Retornaz serves notice to rivals
“It’s not whether you get knocked down, it’s whether you get back up.”
—Vince Lombardi
Try to compare Joël Retornaz to athletes in other sports—you might struggle.
Eric Cole recently won the PGA Rookie of the Year award at age 35, but it’s unlikely he’ll become a top five player in the world anytime soon. Kurt Warner was famously stocking grocery shelves before he finally reached the NFL at 27. One season later, he led the St. Louis Rams to a Super Bowl victory in 2000.
Italian skip Joël Retornaz, now finally ranked #1 in the world, is 40 years old.
The curling comparison might be John Shuster. He and Joël both represented their respective countries at the 2006 Olympics. John, at 23, played lead for Pete Fenson and Team USA. Joël was just 22 when he skipped the host team and won a surprising four games, including wins over Fenson and the eventual gold medallists from Canada skipped by a youthful Brad Gushue.
During the next 12 years, Shuster endured countless disappointments as a skip but after starting 2-4 at the 2018 Olympics, he led USA on a “miracurl” run to a gold medal—at age 36.
Joël led Italy into 11 European Championships before finally winning Euro bronze in 2018. It would be four more years until a bronze medal at the world championships in Las Vegas, in 2022.
Speaking with Joël just prior to this week’s Grand Slam tour stop in Red Deer, Alta., I asked him if there was ever a time he considered giving up.
It hasn’t been easy for me, for sure. I’ve been around for many years. Lots of ups, and lots of downs. Probably more downs than ups, but now I get the good part of it.
It tastes even better now because I never gave up. I kept, I'm just grinding in there, but of course it hasn't been easy. I've seen myself quitting a few times before, but the passion for the sport was so big that I didn't give up, especially because I was enjoying what I was doing.
I think the day you stop, the day you give up is when you don't enjoy what you're doing. That didn't happen for me, even though I didn't have success in the past, I was still enjoying what I was doing. I was still enjoying playing at high level, at least at my highest, as high as I could in that moment.
Shuster struck gold by winning five pressure-filled games in a row. Retornaz is on the precipice of something perhaps more impressive. Winning four Grand Slams titles in a row, in the same season.
Joël and his current team of Amos Mosaner, Sebastiano Arman and Mattia Giovanella have already made history by winning the first three Grand Slams of a season. The only other skip to win three in a single season is Kevin Martin. He did it twice. First, during the 2004-05 season with Don Walchuk, Carter Rycroft and Don Bartlett and again in 2006-07, with John Morris, Marc Kennedy and Ben Hebert.
In 2007, Team Martin won the final three Slams of the season and first two of the following 2007-08 season, holding five Slam titles in the same calendar year. After losing in the quarterfinals of the 2008 Masters, it would be two years before Martin would win another Slam title, with one of the greatest teams of all time.
Glenn Howard won three Grand Slams in a row once, stretching over two seasons from January to November of 2008. Howard did win four straight Masters in a row, and five of six.
If we were discussing another Scottish sport played with clubs, the name “Masters” would have significance but in curling, the legacy is not in the title of the event but in the acknowledgment of winning “Slams”.
Ponder that for a moment. We’ve now added Joël Retornaz to a sentence that includes only two other names. Glenn Howard and Kevin Martin.
Martin went 35-4 over his five straight titles in 2007. They lost to three teams during that stretch: Wayne Middaugh, Jeff Stoughton (twice) and in the answer to a future trivia question that is sure to stump your friends: Mark Kehoe.
Consider that Kevin and Glenn were recruiting from Canada. Italy has not provided Joël the same opportunities. With their recent success, maybe that will change for the next generation of Italian curlers.
I’ve been in Italy curling since always, and I’ve been there forever, and I’ve gone through different phases. I’ve gone through the 2006 Olympics, where curling became popular, and we hoped after those games it could develop more in Italy.
But it’s just really not in our culture. Because we don’t have many, many current clubs, it’s difficult to attract players. And then because we don’t have players, we don’t build new clubs.
It’s kind of a difficult situation and we’ve been quite successful in the last few years; we’ve won some medals in Euros and worlds and my teammate, Amos, won gold in the mixed doubles at the last Olympics ... so this of course helps a bit and everybody’s excited when we’re doing this and when they see us on television or in the newspapers.
It’s tough to attract more players and to get them to play curling because we are a big soccer country … and it’s tough when you’re a niche sport to develop and to grow, but we’re doing our best.
Our idea is to try to attract more players and to inspire also a new generation and make them understand that everything is possible.
Retornaz is 56-10 this season and 19-2 over the three previous Grand Slams. They are number one in the world and have scored (and defended) better with hammer than any other team by a large margin. Retornaz has a .59 Hammer Efficiency and .08 Steal Defense. Of the teams chasing them, only Scotland’s Ross Whyte comes close in scoring, surrendering more steals and in the process.
Since a quarterfinals loss at the Insitu Players Open in October, Retornaz has reached at least the semifinal in all eight events, including four victories (three Grand Slams and the Baden Masters) and a loss in the finals of the Soo Curlers Fall Classic. They were dominant in the round robin of the European Championships, finishing 9-0 with an incredible scoring differential of 85 points for and only 38 against.
The next closest team, and the one which beat them in the semifinal, was Sweden’s Niklas Edin at 70 and 46. In the semi, Retornaz was up one with hammer after four ends but a steal in six and key deuce for Edin in eight led to a 7-6 loss, followed by a loss to Switzerland’s Yannick Schwaller in the bronze medal game.
Coach Ryan Fry believes they have yet to reach their potential.
I think our ceiling is very, very high. It’s a constant learning process. You can just take example of the tournament we just played in (lost in a semifinal after giving up three in the final end to Carruthers). There are little things we can take that if we probably had done better, we could have been in the final.
Those lessons are invaluable. We take those lessons and take the things that we’ve learned, and our goal is to be competing for and winning Grand Slams and world championships and ultimately the (2026) Olympics at home.
Team Retornaz won their first Slam title last year and with each successive victory they appear more comfortable—but that doesn’t mean it’s getting easier. Indeed, the squad’s first match in Red Deer was an 5-4 upset loss to Scotland’s James Craik.
Said Joël:
It’s not easy to win a Slam. Even if you start winning some in a row, it doesn’t mean the next one is going to be easy. We can easily not qualify next week at the Slam because the level is so high and the top teams in the world are there and every game is a battle; doesn’t matter who you’re playing.
There rarely are underdogs in the Slams. I would say that they’re the most difficult competitions that you can get right now.
Joël realizes the competition isn’t taking them for granted anymore.
I can feel the teams really focus when they play us because they could have thought in the past that we could have been an easy win for them, but now we’re not an easy win for them.
We are the hunters and they’re the prey, if I can say that. So they focus a little bit extra in order to play their A-game, and I think that’s the only way they can beat us right now.
On the possibility of winning four in a row:
So then is it going to happen? I don’t know. We’re going to try our best to do that, but it’s going to be tough, especially because now teams … they don’t want us to win four in a row. And then they know we’re number one, two in the world. They’re going to have that little extra focus to beat us every time they play us.
Win or lose this week in Red Deer, Joël has reached a level that most never thought possible. His perseverance and hard work over a lifetime of setbacks is finally producing results. How did he get here and how far could he go?
Consider his answer to my last question. With teammates all in their twenties and Joël now 40, I asked if he was able to keep up with them.
His answer? “They need to keep up with me.”
Now, so does everyone else.