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TSN Senior Reporter

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COVID-19 has created some unusual arrangements for the Canadian men’s curling team as they prepare for the Beijing Olympics.

For the past three weeks, the squad skipped by Brad Gushue has been holed up in a house in Vancouver hoping to combine training and Omicron variant avoidance. The four team members and four support staff have done little other than travel to the rink to practice and then back to the house to do, well, not much.

The rental home has a pool table, there have been regular card games and the PS4 video terminal has been put to good use. So, too has the hot tub and there’s also a make-shift gym in the garage. If you’re on social media, you’ve probably seen lots of their posts -- they’ve been particularly prominent on TikTok.

“It is a bit of a long time to be eight guys in the same house,” admitted Brett Gallant, the team’s second. “Luckily, we’re pretty familiar with everyone and we know how to get along with each other and if we want a little quiet time to ourselves, we can take it.”

The time in the isolation frat house is coming to an end. The team will leave Friday and fly to Tokyo where they will change planes and head for Beijing, arriving early in the morning on Feb. 6. That will give them a couple of days to recover before their first game on Feb. 9.

For Gushue and third Mark Nichols, who played on the Canadian team at the 2006 Games in Turin, Italy, the relaxed pace is welcome. It represents a vast difference compared from their last experience when they were run ragged between winning the Canadian Curling Trials and departing for the Olympics.

“It's night and day, to be quite honest,” said Gushue. “I think our preparation in 2006 was very chaotic, very busy with different appearances, events, a lot of activities that we had. We actually went into that and were quite tired out mentally, physically and this time around, we've been here in the house for almost three weeks. And outside of our time that we go to practice, there's a lot of time to rest and a lot of time to do nothing, to be quite honest.”

The Canadian team can use the relaxed preparation. They’ll be in tough once they hit the ice in Beijing. Once almost a sure thing for a medal, Canadian curlers can no longer bank on gold, silver or bronze. At the last Olympics both the men’s and women’s teams failed to reach the podium for the first time. The world has caught up.

The Gushue team is fully aware of that and has been following a plan that it hopes will yield positive results. The next step in that will be getting on the Olympic ice and trying to become fast learners on the conditions.

“Whenever you go to these big events, the first couple of games for all teams is kind of feeling out the ice, feeling out the rocks, getting comfortable in the environment,” Gushue stated. “And then really by game three or four, you hope you can put it into a little bit of autopilot where you can go out and know exactly where to put the broom for certain shots. And then it just really comes down to a skill competition and all the years of preparation built into that.”

The competition is no secret with rinks such as Sweden’s Niklas Edin, Great Britain’s Bruce Mouat and defending champion John Shuster of the United States all looking to get on the podium. This time, however, the best in the world haven’t locked heads for some time with the pandemic cancelling most of the top events. Everyone is coming in just a little unsure of where they sit compared to the rest.

Some advance scouting of the conditions could help. The team’s fifth player, Marc Kennedy, is already in Beijing, serving as an alternate for the Canadian Mixed Doubles team of John Morris and Rachel Homan. They start play on Wednesday. Kennedy will be able to provide some intelligence on everything from the ice conditions to how long it takes to get from the Olympic Village to the curling facility, known as the Ice Cube. The fewer surprises, the better.

While he is focused on the task at hand and has been for the last four years, Gushue also plans to embrace the experience of the Olympics. He realizes now just how rare and grand it really is.

“I just feel fortunate to have this opportunity after 16 years,” said the 41-year-old. “You know, 16 years ago, I thought I'd have a lot of these opportunities to be quite honest, maybe not a lot, but definitely more, more than what we've had at this point. . . It's pretty special. So, for us, we're trying to really just embrace it. That doesn't mean that we're not going to be focused by any means. We're going to have the same focus that we had 16 years ago and just try to really engage in those moments when we're not out on the ice and hopefully get to see some other events and just feel how special and lucky we are to be competing at the Olympics.”

The men’s team will face Denmark in its opening match.