TSN’s Bryan Mudryk doesn’t miss too many big curling events these days.
But there was a time in his teens when the Boyle, Alta., native was too sick to attend a Brier in his own backyard. He had been diagnosed with Hodgkin’s Lymphoma and was battling for his life.
“I remember I was lying in bed at the Cross Cancer Institute in Edmonton going through chemo,” Mudryk said Saturday at the John Labatt Centre, “and watching the (1999) Brier on TV was one of the things that helped take my mind off what I was going through. It was a great diversion.
“I obviously couldn’t go but my uncle brought me a shirt from it.”
Jeff Stoughton won it that year. It’s Manitoba’s last Brier title. He’s back again in London trying to break the provincial drought.
Mudryk grew up a curler and actually worked in Winnipeg for a couple of years, using it as a stepping stone to the national stage.
“I’ve never told Jeff that Brier story before,” he said. “To me, (fellow Winnipegger) Kerry Burtnyk was a big inspiration. To see him battle through what he did (a rare form of scalp cancer) and come back to skip, that was a big deal.”
