Broomgate: A Curling Scandal CBC STORIES

It’s 2015 and we’re at the international Grand Slam of Curling, hosted in Paradise, Newfoundland. A team led by home crowd favourite Brad Gushue debuts a new and strikingly effective new technique. Instead of sweeping the way curlers always have with two brooms, they’re using only one. Within weeks, every competitive curling team on the planet would switch to this technique and the special broom that enabled it. It was the start of the biggest scandal in curling history.

Flush with an infusion of cash from investors the brothers behind the Hardline Curling company are ready to take their revolutionary curling broom into the world. Now all they need is to convince a bonafide superstar to use it. Enter Winnipeg’s Mike McEwen.

Some people say Brad Gushue, Olympic gold medalist and world title holder, plays the sport of curling with the strategy and cunning of a chess grandmaster. So when he starts losing to two particular teams, he takes a closer look at why and he zeroes in on their brooms.

Another company, BalancePlus, decides to get into the broom modification game to challenge the Hardline broom. It all comes to a messy confrontation when teams go head to head at a 2015 bonspiel. The ice ends up shredded — and an emergency meeting is convened in Toronto to decide what to do.

For as long as curling has been a game there was nothing in the rulebook about brooms, and so players had nowhere to turn when Broomgate hit. Tensions kept growing, and there were near blow ups and confrontations on-ice. What’s a World Curling Federation to do? Create a sweeping summit — and decide the future of the sport forever.

Host John Cullen has a heart-to-heart with producer Kathleen Goldhar about curling, Broomgate, and all the bonus stories they left on the cutting room floor.