Curling hits big time

Upstart skip Brad Gushue led the way achieving what Canadians barely dared hope, bringing home the first men's Olympic curling gold to the world's biggest nation of curlers.

"We are just five good curlers and we made a good team and we won Canada's first medal. A hundred years from now people will still be saying it was us," Gushue, triumphant, said after sliding to a massive 10-4 finals victory over Finland.

The 25-year-old, a boy wonder in the veteran world of curling, captained a quartet of unknowns bolstered by the last-minute addition of one of the country's most famous and flamboyant curlers, Russ Howard.

But the quarter-century age gap between Gushue and 50-year-old Howard, a two-times world champion, created magic on the ice and on television.

The Canadian pair and the U.S. team, skipped by "Pizza" Pete Fenson, starred in hours of cable network broadcasts. Japan showed matches live in prime time. In Britain, men with brooms won more viewers than the much-revered Champions League football.

"We've had lots of e-mails -- some wishing us luck, others offering marriage proposals and quite a few asking how to get into curling and where their nearest club is," said Shawn Rojeski, vice on the bronze medal-winning U.S. team.

Finland's Markku Uusipaavalniemi, silver medal winner, said 30,000 Finns had asked to join his curling rink, the only one in the country and he was considering building another in Helsinki.

The gold-winning Swedish women had rock-solid support for their unprecedented Olympic, European and world championships win from heavy metal band Hammerfall who they met when starring in one of their music videos.

They were not the only ones feeling like rock stars.

"I can't walk in the street, people are stopping me. "I want a picture, I want a signature," said Joel Retornaz, the Prada-wearing skip of the Italian team, who astonished the curling fraternity when he appeared stripped to the waist in a photo mid-way through the Games.

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