GANGNEUNG, South Korea, (CCA) — Canada’s Jennifer Jones still has some work to do in order to qualify for the playoffs at the Mount Titlis world women’s curling championship.
Jones, third Cathy Overton-Clapham, second Jill Officer and lead Dawn Askin, who are chasing back-to-back world championships, suffered their second loss in three games to fall to 7-2 in the 12-team round-robin, bowing 7-5 to Denmark’s Angelina Jensen on Wednesday at the Gangneung International Ice Rink.
The result left Canada tied for second place with the Danes (who, at 7-1, hold a game in hand) behind China’s Bingyu Wang (8-1), an 8-2 victor over Germany’s Andrea Schoepp in the same draw.
China’s win wrapped up a tiebreaker berth.
Canada opened the game with Jones drawing for a first-end deuce, then padded their lead with two more in the third end when Jones made a tough double to remove two Denmark counters.
But the Danes fought back and managed to tie the game with two in the ninth end. And in the 10th, Jones had no path to the four-foot with her final rock and had to try a short angle-raise for the win, but her rock failed to curl enough, giving a game-winning steal of two to the Danes.
“Well, we’ll have to shake it off, but it was disappointing,” said Jones. “You control the whole game and then all of a sudden you lose. But we fought back and won this morning and we’ll have to come out and win two tomorrow. We just didn’t execute. We’ll have to play better. This wasn’t our best day. We’re making some big shots; just not as consistent as we’d like to be.”
Canada completes its round-robin on Thursday with games against Italy’s Diana Gaspari (1-7), a game that begins at 9 p.m. (all times Eastern) on Wednesday night, and Switzerland’s Mirjam Ott (5-3) at 7 a.m., a game that can be seen on curltv.com.
The top four teams following the conclusion of round-robin play on Thursday night will make the Page playoffs. The first- and second-place teams will play Friday or Saturday depending on potential tiebreakers, with the winner going into Sunday’s 2 a.m. championship game on TSN2 (the final will be repeated at 7 p.m. on TSN’s main network).
The third- and fourth-place teams will play Friday or Saturday for a berth in Saturday’s semifinal against the Page one-two loser.
TSN will broadcast the semifinal live Saturday at 6 a.m.; it will be repeated at 7 p.m. on TSN.
Curltv.com also will have complete coverage of the playoff round.