Canada fights off U.S. for Olympic girls’s curling bronze in high-quality showdown

[ad_1] CORTINA D’AMPEZZO, Italy — Two days after a U.S. girls’s workforce beat Canada in a considerably fiercer contest on ice, Canada’s girls’s curlers gained some revenge for the hockey defeat by beating their neighbors 10-7 on Saturday to win the bronze medal right here on the Winter Olympics.

Each of those groups had been very low after their semi-final defeats on Friday, however they'd left the Cortina Curling Heart that night promising to boost themselves for this battle for bronze. And so they did.

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There was nothing between Rachel Homan’s Canadian rink and the Tabitha Peterson-led Individuals over 5 high-quality ends. The U.S., due to its greater end within the round-robin part, began with the hammer and scored an early level. However Homan responded within the second finish, and so it went, the groups buying and selling single factors, till the sixth.

Having been so good for thus lengthy, first Tara Peterson, Tabitha’s youthful sister, after which the skipper herself, threw rocks they'd undoubtedly need again. That left Homan, a three-time world champion, with the simplest of attracts for a three-point finish and a 5-3 lead.

Tabitha Peterson, not for the primary time on this match, instantly composed herself and delivered probably the most delicate of stones to tug two again within the seventh. However the Canadians got here into these Video games because the top-ranked workforce for a purpose, and excellent play by Homan’s teammates Sarah Wilkes, Emma Miskew and Tracy Fleury left her with one other easy draw for a triple and an 8-5 benefit.

Cease me when you've got heard this one earlier than, however Peterson once more dipped into her field of perfectly-weighted take-outs and scored one other double to trim Canada’s result in 8-7.

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However with Homan having the final say within the tenth finish, the chances had been in opposition to the Individuals, and Canada threw down seven good stones to depart Peterson with the trickiest of pictures to make issues fascinating. She couldn't maintain pulling rabbits out of hats, although, and her take-out try failed, leaving Canada two to the nice and unbeatable.

The outcome means the Individuals’ seek for a primary Olympic medal in girls’s curling continues, however they acquitted themselves brilliantly right here, most memorably in an epic Eleventh-end victory over Switzerland to grow to be solely the second American girls’s workforce to succeed in the final 4 of an Olympic match. There may be additionally the massive comfort of the silver medal Cory Thiesse, who was unfortunate to be on the shedding workforce on this recreation, gained with associate Korey Dropkin within the blended doubles.

Canada, alternatively, got here to Cortina wanting greater than a bronze medal however, after disappointments in 2018 and 2022, this sensible quartet is just not going dwelling empty-handed. And so they regarded fairly joyful about it, too.