Takeaways: Canada rides huge first end to women’s world championship final

It’s funny how life works. 

In 2021, Canada’s skip Kerri Einarson made her world championship debut, playing at The WinSport Event Centre in Calgary, the same venue as this year’s edition of the tournament.

Unlike this year’s event, though, she never got the home country support in the building as no fans were in attendance thanks to the COVID-19 pandemic. The week didn’t go as she planned and she was eliminated in the qualification game. 

Now, five years later, Einarson will play for her first gold medal at the worlds after beating Japan 11-3 in the semifinal. 

The best part? 

A 3,004 sold-out crowd got to stand and celebrate Einarson and her teammates, Val Sweeting, Shannon Birchard and Karlee Burgess, with cheers. 

“Oh my god, I have goosebumps all over,” Einarson said in her post-game interview. 

“You know, it’s a pretty special moment and our team has been through so much over these years, we’ve had some heartbreakers, so to finally get ourselves into that gold-medal game, it’s a pretty special feeling.” 

Canada may have played eight ends in total, but it was the first end that won them the game.

While the Japanese were just trying to settle into the game, Canada was on full attack mode and made them pay. 

As Einarson went to throw her last rock, Canada was already sitting two but was looking to score a bundle. The skipper dialled up a hit and punched the Japanese rock far enough to score three.

Seven of their eight shots were perfect.

From there, Canada never gave Japan a chance. Every end Japan was chasing the Canadians, trying to keep up, but just couldn’t.

“Coming into this week I knew we had it in us and we trained so hard,” Burgess, who shot 100 per cent in the game, said afterwards. “Getting to put ourselves in a final, I’m really excited. For all of us, being our first world final, it’s even better.”

Now, the Canadians will have a rematch against the only team that finished with a better record than them, Switzerland’s team skipped by Xenia Schwaller. Schwaller beat Einarson earlier in the tournament.

Japan hurt themselves 

There is no other way to say this, Japan might have played the worst game of any team this week, and it couldn’t have happened at a worse time. 

It wasn’t like Canada was shooting the lights out of the building versus Japan. Canada did play great, finishing at 87 per cent as a team, but it was nowhere near the performance the Canadian rink displayed on Friday in their first meeting with Japan. Einarson’s rink shot 94 per cent in that game.

Japan just hurt themselves end after end. They couldn’t buy a shot.

Through four ends Japan was curling 52 per cent as a team, but the weakest link of them all was Satsuki Fujisawa. She was at mind boggling 28 per cent, including zero per cent on her hits. The score was 7-1 for Canada but it easily could have been 10-0.  

Obviously and rightfully so, the topic of conversation has to be about skip Satsuki Fujisawa for her performance, but it doesn’t mean her teammates made her life any easier. 

The whole team in front of Fujisawa struggled to make anything, so by the time it was Fujisawa’s turn to shoot, she had to pray.

Swiss continue to dominate 

What else can you say about this team?

Sweden, with all due respect, stood no chance of winning this game. Schwaller and the rest of her teammates are just playing out of their minds at the moment.

In the 8-5 win, the Swiss shot 93 per cent as a team with Schwaller shooting 96 per cent on her own.

Early on, Sweden was containing the Swiss the best they could, but they couldn’t hold them down past the fifth end. 

In the second half of the game Switzerland dominated. They scored five points in the two ends with the hammer and without, as Sweden didn’t even have a rock in the field of play (!) after Schwaller threw her last stone.

At this point, they look unstoppable. 

Turkey gives great effort in loss

Even though the tournament may now be over for Turkey’s team led by skip Dilşat Yıldız along with third Oznur Polat, second Iclal Karaman and lead Berfin Sengul, they have so much to be proud of. 

Not only did the Turkish team reach the playoffs for the first time in their country’s history, but they also legitimately had a chance to advance from the qualification game against Japan.

Turkey, the No. 37th-ranked team in the world, gave the No. 9-ranked Japan everything they could handle. That included taking advantage of a couple Japanese misses in the sixth end to score three, giving them the lead 4-3.

They may have given three right backs, but the fight never stopped. In the 10th end down one without hammer, Turkey had a legit shot to steal one to force an extra end. However, Fujisawa made a nice shot to win 7-5.

Given how young Yıldız, Karaman and Sengul are, it’s so exciting to think about the future of curling in Turkey. The next step would be playing in North America more, including on the Grand Slam of Curling tour, to face all the teams they met this week more regularly.