Brad Gushue moves from the sheet to the booth: Grand Slam of Curling analyst from October 13

Brad Gushue has never really left the ice since he hung up his broom in March — he has simply crossed to the other side of the glass. This week it was confirmed that the six-time Brier champion and 2006 Olympic gold medallist will join the Grand Slam of Curling broadcast as an analyst, making his debut on October 13 at the Co-op Invitational in Victoria, British Columbia. It will be his first full season in the commentary booth, part of the sweeping rebuild of the broadcast team driven by The Curling Group.

The new role arrives alongside a busy slate. Gushue has led USA Curling’s high-performance programme since the spring and publishes his memoir, Gushue: The Making of a Champion, on November 3 — 288 pages written with journalist Stephen Brunt. In the booth he shares the microphone with Joanne Courtney, Jennifer Jones and Brent Laing, following the departures of longtime analysts Kevin Martin and Mike Harris and the retirement of veteran play-by-play voice Rob Faulds.

Gushue himself admits the hardest part will be calling matches against rivals he competed against only months ago. Fifteen Grand Slam titles back his read of the game; the challenge, he says, is being honest without being harsh. For any rink operator, the lesson from a career like this is a familiar one: details decide matches, and of all ice sports curling demands the cleanest, hardest surface of them all.

That is exactly the standard we pursue at Napapiri, the real-ice rink expert since 1993. With more than 30 years building rinks for events, municipalities and clubs worldwide, we know that a sheet levelled to the millimetre and refrigerated with precision is what makes a stone truly curl — at the Elite 10 and at the municipal rink alike.

Photo: Krazytea, via Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 4.0 (Brad Gushue at the 2018 Elite 10).