Skip to content

Canada downs Sweden to capture 2nd straight world women’s curling bronze medal

Switzerland took gold, and Norway got silver
32242142_web1_2023032615038-a6be5aede047ac82639eac23eb772503ea1e8e17b939f214a7fef77f39cf62aa
Bronze medalists, Canadian Kerri Einarson, Val Sweeting, Shannon Birchard, Briane Harris and Krysten Karwacki show their medals after the LGT World Women’s Curling Championship at Goransson Arena in Sandviken, Sweden, Sunday, March 26, 2023. Canada defeated Sweden 8-5. THE CANADIAN PRESS/AP-TT, Jonas Ekstromer

Canada’s Kerri Einarson captured another bronze medal at the world women’s curling championship.

Einarson’s rink from Gimli, Man., defeated Sweden 8-5 on Sunday. Canada captured a bronze medal in last year’s event with an 8-7 victory over Sweden.

Canada finished round-robin play with a 7-5 record. After downing Japan’s Satsuki Fujisawa 6-4 in the qualification round, the squad dropped an 8-5 semifinal decision to Norway’s Marianne Roervik on Saturday.

“I feel pretty excited to come here and medal,” Einarson said. “I know it’s not gold like we wanted, but at least it’s a medal.

“To win bronze two years in a row is pretty special.”

Canada opened the contest with two in the first end. A steal of one in the second and two more in the fourth staked the Canadians to a 6-1 lead.

Sweden scored two in the sixth and added one in the eight to cut Canada’s lead to 8-4 before a steal in the ninth pulled the Swedes to within 8-5 but that’s as close as they’d get.

Skip Einarson’s team consisted of third Val Sweeting, second Shannon Birchard, lead Briane Harris and alternate Krysten Karwacki with coach Reid Carruthers.

“The fact that we were able to still get the bronze with not our strongest performance this week is big for our team,” Birchard said. “It’s lit a fire under us.

“We want to come back and we want to challenge for the gold, obviously, we had hoped to do that this week but it wasn’t in the cards, so we’ll just look forward to next year.”

Added Sweeting: “It is very special. It was an up-and-down week, but we put ourselves in a good position (Saturday) and it was really hard to lose that semifinal again. But I’m super proud of how we came out today and getting up against the hometown team isn’t easy either. We have a really good support crew here with our coaching and families and everything and it definitely helped us get through that.”

Switzerland defended its championship, downing Norway 6-3 in the gold-medal contest.

The Canadian Press

Like us on Facebook and follow us on Twitter.