BEIJING, China — Canada’s curling teams were looking for positive results on Sunday after seeing their medal hopes take a hit at the Beijing Olympics.
Brad Gushue’s men’s team succeeded in their mission with an easy 10-5 victory over American John Shuster, the reigning Olympic champion. Jennifer Jones’ women’s team, however, had another frustrating performance in an 8-4 loss to Switzerland.
For a nation that prides itself on being a curling powerhouse, Canada’s recent Olympic results haven’t been very inspiring.
Both the men’s and women’s teams were kept short of the podium at the 2018 PyeongChang Games. Canada had won a medal in both events at every Olympics since 1998, when men’s curling made a comeback and curling female debuted.
Canada won mixed doubles gold in PyeongChang, but failed to defend their title in Beijing following an outright loss to Italy to end the preliminary round and deprived the team of John Morris and Rachel Homan of a place in the semi-finals.
That was followed by shaky starts from Gushue and Jones, who were both on two-game losing streaks heading into Sunday’s clashes.
Gushue, the 2006 champion, and his teammates looked full of energy Sunday as they took the lead with a four-run steal in the second inning to take control of the game.
“It’s been a long time since we lost two in a row,” Gushue said. We couldn’t wait to get back on the ice and win. »
Canada, which improved to 3-2, maintained a 94% save percentage compared to 76% for the Americans.
Gushue’s side will look to solidify their place in the standings against Italy on Monday.
Jones, who guided Canada to a gold medal in 2014, gave up back-to-back two-point steals before running out of stones in the 10th end to fall to Switzerland’s Silvana Tirinzoni.
Jones will face Russia and Great Britain on Monday and must win both for his team to get back into the medal hunt.
“It’s super disappointing this loss, admitted Jones. We’re going to have to show up tomorrow, take it one game at a time and one shot at a time, and see what happens at the end of the week. »
De Bruin in good shape
The monobob made its Olympic debut on Sunday, and Canadian bobsledder Christine de Bruin put herself in a good position to win a medal. The Albertan is in second place after the first two runs of the event with a combined time of two minutes, 10.14 seconds.
De Bruin will need to be near perfect in the final two runs on Monday to hope for gold. She concedes 1.04 seconds to the American Kaillie Humphries.
“It’s a race of consistency,” said de Bruin. Everything can happen. »
Toronto’s Cynthia Appiah is 10th with a time of 2:11.28.
In the other events, Alberta’s Erik Read was the top Canadian with 13th place in the giant slalom and the Canadian relay took 11th place in the 4 x 10 kilometer cross-country ski race.
Before the end of the eighth day of competition in Beijing, Canada can hope to add to its total of medals in short track speed skating, with the presentation of the 3000 meters relay ladies and the 500 meters men.
Team Canada will also be looking to rebound from a 4-2 loss to the United States when they face China.
