Canada settles for bronze

A third time was not the charm for Team Kerri Einarson.

Another trip to the World Women’s Curling Championship has ended with them falling short of the ultimate goal, this time in Sandviken, Sweden.

For the second straight year, the Gimli-based team featuring skip Kerri Einarson, third Val Sweeting, second Shannon Birchard and lead Briane Harris settled for bronze on the world stage.

Team Canada, which included head coach Reid Carruthers and alternate Krysten Karwacki, finished strong with an 8-5 victory over Sweden’s Anna Hasselborg — who they beat in the 2022 third-place game as well — early Sunday to claim the final spot on the podium.

Switzerland’s Silvana Tirinzoni, who didn’t lose a game all week, defeated Norway’s Marianne Roervik 6-3 in the final to win her fourth straight world title.

Einarson dropped an 8-5 result to Norway in Saturday’s semifinal.

“We had a really good feeling coming in. We thought this was a really good opportunity to bring home the gold,” said Sweeting in a phone interview.

“We fought hard all week. Even though we’re not coming home with it, that doesn’t define our team. We have a ton to be proud of. We’re super resilient, we fought for every inch out there, and we have nothing to hang our heads about.”

Whether they’re happy about it or not, it was the result the group of Canadians deserved as they struggled to find consistency all week. They showed flashes of what has made them so dominant over this four-year stretch, but rarely did you see all four of them at their best in the same game. They had an up and down round robin where they finished at 7-5, which was a drop from last year when they went 9-3.

“I think there were some more uncharacteristic things than we’re used to, but we’re human, that’s going to happen and all we can do is learn from it and move on,” said Sweeting.

“And I thought that we did that. I thought we kind of had a bit of our stride going later in the week and regardless of how the round robin went, we still gave ourselves a good shot of getting into that final.”

Arguably their best performance came on Sunday with Einarson, Sweeting, and Birchard all curling in the high 80s and controlling the game from start to finish. On average, the foursome curled at 82 per cent during their time in Sweden.

“It’s nice to leave with a bronze medal. We’re super excited about it and it’s nice to leave on a good, solid win,” said Einarson.

“We just kind of got a little behind the eight ball in some of the games, but we started trending in the right direction and played well. We didn’t feel any pressure, we’ve been here before. It was our first worlds overseas; it was a great experience and we’ll definitely learn from it.”

The nation’s drought continues as Canada hasn’t won women’s gold since Jennifer Jones triumphed in 2018. Since then, Tirinzoni has ruled the curling world. Tirinzoni and fourth Alina Paetz — who were playing with a new front end this season in Carole Howald and Briar Schwaller-Hürlimann — have now won 36 straight games at the tournament.

“It’s just something that you never thought would be possible. I don’t know how we do it, but I guess we have great team together,” said Tirinzoni.

Sunday’s final went down to the wire with Norway’s fourth Kristin Skaslien needing a draw on her last shot in the 10th to tie the game 4-4 and force an extra end. Skaslien’s rock ended up being way too short, which gave Switzerland two points and the game.

A Swiss team has won seven of the last 10 gold medals.

“I don’t know how to describe it, really. I felt like they outplayed us today,” Tirinzoni said.

“It was such a close game. It could’ve gone to either side… So, to stand here being a world champion again is just unbelievable.”

A bright spot for Canada was Harris, who didn’t miss a single game even though she’s expecting her first child in June. Harris had the third-best shooting percentage out of all leads at the 13-team event.

“Briane was outstanding all week and gave it her all out there. I know she’s feeling pretty exhausted. We were hoping she could’ve put up her feet in one of the games and maybe relax a bit, but the games were pretty tight for us so we couldn’t give her that chance. She didn’t complain at all,” said Einarson.

“She just kept fighting through whatever pain she was having.”

This was the third trip to worlds for Einarson and Co. (the 2020 event was cancelled owing to the pandemic), and they intend on taking another shot at it in 2024 in Sydney, N.S., as the skip confirmed they’re fully committed to staying together. They failed to medal at the 2021 worlds inside the Calgary bubble.

But their 2022-23 season isn’t over yet as they still have a pair of Grand Slam events to prepare for with the Players’ Championship in Toronto (April 11-16) and the Champions Cup in Regina (May 2-7).

“We look forward to celebrating with everyone back home,” said Sweeting. “We didn’t really get a chance to celebrate the Scotties win much either, so I think we definitely want to do that with everyone and get some rest for sure.”

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Twitter: @TaylorAllen31