US team completes improbable run to win men's curling gold at Olympics

GANGNEUNG, South Korea - John Shuster, the face of U.S. curling for the past four Winter Olympics - and all the good and bad those experiences have entailed - had a gold medal draped around his neck for the first time in his life Saturday. Moments before, he and his teammates had done what jubilant curlers do, raising their brooms aloft in screaming excitement over an improbable victory. Yet at that moment, it was hard to believe how close his dream here had come to crumbling apart.

Last Sunday, after a loss to Norway, the Americans were on the brink of elimination, again.

After the game, with family headed to a hotel and his wife’s encouraging words ringing in his head, Shuster found a grassy spot outside the venue, sat down and came to a realization.

“This is silly,” he told himself. “I’m getting my heart broken, I feel like, by this sport - and this is silly. Seriously, this is the Olympics.”

He slept soundly that night for the first time in a long time. His team did not lose again.

Five consecutive victories culminated Saturday night in something that has never happened before: an Olympic gold for the U.S. curlers as they defeated Sweden 10-7 before a flag-waving throng from back home. Shuster and his four teammates - Tyler George, Matt Hamilton, John Landsteiner and Joe Polo, who served as the team’s alternate - defeated Sweden, the top-ranked team in the world, so soundly that it conceded the match with several rocks to play in the 10th and final end.

The victory was as decisive as it was unexpected - to everyone, perhaps, but the Americans themselves.

“This,” George said, “is a team that never gives up.”

The United States is not known as a curling powerhouse. Americans had never won a gold medal in the sport. For that reason and more, members of the team expressed hope that curling would become more than a cultural curiosity every four years. Perhaps the team’s success here can help.

“We want our sport to be loved by our country as much as we love it,” George said. “There’s a reason why we play it, and there’s a reason why we love it as much as we do.”

The win came with its share of thrills.

On Saturday, Shuster delivered the biggest shot in the history of U.S. curling when he cleared two Swedish stones with his final rock of the eighth end to score 5 points.

“During the entire end, we could kind of feel it building,” Shuster said. “Their margin for error got incredibly small.”

Shuster had executed a perfect shot: a blend of cool-handed finesse and foolproof strategy. His team’s lead was suddenly insurmountable.

“We knew we were going to lose,” Niklas Edin of Sweden said.

This was Shuster’s fourth consecutive Olympic appearance, and he has experienced all the joy and heartbreak that the games can offer. After helping the U.S. to a bronze medal at the 2006 Turin Games, the Americans’ next two trips to the Olympics were unmitigated disasters: last place in 2010 and next-to-last place in 2014.

It got so bad that the word “shuster” was added to Urban Dictionary. (Definition? “A verb meaning to fail to meet expectations, particularly at a moment critical for success or even slightly respectable results,” as in “Man, he really shustered that!”) Then, in the summer of 2014, Shuster was sidelined from USA Curling’s high-performance program.

“Everything happens for a reason,” he said.

The United States had to beat Canada - Canada! - twice in four days just to reach the final.

“From the day that the 2014 Olympics came to an end, every single day was with this journey in mind,” Shuster said.

That much was clear as the members of Team Reject stood together atop the medal podium. Their journey was complete.