Canada House rocked as playoffs loomed

#Nagano25Years—Chapter 13, February 13 1998

(See Facebook’s The Curling Guy for yesterday’s Feb. 12 chapter).

This entire series has been taking the reader behind the scenes, but this is a multi-layered reveal.

It was the final day of the round robin and the first of two tiebreakers on the men’s side. Before we recap all that, here’s a look at some off-ice mayhem, good times, shenanigans and so forth.

You’ll recall we had gone through staging with the snowboarders. Well, by this point Ross Rebagliati had won the Olympic gold medal, then had it stripped for a doping violation, only to have the medal reinstated on appeal. At that time, marijuana was not on the IOC’s banned substance list; it wasn’t considered a performance-enhancing drug.

It proved to be a minor distraction for us, in that Canadian Olympic committee officials visited Karuizawa to warn us not to say anything to the press if asked about this affair.

It was around this date that Ross fled Japan with his medal and ended up on the Tonight Show with Jay Leno. 

Should any of the Canadian curlers—men’s curlers—been worried about marijuana? It’s been 25 years but I’ll stick to the party line … “of course not!”

Our families were housed at an incredibly cute hotel not far from our satellite village. In fact, Le Petit Maison was a short walk away through some beautiful forest areas running alongside a small river.

Don’t forget, Karuizawa is/was an upscale summer retreat and was usually closed in the winter months.

I walked in that forest a few times during the week, just to decompress from competition.

As a team, we walked over there often to visit our families. The hotel had been completely taken over by Canadians, and the staff had embraced red and white maple leaf decorations to the hilt.

Here’s the hotel’s front door at night. So cute … I hope it’s still operating.

Here’s some of the staff, which were led by Mr. Watanabe. He and my father stayed in touch for years afterwards, writing to each other.

That’s my cousin Charlie, who represented the Greek-American side of the family. He would disappear for hours or even days, then turn up and tell stories about getting invited into people’s homes in both Karuizawa and Nagano—and perhaps other towns as well.

When he first arrived in Japan, Charlie had become hopelessly lost at the mammoth train station in Tokyo. He’d learned a few Japanese phrases, and one in particular was a doozy. Apparently, if you shout “zen zen wakarimasen” everyone in Japan within earshot will drop whatever they’re doing and come running—literally—to help you.

Charlie shouted the phrase, and it worked. About 10 people rushed over, grabbed his itinerary and half-carried him to the correct platform ... and threw him onto his train.

Cancer ended up taking Charlie from us. I miss him.

While on the subject of family, I’ll always be proud to have had the biggest contingent of supporters in Japan. It had never been like this at any previous competition; my teammates always had more fam on site than I did. This time I had mom, dad, my sister, my girlfriend, my Aunt Lynne, her friend Sue, and Charlie.

Lynne ended up dying of cancer, too. I miss her all the time.

And I had Alistair as well. Remember the friend who met us in Osaka and kept me out late to beat the jet lag? He came back for the last few days of competition, and joined the fam to cheer us on.

The Schmirler gals had their families, of course, but I don’t seem to have many photos of them.

Here’s Team Schmirler, with Sandra’s husband Shannon England, at the big Zenkoji Temple in Nagano.

Sandra’s team had gone to Switzerland prior to Japan, and that was the first time Sandra had been separated from baby Sara, who had been born shortly before the Olympic Trials, just a few months earlier.

We had a baby on board, little Joey Hart, son of Rich and Margie.

Sandra liked to hold him, as you might imagine. In fact, I believe Joe Hart—who is now off to the Brier with his father as coach—is a key reason Sandra was able to settle into her Olympic competition.

Joey was holding court one day in the “Brier Patch” as we called it, lying on the table and wriggling about as we tickled him. The great newspaper columnist Christie Blatchford spent an hour or more with us, which included witnessing some karaoke—oh yes, there was Olympic karaoke, people.

Blatchford was regaled with great curling stories, including the time Paul Gowsell—who actually replaced Rich on our team at a cashspiel in Thunder Bay when Joey was born—ordered pizza on the ice for his opponents.

I found proof that we Toronto “kids” actually played with the legend that is The Gows. We even qualified. Paul called us “goddamn trapshooters” because we sucked teams into our draw game. I’m sure he still wants to hit everything in sight.

I’m sure Gowsell told us he went home to Calgary and promptly bet on us to win the Trials—and won at least $20,000—but my teammates dispute this. I think I’m right, of course.

Blatchford wrote a long feature declaring the reasons “why I adore curlers and am now their publicity slave.” She liked that we were real people, out to have fun.

We were good at keeping it real. Losing so many big games to Ed Werenich, Russ and Glenn Howard and Wayne Middaugh over the years makes it come naturally. When we arrived in Japan, Mike told the reporters “at the end of the day it’s only curling” and they’d look shocked to hear that.

Now for the competition.

The end of the round robin saw the Schmirler gang beat Germany’s Andrea Schöpp 8-5 to finish up at 6-1. In an unfortunate sign of things to come, Jan Betker had been sidelined with the terrible flu bug that was circulating in and now outside of Nagano, and Atina Ford stepped in to play third. 

First-place Canada would meet Great Britain’s Kristy Hay, who finished fourth, in the next day’s semifinal.

The other semi would see Sweden’s Elisabet Gustafson, who finished second at 6-1, take on Denmark’s third-place Helena Blach-Lavrsen.

The final men’s draw was pointless for us, as we had wrapped up first place, hammer and choice of stones for the playoffs. Norway’s Eigil Ramsfjell had also clinched a playoff spot and decided not to play against us, so third Jan Thorensen moved to skip position.

Eigil had beaten us just a month earlier in Switzerland, so we were looking forward to the game. Now, with Eigil on the bench, everything was blah. We struggled, fell behind, made a comeback, but lost 10-8. We finished 6-1.

Our Swiss friends needed a big win against Sweden’s Peja Lindholm and they got it, beating him 8-2. That gave them second place at 5-2 and both teams had qualified for different semis the next day.

We invited them over to our family’s hotel for some beers, and they accepted. Mike and I were literally pals with skip Patrick Hürlimann, who had married Canada’s Janet Omand and named his first child Briar, and the relationships had quickly forged friendships among the other team members.

We had a fun night.

While carousing, we learned the Americans had beaten Sweden in the first tiebreaker, and would face hosts Japan—a really impressive team—in the next morning’s second tiebreaker.

The women’s semis would take place in the afternoon, with our games coming at night.

Tomorrow’s Feb. 14 entry, chapter 14 ,will be posted to The Curling Guy Facebook page.