now is being able to have a fair curling game.

JOHN CULLEN: Whether Mike knew about the real power of the Hardline brooms or not, the evidence was starting to mount that these brooms were better. Glenn and Rich knew they had to do something to catch up.

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GLENN HOWARD: But I'm not bringing a knife to a gunfight. We're going to go compete.

JOHN CULLEN: So they went to their broom sponsor, BalancePlus.

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GLENN HOWARD: So we go back to our manufacturer. We go back to BalancePlus and say, Scotty, we have a huge problem here.

JOHN CULLEN: The Scott that Glenn is talking about is Scott Taylor, president of BalancePlus.

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GLENN HOWARD: So Scott says, well, we’ve got to develop something. So long story short, they come out and find this black material.

JOHN CULLEN: This black material, it was the most aggressive fabric they could find.

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GLENN HOWARD: It was ridiculous.

JOHN CULLEN: It may have been ridiculous, but Scott wanted to show the world that BalancePlus could compete with Hardline.

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GLENN HOWARD: It was embarrassing, it was a joke, but it proved a point.

JOHN CULLEN: It might have proved a point, but it also started a war. Next time on Broomgate, a new broom enters the arena.

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GLENN HOWARD: We were just again gobsmacked to see what we could do with this rock, and it was just a couple of sweeps. It would just grab and go. It was so abrasive. It's virtually like you're using a 40 grit sandpaper.

MIKE MCEWEN: It was just… it was a spectacle. I went home just gutted. I was mentally shot.

BRAD GUSHUE: I've never walked into a building with so much tension in my life. It was not a fun event. Just the money of winning the event was not worth it to me. It was just… It wasn't fun.

RICH HART: This type of technology is going to ruin the sport.

JOHN CULLEN: So why did you do it?

RICH HART: Because we want the technology race to stop, it had to stop.

JOHN CULLEN: Broomgate is a production of USG Audio and CBC, in association with Pacific Electric and Kelly & Kelly, hosted by me, John Cullen, and concept devised by John Cullen and Kelly & Kelly. Showrunner is Kathleen Goldhar. Executive producers are Josh Bloch from USG Audio, Mike Falbo, Ed Helms and Brett Harris from Pacific Electric, Chris Kelly, Lauren Berkovich and Pat Kelly from Kelly & Kelly, Chris Oke and Cesil Fernandes from CBC, and John Cullen. Assistant editor is Max Collins. Editor is Mitchell Stewart. Production support from Josh Lalongi at USG Audio. Veronica Simmons is our senior producer. Our theme song is by Chris Kelly. Tanya Springer is senior manager, and Arif Noorani is the director of CBC Podcasts.

JOHN CULLEN: Thanks for listening to Broomgate. If you want to hear the next episode right now, subscribe to our channel on Apple Podcasts. Just click on the link in the show description.

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Transcript: Broomgate, Episode 3

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