It was a busy weekend for curling as the World Mixed Doubles and World Senior Curling Championships wrapped up on Saturday at the ATB Centre in Lethbridge.
Canada struck gold in the women’s World Senior Championships. The team led by skip Colleen Jones capped off an undefeated week with a 10-5 win over Switzerland.
“Whenever you win something this big, the euphoria is the exact same, if you could bottle it you would be a multi-millionaire and you want to hold onto that feeling forever,” Jones said. “Winning at this age may be sweeter than when I won as a 21-year-old or 39-year-old.”
In the bronze medal game, Scotland beat the U.S. 8-5, earning third place.
On the men’s side, Canada came back in the 8th to tie their game against Sweden, forcing an extra end. But Sweden managed to pull out a 5-4 win on their last shot by skip Mats Wranaa, finishing the week undefeated and earning another world title.
“It was the toughest game we had all week, going into the game we knew we’d have to play a real offensive game to try and generate some points, and we were unsuccessful early in the game,” lead Ken Sullivan said. “We got behind and fighting back was really tough.”
In the bonze medal game, Ireland beat Germany 6-3.
Canada’s Joanne Courtney and Reid Carruthers finished second to Martin Rios and Jenny Perret of Team Switzerland in the World Mixed Doubles Championships.
Canada led 5-2 going into the final end, but a miss from Courtney on her final shot allowed the Swiss to draw for four winning 6-5. It’s the sixth gold medal in the event for Team Switzerland who went undefeated throughout the championship.
“If you were to ask us after our last round-robin game how we would feel about winning silver, we would have been pretty happy, so there’s lots to be proud of,” Courtney said. “It definitely stings, silver always does sting a little bit, but congrats to the Swiss, they played amazing.”
Along with a silver medal, Courtney and Carruthers earned Canada one of eight spots in the inaugural mixed doubles event at the winter Olympics in Pyeongchang next year.
“We’ve got lots of work to do for mixed doubles in Canada and we’re really proud that we’re able to get us into the Olympics,” Courtney said.
In the bronze medal game China defeated Czech Republic 6-2.
Comments