Team Craik curlers sweep aside rivals
James Craik completed a rare double when he led his team to victory at the Fisu Winter World University Games (WUGS) at the weekend, defeating hosts USA 5-1 in a one-sided final in Lake Placid, Newyork.
Along with his team’s second, Angus Bryce, the skip had also won the World Junior Championships last year, making them only the second pair of Scottish men to do so as they followed in the footsteps of Bruce Mouat and Bobby Lammie,
Up against a noisy home support, as well as the team with the next best record after the round-robin stages, Craik missed an opportunity to score two at the opening end.
However at the second, he produced a triple takeout to pile pressure on opposing skip Danny Casper who was only able to remove one of the three counting Scottish stones with the final delivery of the end, his shooter rolling out to leave Craik lying two.
The third end blanked and at the fourth the Scots took a calculated risk, giving US skip a difficult chance to make a double and he didn’t manage to shift the second counting stone sufficiently, leaving Team GB 3-1 up at the break, with the hammer as they headed into the halfway break.
The fifth end was also blanked before, at the sixth end, Craik manufactured the chance to make a double take out for a two.
While he did not quite get the angle right, he still scored to take a commanding 4-1 lead into the penultimate end.
There Casper was left attempting an unlikely looking angled raised double takeout and while he made a brave try, he could only remove one British stone, costing his team another steal which left Great Britain four up playing the last where they duly ran their opponents out of stones to wrap up the victory.
“I felt like it was a really dominant performance in the final, especially after that second end,” said Craik.
“We had an opportunity for a two at the first, but just got caught out a little bit with a fresh bit of ice and came up a bit short, so it was nice to get our two at the next and establish that three shot lead.
“That steal of two was probably a key moment in the match and then forcing them in the fourth was really, really big, getting the hammer back when we know we’re really effective with it.”
Having achieved everything he can at junior level, Craik is now setting his sights on success in the men’s game where he served notice of intent earlier this month when reaching the semi-finals of the Perth Masters.
In the women’s event there was play-off disappointment for Team Henderson, who had performed well through the round-robin, winning seven of their nine matches.
Having inflicted the only defeat on Korea in the round-robin stages, they were unable to repeat that in the semi-finals, losing 10-4 to the eventual silver medallists, before suffering a 7-3 loss to hosts the USA in the bronze medal play-off.