Canada stays alive at curling worlds
SILKEBORG, DENMARK Chelsea Carey’s Canadian rink stayed in the playoff hunt with a 9-6 win over Russia’s Alina Kovaleva on Thursday at the World Women’s Curling Championship.
The Calgary-based team of Carey, third Sarah Wilkes, second Dana Ferguson and lead Rachel Brown had lost 9-3 to Switzerland’s Silvana Tirinzoni earlier in the day.
Carey (5-5) was tied with Japan and the United States for sixth in the 13-team event heading into the final day of preliminary round action. The top six teams make the playoffs after the round robin concludes Friday.
“We made it a goal early in the season to be a grinding team,” said Carey. “We had a bad loss at an early event where we kind of gave up after we got a few points down and I said to the girls, ‘This needs to be our identity. We need to own this and work really hard to be a team that grinds out wins.’”
Reigning Olympic champ Anna Hasselborg of Sweden led the way at 9-1. Russia, which rebounded with a 7-4 win over Scotland in Thursday’s late draw, was next at 8-3. Both have qualified for the playoffs.
South Korea and Switzerland were tied for third at 7-3 followed by China at 7-4.
Canada battled back from a 3-0 deficit against Russia, scoring three in the fourth to tie it at 5-5.
Carey notched another three in the ninth to break a 6-6 tie, making a draw on her final stone.
Two big shots from Wilkes — a runback triple takeout and a draw behind a corner guard — set things up for the big ninth.
“In other games, that would happen (giving up a big end) and it would kind of snowball,” said Brown.
“In this game, we were just like, ‘You know what? Let’s just get our deuce back and we’re right back in it.’ That was our mindset: just keep plugging away like we did in the Scotties final. We felt like the old Team Carey.”
Against Switzerland, Carey gave up four in the eighth, all but sealing it for Tirinzoni.
Canada wraps up the round robin with games against Sweden and Denmark.