Women win curling bronze,

Canadians came within one shot of making final

RIGA, LAT VIA • Canada’s Rachel Homan entered her first world women’s curling championship full of confidence after a stellar performance at the national playdowns.

The young skip leaves the tournament with a bronze medal and the invaluable experience of dealing with adversity on one of the sport’s biggest stages.

Homan defeated Erika Brown of the United States 8-6 in the third-place game on Sunday morning, just hours after a crushing 8-7 loss to Scotland’s Eve Muirhead in the semi-final a night earlier. The young Canadian side was able to quickly put the defeat in the past and concentrate on reaching the podium.

“We’ve had to battle back, we’ve had to regroup,” Homan said. “I think we showed ourselves that we can come back, battle hard and fight to the end.

“I’m really proud of my team, how we played this week and into the playoffs as well.”

Scotland defeated Sweden’s Margaretha Sigfridsson 6-5 for the gold medal later Sunday.

There were some challenges for the Canadians on this trip. They arrived later than expected after spending an uncomfortable night sleeping on chairs in the Frankfurt airport when bad weather grounded their connecting flight.

Early nerves were a factor and ice conditions were a problem at times. The Canadians were handed some early losses — a rarity this season — and every game seemed like a battle to the final stone.

The low point came when Homan blew a glorious chance to reach the gold-medal game when she missed a double takeout attempt that gave Muirhead the victory in the semifinal.

The Canadians couldn’t hide their dejection after the loss. They had long, expressionless faces in the arena hallway and Homan needed 20 minutes to cool down in the locker room before eventually providing a few pithy answers to questions from reporters.

With the loss still gnawing at them, Homan and teammates Emma Miskew, Lisa Weagle and Alison Kreviazuk put on their best faces at the Volvo Sports Center in the bronze-medal match.

“It was a hard game to play,” Miskew said. “It’s not easy to come out after a heartbreaker like last night and play up to the level that you were playing last night in a game that isn’t for gold.

“But we did want to win that bronze medal so we faked it at the start. The faking it turned into more comfort and then we were able to start playing.”

Homan scored three points in the third end and never trailed after that. She nailed a hit for two in the seventh for a comfortable lead down the home stretch.

“We stuck together, grinded it out, made playoffs and missed the gold-medal game by one shot,” Homan said. “So I’m really proud of that. Just learn from our mistakes along the way and take the good experiences from it as well.”