Homan has presence at world championship, even though she’s not here ... Swedes improve to 5-0 and lead standings ... Sinclair feeling right at home in North Bay
NORTH BAY, Ont. — There’s a definite Rachel Homan influence at the World Women’s Curling Championship, even though Canada’s representative in the Olympics isn’t here. Team U.S.A. skip Jamie
Sinclair, who now lives in St. Paul, Minn., was born and raised in Manotick, Ont., just outside of Canada’s capital. As a 14-year old, she spent two years playing for Homan’s team, with whom she captured the 2007 Canada Winter Games title.
“It was a great experience. I learned a ton,” said Sinclair, who went on to lead Carleton to the national university title in 2014. “It was my first taste of competitive curling, and I absolutely loved it. I learned a lot from Rachel’s style of play, and I admired her for that. I turned around and I wanted to start skipping my own team, because of that experience playing for her.”
Sinclair lists “competitiveness and intensity” among the Homan traits she tried to copy.
“I just admired how much she was devoting to the game, how intense she was on the ice,” said Sinclair, “That’s kind of what I took ... that leadership. It inspired me to go skip my own team.”
The Americans fell to 2-3 at the worlds on Monday by losing both their games, the first to Anna Hasselborg’s undefeated Sweden team.
The Olympic gold medalists are picking up where they left on in Pyeongchang with a 5-0 record that has them atop the standings at Memorial Gardens. They took care of the silver medallists from South Korea in a 9-7 win on Monday night.
It might be too early to talk shutout (is there ever an appropriate time to mention that word to somebody who has one on the go?) but that didn’t stop the guy you’re reading now from asking Hasselborg if she is either awed by or inspired to duplicate the perfect 13-0 record (including playoffs) that Homan compiled while winning the world championship in Beijing last year.
“I think it’s both,” said Hasselborg. “It’s very impressive. She played really well last year. I was not surprised she went unbeaten. And of course you aspire to do the same. It all comes down to just medalling. It doesn’t matter how you got there, if you’re not in those last games. However your road was, it’s what happens in the last games that matters.”
What’s especially impressive about the Swedes is how smooth they’re sailing even with the quick turnaround from the Olympics to the worlds. They arrived home from Pyeonchang on Feb. 27 and they landed in North Bay on Mar. 13.
Barely enough time do their laundry.
“We had one week where we took it very slow, and just did what ever you had to do, then we had almost one week where you tried to come back to our routine, to go back to the gym and really focus on curling,” said Hasselborg. “Just tried to find our way back.”
So far, they seem to have done a nice job of that.
“I think we’re really playing well right now,” said Hasselborg. “There’s always a small adjustment we can do. We’re still learning the ice. I think the challenge we have is just to keep focused on every game. The whole tournament, since we have a lot of games just coming into this event. We’re playing well now and I hope that continues.”
IN THE HOUSE
Sinclair admits she feels almost at home in North Bay, which is about a four hour drive from her actual hometown. “A lot of family members came up from Ottawa, so it’s nice to have a pretty big crowd cheering for us,” she said. How many? “Well they got a house for 10, and throughout the week it’s probably 20 of them coming up,” she estimated. “That’s just my family. Parents, brothers, aunts, uncles, cousins ... and my team, all their parents came as well.” ... Hasselborg says winning gold at the Olympics meant her and teammates met the King Carl XVI Gustaf, twice, and Prime Minister Stefan Lofven phoned his congratulations. Otherwise, the reaction in Sweden was pretty “calm,” said Hasselborg. “Mostly just a tap on the shoulder and a ‘congrats.’” ... Hasselborg said her and her teammates will have a big celebration with family and friends in the spring, soon as they have time to catch their breath ... Despite being a young and elite athlete, Hasselborg says she doesn’t personally know any of the many NHLers who share her hometown of Stockholm. “I wish,” she said. “Then they would give us tickets to games.” Told they probably would now anyway, she laughed. “After an Olympic gold, maybe,” she said.
PERSONALLY SPEAKING
Danielle Inglis may be one of the top curlers in Ontario but curling shuffleboard is not her thing, at least when the undefeated duo of Greg Strong of the Canadian Press and yours truly are providing the opposition. The Strongman and I improved our career record to 1-0 ... For some reason the auto-correct on my laptop has decided to start changing Ont. to Not. So in the placeline on one of these stories, if it happens to say I’m “Not” in North Bay, it’s lying, we just missed the typo ... There must not be a word for “hurry” in Chinese. Because that’s all a guy fluent only in English can understand from the country’s curlers when they are demanding their teammates sweep faster.