Cheryl Bernard’s retirement a definitive one, with a variety of options on the horizon

In curling, a retirement isn’t always a retirement. Sometimes, a player calls it a retirement, when it might actually just be a respite, a return to the hack as inevitable as a first slide of the season speed wobble.

For Cheryl Bernard, 2010 Olympic silver medallist, there is no chance a comeback is on the horizon. Not soon, not ever.

“You will not see me back, in a competitive capacity, on the ice, no,” she said succinctly, in response to the question of her ever returning to a game that has been a large part of her life since the age of eight.

“When I make a decision it’s done,” she explained, over the phone, from her home in Calgary. “I’ve gotten myself and my mind around all the other things that I want to do. I will make it so there’s really no way for curling to come back in. That’s just the type of person I am.”

It’s a serious answer to a serious query. There would be more of the same, but also plenty of that well-known Bernard humour and self-deprecation, in a conversation that touched on everything from the changing face of curling, to the heartbreak of Olympic shortfall, to the possibility of bringing her winning charm to the broadcast booth in the future.

At 47 years of age, Cheryl Bernard is very much done with the sport that she still loves, at least on a full-time basis, announcing her retirement earlier this week after months of soul searching. As well as plenty of shin splints, I imagine.

The insight and the soreness came from Bernard’s training for and running of her first marathon, which she completed earlier this month. It was not just a physical test. It was a psychological one, with Bernard looking for an emotional catalyst that would decisively signal she could find her competitive hunger satiated outside of the game she's played for some 39 years.

“I wanted to know that I could throw myself into something else and love the training in a different sport,” she said of her foray into long distance running. “And push myself at a different sport.”

While successful completion of the traditional 26 mile run brought the confirmation Bernard was looking for, the seeds of retirement were planted earlier in the year. During the Alberta Scotties, last January, there were whispers that the four - time provincial champ might just be finishing up her career. When Bernard asked for a DVD copy of her loss to Val Sweeting in the final, as a memento, you knew odds were that she was finished.

Quite finished, it turns out. While Kevin Martin’s retirement was quickly followed with announcements about his continued, high level, involvement in the sport, Bernard’s was followed with the sense that she’d like to fill her life with a wide variety of experiences, with curling being only part of the picture.

“My concern was what do I replace those millions of hours that I devoted to curling with? What will I do? I’ve really thought that through and found some great things.”

She’ll have her chance in the TV booth, if she wants it. When Bernard debuted in that capacity at the 2012 Players’ Championship, she took to it quite naturally.

“I enjoy doing that. I enjoy analyzing the game,” she said. Then, adds, cautiously: “To sit in the booth for a week for six, seven hours a day? I don’t know that that’s me.”

“I think there’ll be some doors open that might not strictly be broadcasting,” she continued. “It might be more where I can do some in-depth stuff with the players. I love that kind of digging in and finding out great things.”

Bernard has an understanding of the psychological rigours of the game and the obvious grip on strategies that veteran skips possess. Those qualities, along with her positive outlook when it comes to meeting challenges, might just make her a damn fine coach. Coaching, however, is a bit too much like playing for that to make sense for her.

“Maybe just stepping in for a weekend,” Bernard mused. “I don’t think I could coach a team for a year. If I was going to do that I think I’d rather be on the ice myself. The commitment it takes is just as much as a player. If not more.”

“To do a day or a weekend or a kind of a guest appearance for a team that I thought had great potential, that kind of excites me. I think I could be a lot more effective that way than to be a year-long coach with a team. It (full-time) wouldn’t do them any good, or me, either.”

The picture you get of the future Bernard has mapped out for herself is one of variety, and she’d like to include the world of business in that as well. Starting an insurance company when she was 23 years old, Bernard sold it when she was 35. That allowed her to devote most of her time to being a curler for the last 12 years. Now, with her curling career behind her, she can jump back into the realm she knew so well.

“I miss business. I miss the corporate world,” she explained. “That’s going to be really interesting. I don’t know how I’m gonna end up. I doubt it’ll be anything full-time but I think it’ll be something exciting.”

A little business, a little TV, maybe the odd mentoring gig. Bernard will make sure she leaves room for another passion, that of public speaking. “I love that,” she said, enthusiastically.

Those speaking engagements became more plentiful after Bernard’s silver medal performance at the 2010 Olympics. They’ve allowed her to communicate the experiences of what some saw as a failure and what she now sees as a triumph. Olympic medals are nice, but in Canada, winning silver in curling is a lot like winning silver in hockey, to many people. Not a win at all, but a loss.

“I’ve really had amazing support from people,” Bernard says of her post Olympics travels. “There’s the odd person that maybe doesn’t have any kind of sensibilities and comes up and says ‘ah, that’s shitty that you lost that.’"

Then, she adds, laughing: “Most people say it behind your back.”

No matter. As she reflects on the signature moment of her curling career, Bernard is at peace, even if she knows that if her last rock in the 11th end of the final had curled a wee bit more....

“I walked away from those Olympics looking at that loss as a gift. I did. I learned some amazing things about myself. It took me a little bit to be okay, but I am. I’m pretty okay.”

The quest for Olympic gold has changed the sport of curling in immense ways over the course of Bernard’s career. She’s seen those changes first hand, been affected by them at ice level.

“It’s good and bad,” she says, of the effect The Olympic Games have had on curling. “I can go through the pros and cons for half an hour. You can make more money with sponsorship now, we’ve had more kids joining the sport because of the Olympics.”

“But on the other side I think you’ve lost a little bit of the ‘hey, let’s sit down and have a beer’ (type of) people. Not because teams aren’t friendly anymore. It’s because they go back and sit with their sports psychologist and they sit with their coach and they debrief the game and then they go to bed. It’s not lost because the curlers aren’t social anymore, it’s lost because the curlers are trying to get to that top level and they realize what it takes to do that.”

The allure of Olympic gold has taken the steam out of curling’s legendary, fun-loving social structure. At least, to some extent. That must be galling to the ever-smiling Bernard. Friendly and outgoing, you’d assume she was always at the centre of that.

“I’m not the wild and crazy one on the tour,” she says, still speaking of her playing days in the present tense. “I curl and I go to bed. Good God, you can ask anybody. I was never one that had a lot of energy after playing two or three games in a day.”

“Maybe in the early years,” she adds, laughing.

Part of the reason Bernard is retiring now is the four year commitment it would take to try and get back to The Games, in 2018. It’s a sentiment some others have revealed, as they back away from a life devoted to competitive curling.

Bernard has other mountains to climb. Figuratively and literally. Next January, she'll attempt Mt Kilimanjaro, aiming to raise funds for World Vision.

There may be more marathons in her future, although it seems that one may just have been enough. She got the answer she sought and briefly felt she'd surpassed her Olympic podium.

“For a second I thought ‘this might mean more to me than the Olympic medal’ because it was just so against my nature. I’m not a runner, so it was a really hard thing for me to accomplish. I was pretty happy.”

Happy and assured. Cheryl Bernard is most certainly done with competitive curling.

"I’m satisfied with what I did and the decision I made."