Canadian curling's misunderstood man charts a new path

While Bottcher's choices have always been measured and deliberate, they sometimes have been controversial. His latest move is perhaps the most surprising of all: Last month, Bottcher announced he would join one of Canada's most respected rinks - Team Brad Gushue - not as skip, but at second. No longer in charge, he would do his work in the game's trenches instead.

"I just don't think he's going to fit in very well with this team," one curling fan said to the stranger beside her at Bottcher's first event with Gushue in Lacombe, Alberta, this fall. "He's so controlling."

"Why do you think that?" the second curling fan asked.

The first person had no answer. There wasn't a specific reason - it was simply a feeling she had.

The second curling fan was Bottcher's wife.

"He's so calm and so cool, people seem to think he's arrogant," says Bobbie Sauder, who's been married to Bottcher for three years. "He really isn't. He just very much has a logical approach to his curling game. It's funny because that's just who he is as a human."

A lot of curling fans don't know the 32-year-old Bottcher as a human. He's introverted, private, and he's consciously stayed out of the conversation about his curling career. He doesn't use social media very much, and rarely reads curling articles.

His priorities make him largely unaffected by the criticism about team breakups, or how he's navigated the curling world. "If that's how you defined happiness, you would chase that for the rest of your life," he says. "There's always going to be someone trying to tear you down, and they don't know nearly enough. But I've never felt it was my job to tell that story."

Those priorities also mean fans know little about him beyond what they see when he competes. That fan in Lacombe isn't alone in having an unfavorable and unnuanced idea of who Bottcher is.

While he might not open up about stories that affect his former teammates or his decision-making on the ice, he's open to talking about the biggest story in his personal curling trajectory - one that could come to define his career. It's a decision-making process that could surprise a lot of fans, one that shows Bottcher in a different light than fans expect.

The news earlier this year that Marc Kennedy, Brett Gallant, and Ben Hebert were parting ways with Bottcher to find a new skip after two seemingly successful seasons together surprised much of the curling world. It's not unusual for skips to adjust their lineups between seasons and within the Olympic quadrennial, but it's less common for three-quarters of a rink to move on from the skip.

Reasons given were vague, other than to say last year's third-place finish at the Brier, the Canadian men's championship, left the rest of the team feeling it needed to try something different to dethrone Gushue, who's won the last three Briers. They chose to add 2014 Olympic gold medalist Brad Jacobs as their skip.

For Bottcher, it was more than surprising - it was scary. There was a real possibility he'd have to sit out the 2024-25 season. Not ideal in the run-up to an Olympic year.

"It was scary because my identity as a person is so intertwined with curling," he says. "Just the thought of not being involved with curling for a year was scary. And, certainly as an athlete, you're very aware that you have a currency that you need to try and keep up if you want to get on to teams in the future."

Bottcher was 10 years old when he fell in love with the game, in the junior house league Saturday mornings at the Shamrock Curling Club in Edmonton. It was clear he was a born skip from the day he stepped on the ice. He always seemed confident, strategic, and capable. He was naturally good at throwing. Even then, he expected much from his team. It was obvious he loved curling.

"I still feel that way about curling now," he says.

Bottcher's identity being inseparable from curling isn't surprising to those who know him best. It's what former coach Don Bartlett, who won Olympic silver with Kevin Martin in 2002, remembers most about Bottcher from his teenage years. He recalled driving home from an out-of-town bonspiel with the young skip. Bottcher's parents were in front and Bartlett took the long car ride as an opportunity to impart some wisdom.

"I was giving him as many curling tips as I could, but also good life tips," Bartlett says. "I wanted him to know that there's more to life than curling. He has a brilliant mind. He cares a lot about people. And you could tell he cared a lot about curling."

A dream crystallized for Bottcher as he was exposed to more of the curling world: represent Canada at the Winter Olympics. He's been chasing it with every decision he makes. As a skip, he's made eight Brier appearances. Bottcher claimed one national title, in 2021, which made his team (which had a different lineup than his most recent one) the favorites to represent Canada at the 2022 Beijing Winter Games. But Team Bottcher had a disappointing showing at the 2021 Canadian Olympic Curling Trials. It finished seventh, with a 3-5 round-robin record, including a 6-4 loss to Gushue, who went on to represent Canada in Beijing and win bronze.

A week after Team Bottcher failed to qualify for the 2022 Winter Games, the team announced that vice-skip Darren Moulding was out. It caused a minor curling controversy, with Moulding commenting extensively on the decision and Bottcher keeping to clipped answers during an official press conference that provided little insight into his side of the story.

"I don't make rash decisions, and I don't feel like I have to explain myself," he says. "The people that are involved in me making a decision, all of my friends and family, they know who I am as a person."

"I've only ever known Brendan as the most professional person. Always choosing to do the right thing, always taking the higher road," says Rachel Homan, the two-time world women's champion skip who represented Canada at both the PyeongChang and Beijing Winter Games. "He doesn't lash out or retaliate. He just continues to live life."

Bottcher says there are many elements to curling's structure in Canada that necessitate many behind-the-scenes decisions for athletes, making it somewhat unique from other sports. "What the average curling audience doesn't understand is that we're all our own agents and we don't have people negotiating on our behalf. We don't have owners making decisions for us or GMs managing the relationships and the players. It truly is the team sitting in a hotel room deciding what we're going to do next.

"It's also the team that has to hold each other accountable in the hard moments, and it's the team that has to set expectations when it's not easy. It's the team that has to debrief the tough moments when it hasn't all went to plan."

Bottcher's experience with Moulding exposed him to some of the toughest curling decisions Canadian athletes have to make to chase national championships and Olympic berths in the nation with the world's deepest pool of curling talent. And there was still another big decision coming - but this one would look a lot different.

At the beginning of the current quadrennial - the span of four years that culminates in an Olympic Games - Bottcher joined forces with an All-Star cast of Kennedy, Gallant, and Hebert. Kennedy and Hebert won Olympic gold in 2010, while Gallant earned Olympic bronze in 2022. They've all won world and national championships. If Bottcher's Olympic dream had any chance of coming true, this group seemed like his best shot at making it happen.

That Olympic goal seemed further away than ever when the team announced it was parting ways with Bottcher midway through the quad. "Every year there's team breakups," he says. "This year there was a whole pile in the middle of a season, in the middle of a quad. It just happens. Not because there's bad people on either side of the equation, just because the situation we're in."

What Bottcher did after the team disintegrated could be his most powerful curling move yet: he decided to pause. "You'll probably see that I'm a very deliberate person," he says. "I didn't want to make an emotional decision and just play because I had something to prove."

He stopped worrying about curling. He took Bartlett's advice and focused on everything else in life that brought him meaning. "I decided I could embrace more time with my family. I could embrace more time traveling. I could embrace putting more energy into my work life," he says.

In addition to chasing his Olympic dream, Bottcher gardens, pickles, cooks, hosts his friends for cards nights, and is raising four stepchildren with Sauder in a household that also includes two cats and a dog. He also works full time as an engineer in a role with ever-increasing responsibilities.

Bottcher's developed a tight circle of curling friends over the years. "In a setting where he doesn't know anyone, he's introverted. He's shy and reserved. But in small groups with people he knows, he's much more extroverted," Sauder says.

He and Sauder met through curling at a late season funspiel. "My first impressions of him were that he was a little bit shy and incredibly intelligent," Sauder says. "He's probably one of the kindest, most gracious people I know. I call him the calm to my storm."

The two enjoy hosting other curlers in the Edmonton area for dinner and games nights. Mostly, they play cards - spades is their game of choice. "He's very intelligent and a lot of times we'll have to gang up on him to bring him down from the lead," Bartlett says.

Bottcher loves to cook when the group comes over. "Every time I go over it's a different meal with about 15 spices. He doesn't measure any of them, he just throws them in and goes by taste," Bartlett says.

He also plays golf. "He's really good at golf," says Homan. "It's so annoying."

He and Sauder maintain a huge backyard garden. Each fall they can their harvest of cucumbers, asparagus, carrots, and beans. Bottcher's also taken up jam-making. This year he produced over 40 jars of raspberry - his specialty.

"I've got a really good network of people that helped me in those moments," he says. "I think the consensus from the group was just don't rush into anything. The sport's not going anywhere, even if you end up taking a year off."

When he was ready to step back on the ice, he did so with an eye to improving his own game. "I wanted to use the time to develop as an athlete. There's things I needed to work on and energy I could have been putting in to moving the ball forward for me in the future."

That calm, deliberate nature led to an opportunity to coach Team Homan, the reigning world and Canadian champions. "He's so well spoken, he's so smart, he's a student of the game. He loves curling. Anyone who's on his team, he makes sure they're in a good space. He knows the game so well and has so much experience with the knowledge and tactics. His strategy is something that we knew could really help us," Homan says.

He also agreed to play mixed doubles with Homan, an opportunity he says taught him a lot about his own game, especially sweeping. "He's just a true professional and the kindest person. He would do anything for any one of his friends, any one of his teammates, and he's never going to throw anyone under the bus no matter what happens on the team. That made me excited to play mixed doubles with him," Homan says. (Mixed doubles is also a recent addition to the Olympic program.)

Bottcher was confident in his decision to not force anything in curling after consulting his inner circle. "When this curling season started, I was at peace with everything that had happened," Bottcher says.

That's when he got the call from Gushue with an offer to join his team. Gushue has 21 Brier appearances and Olympic gold and bronze medals. But there was a catch: instead of playing skip, as Bottcher's done for his entire career, he'd play second.

"Both Brad and I are, again, pretty deliberate, so it wasn't an immediate yes for either of us," Bottcher says. "There was a lot of making sure it was a good fit, making sure our visions aligned, making sure we approached the game the same way, that the roles were well defined, and we had similar expectations. When we got through that, I was genuinely excited to join their team."

Playing second actually seemed like a good idea the more he thought about it. "The last couple years have been both busy and mentally busy. Taxing at times. This is an opportunity to just go out there and make a pile of shots and be a good teammate, but a little bit less pressure on my shoulders than when every big decision is coming down to me."

The new Team Gushue is performing well so far. The team went undefeated through the round robin in its first bonspiel together at the Pan Continental Championships before ultimately finishing fourth. It's currently 4-0 at the Co-op Canadian Open, the second event of the revamped Grand Slam of Curling series, which switched ownership last spring.

"They have this Canadiana vibe to them," Bottcher says of Gushue's team. "Regardless of where they go in the country, it feels like they're Team Canada." It's a feeling he hopes he can get used to, because that Olympic dream is burning hotter than ever.

"In life, just like in curling, it doesn't always go exactly how you scripted it out, so you need to be flexible and you need to be resilient. I've certainly learned some of those skills a little bit," Bottcher says.

Curling fans may never know every detail of every decision Bottcher makes both on and off the ice, but knowing more about how he made the biggest decision in his career so far gives insight into the way he approaches his teammates and the game.

Bottcher's often misunderstood, but he's accepted that, and it's a sacrifice he's willing to make in order to approach the game in a way that feels right to him.

"There isn't an amount of winning that justifies the sacrifices you make, or that your family makes. It's not about winning. I've always just loved curling, and that's why I keep doing it."

Jolene Latimer is a feature writer at theScore