WEBVTT - Introducing: Broomgate 0:00:04.640 --> 0:00:08.360 Hello everyone, ed here. I'm delighted to share with you 0:00:08.440 --> 0:00:12.200 as a very special sneak peak, the first episode of 0:00:12.280 --> 0:00:17.000 another brand new podcast I executive produced. It's called Broomgate. 0:00:17.600 --> 0:00:20.960 Over the course of six episodes, semi professional curler and 0:00:21.120 --> 0:00:26.600 fully professional comedian, the amazing John Cullen is exposing the unbelievable, 0:00:26.800 --> 0:00:30.920 never before told, true story of a scandal that rocked 0:00:31.280 --> 0:00:36.120 the sport of curling. Yes, curling, ladies and gentlemen, this 0:00:36.159 --> 0:00:39.120 story has all the intrigue and edge of your seatness 0:00:39.120 --> 0:00:43.360 of a Hollywood blockbuster, and it's wildly funny because well, 0:00:43.400 --> 0:00:47.120 at the end of the day, it's about brooms, which 0:00:47.200 --> 0:00:52.159 is a type of sporting equipment in the sport of curling. 0:00:52.320 --> 0:00:55.720 You get it. You can find Broomgate wherever you get 0:00:55.720 --> 0:00:59.880 your podcasts starting May sixth, but for now here is 0:01:00.040 --> 0:01:01.680 Broomgate Episode one. 0:01:03.560 --> 0:01:07.080 Content warning. The following podcast contains mentions of brooms and 0:01:07.120 --> 0:01:14.039 graphic depictions of curling. It's Thursday, September tenth, twenty fifteen, 0:01:14.480 --> 0:01:18.080 and my phone is blowing up. My friends are all 0:01:18.120 --> 0:01:21.240 texting me, John, are you seeing what's happening right now? 0:01:22.080 --> 0:01:24.240 They tell me it's an emergency and I have to 0:01:24.240 --> 0:01:25.120 turn on the TV. 0:01:36.080 --> 0:01:39.680 It is the Enti's Grand Slam of Curling on Sports 0:01:39.720 --> 0:01:42.360 that and they are fired up for the first event 0:01:42.400 --> 0:01:47.120 of two thy fifteen twenty sixteen, it's the Tour Challenge 0:01:47.240 --> 0:01:49.480 in Paradise, duber Lamb and Labrador. 0:01:50.760 --> 0:01:54.240 Walking onto the ice is a man named Brad Gujou. 0:01:56.000 --> 0:01:58.840 Ask most anyone in Canada to name a curler, and 0:01:58.840 --> 0:02:01.760 whether you're into the Gamer not, they'll have heard of Brad. 0:02:02.440 --> 0:02:05.120 If Brad isn't the Michael Jordan of curling, he might 0:02:05.120 --> 0:02:08.320 be the Lebron James, the best curler of this generation 0:02:08.720 --> 0:02:11.600 and someone who is innovating the sport on and off 0:02:11.639 --> 0:02:12.080 the ice. 0:02:13.360 --> 0:02:18.960 The twelve time New Fland Men's champion, three time Grand 0:02:19.000 --> 0:02:25.440 Slam champion, two thousand and six Olympic gold medalists from 0:02:25.560 --> 0:02:27.200 Saint John's nupoun Land. 0:02:28.120 --> 0:02:33.079 Seen the texts from my friends who are elite curlers 0:02:33.080 --> 0:02:35.960 and broadcasters from around the world are telling me that 0:02:36.000 --> 0:02:39.320 Brad is trying something that no one has ever seen before. 0:02:39.840 --> 0:02:41.919 They can't figure out what the hell is going on, 0:02:42.440 --> 0:02:46.960 and once I turn the TV on, neither can I. 0:02:46.960 --> 0:02:52.440 I'm sensing there's a favorite in the house. Maybe maybe not. 0:02:53.840 --> 0:02:57.440 All curling teams consist of four players. The skip is 0:02:57.480 --> 0:03:00.480 in charge of the strategy for the team. The team's boss. 0:03:01.040 --> 0:03:03.720 Brad Gugue is the skip of his team, and like 0:03:03.800 --> 0:03:07.040 lots of bosses, he does an awful lot of yelling. 0:03:09.000 --> 0:03:15.320 Har fr as Brad Gushu was yelling hurry Now they're 0:03:15.440 --> 0:03:18.639 using a theory. You're trying out a theory of where 0:03:18.800 --> 0:03:21.480 what sweeper should sweep and on what kind of side 0:03:21.639 --> 0:03:22.840 of the sliding surface. 0:03:24.480 --> 0:03:28.880 What Gugu is doing is he is using just one sweeper, 0:03:29.840 --> 0:03:33.400 one sweeper this approach. That's what my friends were blowing 0:03:33.480 --> 0:03:37.040 up my phone about. Curling teams always used two sweepers, 0:03:37.120 --> 0:03:40.360 but during this game there's only one and we didn't 0:03:40.360 --> 0:03:40.800 know why. 0:03:41.600 --> 0:03:44.160 So they were trying to hold that rock straighter by 0:03:44.160 --> 0:03:47.760 having one sweeper on the outside sweeping card the other one. 0:03:47.800 --> 0:03:47.880 Not. 0:03:49.240 --> 0:03:52.240 What I'm seeing is Brad's team mate, Brat Gallant sweeping 0:03:52.240 --> 0:03:55.560 the rock up the ice and him alone. The other 0:03:55.600 --> 0:03:58.840 team was looking on in confusion, and so was I 0:03:58.920 --> 0:04:01.000 sitting at home on the cow which I thought to myself, 0:04:01.120 --> 0:04:04.760 what possible benefit could this have? It looked really strange. 0:04:05.280 --> 0:04:07.520 While Brett madly swept in front of the rock as 0:04:07.520 --> 0:04:10.320 it traveled down the ice. His sweeping partner, who would 0:04:10.320 --> 0:04:13.120 normally be brushing along with him, was just kind of 0:04:13.760 --> 0:04:17.520 walking beside the rock doing nothing, like he had just 0:04:17.600 --> 0:04:18.160 given up. 0:04:18.680 --> 0:04:19.919 What do you think it of, Kevin. 0:04:21.240 --> 0:04:24.920 Well? I think the inside sweeper certainly shouldn't be on 0:04:25.000 --> 0:04:26.000 the inside of the. 0:04:26.040 --> 0:04:27.520 Curve of the rock. 0:04:28.320 --> 0:04:30.960 Twenty ten Olympic gold medalist Kevin Martin was in the 0:04:30.960 --> 0:04:32.279 broadcast booth that day. 0:04:33.040 --> 0:04:35.359 To not have the other person out front cleaning in 0:04:35.360 --> 0:04:37.680 a frosty situation doesn't make a lot of sense. 0:04:37.600 --> 0:04:38.120 I don't think. 0:04:38.200 --> 0:04:40.920 But we'll see how it goes as the game progresses. 0:04:40.960 --> 0:04:45.679 But it may be a theory that maybe shared that Charlotte. 0:04:47.000 --> 0:04:53.080 But Kevin was wrong. Within weeks, every competitive curling team 0:04:53.080 --> 0:04:56.600 on the planet would switch to using one sweeper. It 0:04:56.640 --> 0:04:59.680 wasn't because they were lazy, It wasn't because the rocks 0:04:59.760 --> 0:05:02.400 or the ice changed. It was because of one thing, 0:05:02.640 --> 0:05:05.599 and one thing only, a. 0:05:05.480 --> 0:05:10.600 Broom, a new super broom made of a mysterious material 0:05:10.800 --> 0:05:15.160 never used before, and that broom, combined with the one 0:05:15.240 --> 0:05:20.200 sweeper technique, would lead to the biggest scandal in curling history. 0:05:21.800 --> 0:05:26.560 This is Broomgate, the story of how a broom almost 0:05:26.720 --> 0:05:49.120 killed curling. When I say the word broomgate, what does 0:05:49.120 --> 0:05:49.800 that mean to you? 0:05:51.440 --> 0:05:55.040 That's when that tight knit fabric amongst the top competitive 0:05:55.040 --> 0:05:57.440 teams started to be ripped apart. 0:05:58.080 --> 0:05:58.640 I think some. 0:05:58.680 --> 0:05:59.719 Friendships were ended. 0:06:00.400 --> 0:06:05.200 This is a mess, very stressful, a lot of sleepless nights. 0:06:05.800 --> 0:06:07.839 It felt super personal because it was being held a. 0:06:07.880 --> 0:06:10.359 Cheater when your first went out the door. 0:06:10.440 --> 0:06:13.000 Because you're gonna get bloody, people are gonna come. 0:06:12.920 --> 0:06:14.839 After you like it was just toxic. 0:06:15.400 --> 0:06:16.320 It was so toxic. 0:06:17.000 --> 0:06:21.400 Her very stressful, traumatic curling season, my least fun curling 0:06:21.440 --> 0:06:22.960 season of my entire career. 0:06:23.920 --> 0:06:29.000 It was the It was a year I'd like to forget. 0:06:32.920 --> 0:06:35.600 While some people might have wanted to forget about broomgate, 0:06:36.120 --> 0:06:38.960 there was no way not once the controversy hit late 0:06:39.040 --> 0:06:39.480 night TV. 0:06:41.200 --> 0:06:44.760 Folks, this is one sports controversy you can't just sweep 0:06:44.839 --> 0:06:48.800 under the rug. I bristle left the idea. I try 0:06:48.839 --> 0:06:51.120 to brush off the allegations all you want, but this 0:06:51.160 --> 0:06:55.080 sort of thing doesn't happen in a vacuum. 0:06:55.200 --> 0:06:57.560 It took just two months for this scandal to move 0:06:57.600 --> 0:07:00.680 beyond the world of curling. By November of t twenty fifteen, 0:07:00.800 --> 0:07:04.080 The New York Times, CNN and The Washington Post had 0:07:04.120 --> 0:07:07.240 picked up on the story. Stephen Colbert did a full 0:07:07.360 --> 0:07:08.680 six minute segment on it. 0:07:09.320 --> 0:07:11.360 The point is, I'm a curling purist. As far as 0:07:11.400 --> 0:07:14.280 I'm concerned, it's all gone downhill ever since they started 0:07:14.320 --> 0:07:17.800 playing indoors. I prefer the original sixteenth century Scottish rules. 0:07:18.320 --> 0:07:20.960 Just a group of guys on a frozen pond, hurling 0:07:20.960 --> 0:07:23.600 flat bottom river stones and probably falling through the ice. 0:07:24.440 --> 0:07:28.520 Whoever doesn't die wins. Now that's a sport. 0:07:31.080 --> 0:07:34.000 My name is John Cullen. If you're the kind of 0:07:34.080 --> 0:07:36.640 curling sicco who knows who finished second at the twenty 0:07:36.680 --> 0:07:40.480 fifteen British Columbia Curling Championships, well then you might have 0:07:40.520 --> 0:07:43.000 heard of me. I was what's commonly referred to as 0:07:43.040 --> 0:07:45.720 a Tier two curler. My team went a handful of 0:07:45.720 --> 0:07:48.760 World Curling Tour events, a modest amount of cash, and 0:07:48.800 --> 0:07:51.560 peaked at number thirty in the world. I have seven 0:07:51.640 --> 0:07:55.560 provincial medals to my name, and none of them are gold. 0:07:56.000 --> 0:07:58.440 I started curling when I was twelve. I had always 0:07:58.440 --> 0:08:00.600 been intrigued by seeing it on TV, and when my 0:08:00.640 --> 0:08:03.040 grade seven teacher took our class to a curling rink 0:08:03.080 --> 0:08:06.600 one day. I loved it. The physicality of the sport 0:08:06.640 --> 0:08:09.160 appealed to me as a lifelong hockey player, and the 0:08:09.160 --> 0:08:12.000 strategic aspect of the sport appealed to me has a 0:08:12.040 --> 0:08:16.520 lifelong nerd. Soon enough, curling became my main thing. In 0:08:16.600 --> 0:08:19.400 high school, I practiced so much that the icemaker of 0:08:19.440 --> 0:08:21.680 my local curling club gave me a set of keys. 0:08:22.120 --> 0:08:24.160 As an adult, I spent all my time off of 0:08:24.200 --> 0:08:28.120 work going to curling tournaments. Look my email address was 0:08:28.160 --> 0:08:31.960 culinthecurler at hotmail dot com. For twenty years, the sport 0:08:32.040 --> 0:08:34.520 was my life, and I loved every minute of it. 0:08:35.640 --> 0:08:39.880 Well except for one year. It was twenty fifteen, the 0:08:40.000 --> 0:08:43.880 year of Broomegate. It was a complete disaster. All my 0:08:43.960 --> 0:08:46.480 friends were fighting with each other, people were screaming at 0:08:46.520 --> 0:08:50.200 me online. Would have been previously described as a gentleman's 0:08:50.240 --> 0:08:55.520 game was anything but. And now eight years later, no 0:08:55.559 --> 0:08:59.480 one talks about it. The full story has never been told, 0:09:00.520 --> 0:09:04.800 So I'm gonna tell it. I love curling, always have. 0:09:05.559 --> 0:09:09.040 I don't want this to happen again, so maybe if 0:09:09.040 --> 0:09:19.880 we talk about it, it won't. 0:09:21.160 --> 0:09:25.000 Curling, like love, is a disease of the mind. 0:09:25.200 --> 0:09:28.840 One needs a cardigan, a comfortable cap, rubbers, a broom, 0:09:29.000 --> 0:09:34.880 and stones stones a broom. 0:09:35.000 --> 0:09:39.120 If you're just catching up, Ah yeah, a broom. It's 0:09:39.160 --> 0:09:41.240 the most important piece of equipment in curling. 0:09:41.559 --> 0:09:45.400 Fundamentals of a good curling delivery don't change the position 0:09:45.480 --> 0:09:48.480 of the head, shoulders, or body, except to elevate them 0:09:48.520 --> 0:09:49.760 by straightening the knees. 0:09:50.559 --> 0:09:54.199 This sweet, very Canadian film from nineteen sixty three shows 0:09:54.240 --> 0:09:58.079 us one fundamental thing about curling. Very little has changed. 0:09:58.559 --> 0:10:00.800 Curling is actually considered to be one of the oldest 0:10:00.840 --> 0:10:03.680 team sports known to man. A stone was found in 0:10:03.720 --> 0:10:06.800 Scotland with the date fifteen eleven inscribed on it. 0:10:07.440 --> 0:10:11.160 Oh sure, keep your foot in the hack, use it 0:10:11.200 --> 0:10:11.719 to push off. 0:10:13.280 --> 0:10:16.240 The basic rules haven't changed in hundreds of years. The 0:10:16.320 --> 0:10:18.280 key is to have more stones stay in the bull's 0:10:18.320 --> 0:10:20.320 eye known as the house at the end of the 0:10:20.320 --> 0:10:23.480 game than your opponents. To do that, every member of 0:10:23.520 --> 0:10:25.760 the team gets their turn at being the shooter and 0:10:25.840 --> 0:10:28.720 moving the rock down the ice. But once that rock 0:10:28.800 --> 0:10:31.559 is let go, it's in the sweeper's hands to make 0:10:31.600 --> 0:10:32.240 it perfect. 0:10:33.000 --> 0:10:35.720 Slide the stone easily. Let the weight of the stone 0:10:35.720 --> 0:10:36.240 work for you. 0:10:37.440 --> 0:10:41.839 Keep your eye on the broom I've got it easy enough. 0:10:43.120 --> 0:10:45.959 For most of my career, I was considered a pretty 0:10:45.960 --> 0:10:49.400 good sweeper, and for nearly a decade, Jay Wakefield was 0:10:49.440 --> 0:10:50.400 my sweeping partner. 0:10:51.280 --> 0:10:54.320 I'm an introverted person, so like having less people to 0:10:54.360 --> 0:10:57.000 interact with. This is always a better thing. 0:10:56.880 --> 0:10:57.240 For me. 0:11:00.240 --> 0:11:02.120 To talk to Jay about the ripple effect of the 0:11:02.120 --> 0:11:04.760 one sweeper technique and our years sweeping together. 0:11:05.400 --> 0:11:08.680 I've always just played with my best friends. I've never 0:11:09.080 --> 0:11:11.680 I've only had a handful of teams where, you know, 0:11:11.960 --> 0:11:13.960 maybe me and another guy on the team didn't really 0:11:14.000 --> 0:11:14.840 get along. 0:11:15.559 --> 0:11:17.760 But to be clear, I wasn't one of the guys 0:11:17.760 --> 0:11:18.360 you didn't like. 0:11:18.760 --> 0:11:19.160 You were not. 0:11:19.440 --> 0:11:21.520 No, It's hard to go ten years playing with the 0:11:21.559 --> 0:11:24.920 same guy if you don't like you don't like them. 0:11:25.040 --> 0:11:28.360 This is very true, and it's especially true when it 0:11:28.360 --> 0:11:29.280 comes to me and Jay. 0:11:29.920 --> 0:11:32.520 So obviously not just that you spend a lot of 0:11:32.559 --> 0:11:34.400 time together, but you spend a lot of time on 0:11:34.440 --> 0:11:39.600 the ice together. You spend every shot in each other's face, 0:11:39.760 --> 0:11:43.160 talking to each other. It is just a lot of 0:11:43.240 --> 0:11:44.319 constant communication. 0:11:45.160 --> 0:11:47.400 My wife once told Jay that when she watches us 0:11:47.440 --> 0:11:52.400 sweep together, it looks like we're kissing. Maybe subconsciously we 0:11:52.480 --> 0:12:00.160 wanted to who knows, but what do you remember or 0:12:00.240 --> 0:12:02.360 about the switch to one sweeper. 0:12:04.440 --> 0:12:08.120 I remember I was out doing something I can't remember what, 0:12:09.320 --> 0:12:11.720 and my phone started to blow up with all my 0:12:12.120 --> 0:12:15.760 curling friends being like you watching this. So I got 0:12:15.760 --> 0:12:18.319 home and I looked, and I'm like, what the hell's 0:12:18.360 --> 0:12:23.959 going on here? And it was all this kind of chaos. 0:12:24.000 --> 0:12:27.400 For lack of a better word, we had absolutely no 0:12:27.559 --> 0:12:30.880 idea really what the one sweeper thing was all about, 0:12:31.000 --> 0:12:33.120 and like how to actually try to make it do 0:12:33.200 --> 0:12:33.880 what they were doing. 0:12:35.240 --> 0:12:37.360 It took us a while to catch up, but like 0:12:37.440 --> 0:12:40.439 every other competitive team at the time, we made the switch. 0:12:41.679 --> 0:12:42.280 Do you think. 0:12:42.200 --> 0:12:44.679 Curling like lost something a little bit when all of 0:12:44.720 --> 0:12:47.200 a sudden, only one guy's now sweeping at a time. 0:12:47.360 --> 0:12:49.000 Was some of that art kind of lost? 0:12:49.760 --> 0:12:52.840 Yeah? I think I did. I think at the time, 0:12:54.200 --> 0:13:00.679 being a competitive sweeper, I felt like my job was 0:13:02.200 --> 0:13:05.800 less sacred. I guess like some of the art was 0:13:05.880 --> 0:13:09.560 gone and some of the skill was gone because all 0:13:09.559 --> 0:13:11.840 of a sudden I could just like do whatever with 0:13:11.920 --> 0:13:13.760 the broom and make the shot right. 0:13:14.440 --> 0:13:16.760 I feel that way too. It wasn't like the one 0:13:16.800 --> 0:13:19.280 sweeper method took away all the skill I had developed 0:13:19.280 --> 0:13:21.600 over two decades. Jay and I were still a team 0:13:21.640 --> 0:13:24.480 within a team, but sweeping had become less of a 0:13:24.520 --> 0:13:27.520 sacred bond between two teammates. And as I make my 0:13:27.559 --> 0:13:30.400 way through this story, I do feel a sense of loss. 0:13:31.000 --> 0:13:34.079 I think a lot of us did. But it wasn't 0:13:34.120 --> 0:13:36.360 just the one sweeper technique that made us feel like 0:13:36.400 --> 0:13:39.600 something had shifted. The reason we were all sweeping differently 0:13:40.200 --> 0:13:46.280 was because of a broom. Over time, curling brooms have evolved. Originally, 0:13:46.320 --> 0:13:48.160 they were like the brooms you'd find in your house 0:13:48.280 --> 0:13:51.440 or with a witch's costume, made of corn or straw, 0:13:51.480 --> 0:13:54.840 and mostly meant to remove debris from the ice. As 0:13:54.840 --> 0:13:58.240 technology improved, they moved from corn to hair to what 0:13:58.280 --> 0:14:01.040 we use today, something that looks like a swiffer, but 0:14:01.120 --> 0:14:04.800 with a specialized fabric head. Over the last two decades, 0:14:04.880 --> 0:14:08.880 broom manufacturers have experimented with different fabrics with varying results, 0:14:09.760 --> 0:14:12.959 but no one started paying attention to broom technology until 0:14:13.000 --> 0:14:17.120 two brothers, Archie and haratchman Avian, came along with a 0:14:17.160 --> 0:14:20.200 broomhead that would change the game forever. 0:14:32.280 --> 0:14:33.480 Who's the older brother. 0:14:33.480 --> 0:14:37.280 Archie, I'm the little I'm ten years younger. Even though 0:14:37.280 --> 0:14:40.120 I look ten years older, I'm ten years younger. That's 0:14:40.160 --> 0:14:41.600 what happens when you work with them, you know. 0:14:44.400 --> 0:14:47.560 My producer Kathleen goldhar and I meet Archie and haratchman 0:14:47.640 --> 0:14:50.400 Avian at the headquarters of Hardline, one of the world's 0:14:50.480 --> 0:14:55.560 largest curling broom manufacturers. It's tucked away in a suburb 0:14:55.600 --> 0:14:59.840 of Montreal, not far from the airport. Hardline's office belies 0:15:00.160 --> 0:15:03.000 status is one of curling's big dogs. It's in a 0:15:03.000 --> 0:15:05.880 one story building in the corner of an industrial park. 0:15:06.560 --> 0:15:11.240 This is decidedly not the Nike World headquarters. Archie and 0:15:11.240 --> 0:15:15.200 Harratch sit together behind one desk. It's cluttered with invoices, 0:15:15.320 --> 0:15:18.920 loose sticky notes, and office equipment. Behind the brothers, the 0:15:18.960 --> 0:15:21.760 wall is covered from top to bottom with team photos, 0:15:22.280 --> 0:15:25.080 men and women holding their brooms, wearing t shirts with 0:15:25.120 --> 0:15:28.440 Hardline emblazoned on them and metals around their necks, or 0:15:28.480 --> 0:15:32.280 holding up trophies. There's no pretense with the brothers. They're 0:15:32.360 --> 0:15:35.560 kind of rough speak. Their minds could even be intimidating 0:15:35.560 --> 0:15:38.800 on initial meeting, but their warmth is contagious and the 0:15:38.840 --> 0:15:41.120 love they have for each other is very close to 0:15:41.160 --> 0:15:41.720 the surface. 0:15:43.960 --> 0:15:46.320 I don't know if i'd call myself a bully, but 0:15:47.040 --> 0:15:50.280 this is Archie. Let's just say he grew up and 0:15:50.400 --> 0:15:51.360 not taking my shit. 0:15:51.960 --> 0:15:53.320 He was a very good older brother. 0:15:53.520 --> 0:15:56.880 He showed me life, you know, showed me the ropes, 0:15:56.920 --> 0:16:01.600 and he was always there, always had my back in 0:16:02.080 --> 0:16:05.800 a lot of ways. And you know, I'm very grateful 0:16:05.840 --> 0:16:09.600 to have an older brother like that. He basically, you know, 0:16:11.040 --> 0:16:12.880 took care of me. I mean, we both lost our 0:16:12.960 --> 0:16:17.000 dads when I was really young, so he was the 0:16:17.040 --> 0:16:20.320 guy that made sure that I was on the right path. 0:16:20.960 --> 0:16:24.280 Her ats was sixteen, Archie twenty six when their dad 0:16:24.320 --> 0:16:27.160 died in a car accident while on vacation in Armenia. 0:16:27.960 --> 0:16:28.720 It was sixteen. 0:16:28.800 --> 0:16:32.560 I remember I was in secondary four, which is what 0:16:32.640 --> 0:16:36.640 tenth grade. I had final exams two weeks later after that, 0:16:37.160 --> 0:16:39.240 and my brother was young too, so he was twenty 0:16:39.280 --> 0:16:42.920 six and he had to go there and you know, 0:16:43.920 --> 0:16:47.920 bring him back. Our mother was in the same car accident, 0:16:47.960 --> 0:16:49.280 so we had to take care of her too at 0:16:49.280 --> 0:16:51.440 the same time. So we grew up pretty fast. 0:16:52.520 --> 0:16:53.000 It's life. 0:16:53.360 --> 0:17:02.400 It happens, aren't professional curlers, right? How did you find 0:17:02.400 --> 0:17:04.879 your way to hardline. 0:17:04.440 --> 0:17:05.240 Only in our heads. 0:17:05.280 --> 0:17:06.040 We're professional. 0:17:08.080 --> 0:17:12.760 We're professional armchair curlers, basically is what we are. Friend 0:17:12.840 --> 0:17:15.600 of mine that I played ball with begged me for 0:17:15.640 --> 0:17:17.440 ten years to go try it out. And I used 0:17:17.440 --> 0:17:20.000 to tell him, you know, come on, man, it's for 0:17:20.080 --> 0:17:22.119 old people. And I used to brush him off all 0:17:22.160 --> 0:17:24.440 the time. In this one year I caved. I said, 0:17:24.440 --> 0:17:25.959 you know what, just to shut you up, I'm going 0:17:26.000 --> 0:17:27.199 to go in there and I'm going to try it 0:17:27.400 --> 0:17:30.320 and then leave me alone. He said, no problem, and 0:17:30.400 --> 0:17:33.560 I walked in the door, fell in love with the game, 0:17:33.640 --> 0:17:34.919 and the rest is history. 0:17:35.640 --> 0:17:38.920 But before he discovered curling, Archie's life was all over 0:17:38.920 --> 0:17:39.359 the place. 0:17:40.320 --> 0:17:43.840 I was on the path to become a ski bumb 0:17:43.840 --> 0:17:48.719 Actually I was living in a Whistler and just enjoying life. 0:17:48.800 --> 0:17:51.879 And came back and my father used to own a 0:17:51.920 --> 0:17:54.679 small business and worked with him for a bit and 0:17:54.960 --> 0:17:57.119 didn't like that. Then I went to work for a 0:17:57.119 --> 0:18:00.480 friend of mine at a food company and really like 0:18:00.560 --> 0:18:01.480 that too much. 0:18:01.600 --> 0:18:05.320 And I'm the kind of guy that needs to be outside. 0:18:05.400 --> 0:18:06.400 I can't be indoors. 0:18:07.040 --> 0:18:09.240 So Archie found a job that took him outside. 0:18:10.000 --> 0:18:14.560 I was a what do you call it, a an 0:18:14.600 --> 0:18:19.520 information distribution engineer, what does that mean. 0:18:23.520 --> 0:18:24.280 I was a mailman. 0:18:29.800 --> 0:18:33.800 He was a mailman for the Postal Service, and I 0:18:33.840 --> 0:18:37.560 loved my job. It was a great job. It was 0:18:37.560 --> 0:18:39.840 starting to wear on me, but it was never a 0:18:39.880 --> 0:18:41.800 fact of I have to find something else. 0:18:42.640 --> 0:18:45.200 Their mother wasn't too excited about the way Archie's life 0:18:45.240 --> 0:18:47.280 was going, and so she put pressure on her hatch 0:18:47.400 --> 0:18:48.680 to make something of himself. 0:18:49.359 --> 0:18:53.360 She put her foot down with her hatch and made 0:18:53.440 --> 0:18:54.360 him hit the books. 0:18:54.400 --> 0:18:59.160 And he actually made something of himself by getting an MBA, 0:18:59.359 --> 0:19:02.080 going to work on Wall Street for fifteen years, and 0:19:02.359 --> 0:19:03.720 he took on the big boys in. 0:19:03.720 --> 0:19:07.480 One so before Hardline was born, Archie the Mailman was 0:19:07.560 --> 0:19:09.480 just a local curler who loved to hang with his 0:19:09.520 --> 0:19:12.119 buddies after work and play a few games, then shoot 0:19:12.119 --> 0:19:14.600 the shit over a beer, and her hatch was working 0:19:14.640 --> 0:19:18.120 on Wall Street. The inspiration for Hardline came to Archie 0:19:18.160 --> 0:19:19.679 in two thousand and nine when he was at a 0:19:19.680 --> 0:19:22.600 bond Spiel, a fancy name for a curling tournament in 0:19:22.720 --> 0:19:23.680 Charlotte Walquebec. 0:19:24.840 --> 0:19:28.080 There's a bond Spiel that everyone should attend once in 0:19:28.119 --> 0:19:30.960 their lifetime, about an hour and a half outside Quebec city. 0:19:31.320 --> 0:19:34.159 At the bond Spiel, a curling legend named Randy Ferbey 0:19:34.240 --> 0:19:36.080 and his team caught Archie's eye. 0:19:36.440 --> 0:19:39.959 They had these custom rooms, and our eyes were popping 0:19:39.960 --> 0:19:42.240 out of our heads. We got the brilliant idea of 0:19:42.480 --> 0:19:46.760 coming out with custom rooms at the time, and we 0:19:46.800 --> 0:19:48.760 were on a high all weekend. 0:19:48.440 --> 0:19:53.280 And Archie would return home from Charlevois just buzzing, which 0:19:53.280 --> 0:19:55.879 is funny because the broom he's talking about doesn't have 0:19:55.880 --> 0:19:58.800 anything to do with performance, but rather just a custom 0:19:58.840 --> 0:20:01.480 paint job done on an eg existing broom. And he 0:20:01.560 --> 0:20:05.679 wasn't even imagining starting a custom curling broom empire. He 0:20:05.800 --> 0:20:08.000 was just excited about the idea of making a bunch 0:20:08.040 --> 0:20:10.879 of brooms for his team. But he very quickly hit 0:20:10.920 --> 0:20:11.399 a snag. 0:20:11.800 --> 0:20:13.840 The ebrush artist told me it was going to be 0:20:13.920 --> 0:20:15.240 roughly one hundred dollars. 0:20:14.920 --> 0:20:16.920 Of broom, so that would be too expensive. 0:20:17.400 --> 0:20:19.159 It was on a bit of a downer for a 0:20:19.200 --> 0:20:21.320 week or two and I met a friend of mine 0:20:21.920 --> 0:20:24.680 and he says, ah, you know, you look a little 0:20:24.720 --> 0:20:27.040 bit down. And I told him the entire story, and 0:20:27.080 --> 0:20:28.760 he said, well, what are these booms made of? And 0:20:28.800 --> 0:20:31.000 I said, well, a carbon fiber And he tells me 0:20:31.000 --> 0:20:32.800 he's got a friend of the carbon fiber business. 0:20:33.160 --> 0:20:34.400 You know, why don't you give him a call. 0:20:35.000 --> 0:20:36.720 The good news was that this guy could make the 0:20:36.760 --> 0:20:39.480 brooms for cheaper. The bad news was that he'd have 0:20:39.560 --> 0:20:41.800 to make a bulk order. So he called one of 0:20:41.800 --> 0:20:44.560 his curling buddies, Stan Pong with a proposal. 0:20:45.000 --> 0:20:47.760 Listen, we should really try this out. You know, we'll 0:20:47.800 --> 0:20:50.160 make a few hundred brooms and if they sell, they sell, 0:20:50.200 --> 0:20:52.280 and if they don't, well, it is what it is. 0:20:52.920 --> 0:20:58.520 And so we basically got I think at that time 0:20:58.560 --> 0:21:00.840 it was seven guys to pitch and five hundred dollars, 0:21:01.280 --> 0:21:03.359 and uh hardline was born. 0:21:06.400 --> 0:21:09.960 Archie had unintentionally launched a curling broom company, but so 0:21:10.080 --> 0:21:12.800 far all he had were broom handles. A broom is 0:21:12.840 --> 0:21:16.280 nothing without its head. When it comes to curling, the 0:21:16.359 --> 0:21:19.399 head is crazy important. It's what helps to control the 0:21:19.480 --> 0:21:22.600 rock as it travels down the ice. Sweeping reduces the 0:21:22.640 --> 0:21:25.080 friction between the rock and the ice, allowing it to 0:21:25.119 --> 0:21:29.359 travel further and straighter. While curling had evolved to synthetic 0:21:29.359 --> 0:21:32.520 fabric broomheads, there were always issues with the fabric wearing 0:21:32.600 --> 0:21:35.240 down and with the repeated use in the gathering of 0:21:35.280 --> 0:21:37.720 frost on the head. A lot of brooms weren't nearly 0:21:37.760 --> 0:21:40.639 as effective as they could have been, so Archie started 0:21:40.640 --> 0:21:42.720 to shop around for the best head he could find 0:21:42.760 --> 0:21:45.440 to put on his carbon fiber handles. He could have 0:21:45.520 --> 0:21:49.200 just licensed a broomhead from an existing manufacturer, but that's 0:21:49.240 --> 0:21:50.120 not the Archie way. 0:21:51.400 --> 0:21:54.280 At that time, we were getting handed lots of heads 0:21:54.280 --> 0:21:56.160 to try out, saying, man, it was the best head 0:21:56.160 --> 0:21:58.040 on the market, and I had told them that, you 0:21:58.040 --> 0:22:00.560 know what, I'm gonna try give it a and give 0:22:00.600 --> 0:22:03.680 you a review on it. And basically they weren't really 0:22:03.680 --> 0:22:04.040 that good. 0:22:04.600 --> 0:22:08.000 Archie kept turning down broomheads presented to him. That's until 0:22:08.040 --> 0:22:11.240 he met with a mysterious inventor who showed Archie something 0:22:11.320 --> 0:22:12.240 a little bit different. 0:22:13.680 --> 0:22:16.560 The ice pad was basically put into my hands and 0:22:16.560 --> 0:22:19.040 they said, like, you got to try this, So I 0:22:19.119 --> 0:22:21.960