Book description
“And again, I had to pinch myself. Could this all really be happening?
Was it possible that I was now a gold medal winner at fifty?
“I had won many championships, world and Canadian championships,
Ontario and New Brunswick championships. I had won hundreds of
bonspiels and cashed scores of first-place cheques. I have a basement
full of trophies and medals, but nothing could compare to the moment I
was experiencing now; nothing could ever match the newest reward that
was hanging from my neck.”
From Hurry Hard, Chapter 1
It was a long journey for Russ Howard from his childhood in
small-town Ontario to the pinnacle of the Olympic podium in Turin at
the 2006 Winter Games. Worlds apart, separated by thousands of
kilometers and over four decades, but joined by one remarkable curling career.
A career that started on a quiet, lonely rink in Midland, Ontario.
Howard, coached by his father, developed a solid, consistent delivery
at an early age. He loved practicing, where other youngsters loathed
it, and for hour after lonely hour he honed his skills by throwing
rock after rock on the rink at the Midland Curling Club. A natural
skip from a young age, Howard was always drawn in by the strategy of
the game. He relished the responsibility of throwing the last rock.
For him, it was always exciting and thrilling to control the final
shot of the game, where others were fearful or nervous. And for over
three decades, it has been exciting and thrilling to watch him.
With award-winning journalist Bob Weeks, Russ Howard takes us on his
personal journey through forty years of playing the game he loves:
championships won and lost, the characters in the game, ever-changing
teams and teammates, personal triumph and heartbreak, and an inside
view of the curling world from one of the greatest in the sport.
Russ Howard has established himself as one of the
most-celebrated curlers in the world in more than 30 years of curling,
winning two Canadian championships and two World championships along
the way, and setting records as a skip in the Brier - the annual
national men's championship -- for appearances, games played and wins.
He contributed to building the game with an idea that put more offence
into it and also fought for players' right to wear sponsorship
cresting in national competitions. Beyond all that, he became an
Olympian-and turned 50-at the 2006 Winter Games in Turin, where Howard
won Olympic gold as skip of Brad Gushue's rink, the first-ever Olympic
gold medal for Canada in men's curling. Russ Howard is an Ambassador
for Muscular Dystrophy Canada and the Canadian Liver Association.
Bob Weeks is the editor and co-publisher of the
Ontario Curling Report, now in its thirty-first year of
publishing. For 18 years, he has written a weekly column on curling in
The Globe and Mail, while providing coverage of curling's
major events for Canada's national newspaper. He has written on
curling for publications across Canada and is a regular commentator on
both radio and television. He is a two-time winner of the Scotty
Harper Award for the top curling story in Canada, and in 1995 he wrote
The Brier: The History of Canada's Most Celebrated Curling
Championship, the first comprehensive history of that great event.
He is also the author of Curling for Dummies. When not writing
about curling, Bob is the editor of SCOREGolf Magazine
, Canada's leading golf publication. He is also heard talking
about golf on a nationally syndicated radio program and appears
frequently on TSN.
