Einarson leads Canada to bronze at world women’s curling championship

Canada’s Kerri Einarson claimed the bronze medal at the world women’s curling championship for the second consecutive season after defeating host Anna Hasselborg 8-5 Sunday in Sandviken, Sweden.

It was also a repeat of last year’s bronze game where Einarson edged Hasselborg 8-7 in an extra end in Prince George, B.C.

Einarson, from Gimli, Man., is supported by third Val Sweeting, second Shannon Birchard, lead Briane Harris, alternate Krysten Karwacki and coach Reid Carruthers.

The four-time reigning Canadian champions finished round-robin play with a 7-5 record, defeated Japan’s Satsuki Fujisawa 6-4 in the qualification round, and lost to Norway’s Marianne Roervik 8-5 in the semifinals Saturday.

“I feel pretty excited to come here and medal,” Einarson said in a Curling Canada release. “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.”

Einarson opened with the hammer and jumped out of the gate scoring a deuce in the first end and stealing a point in the second for an early 3-0 lead.

After Hasselborg was held to a single in the third, Canada continued to cruise adding another deuce in the fourth and stealing again in the fifth for a 6-1 advantage at the break.

The teams traded pairs of points in six and seven. Hasselborg scored a single in the eighth and stole one in the ninth but the deficit was too much to overcome for the Swedish squad.

“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.”

Meanwhile, Switzerland’s Silvana Tirinzoni captured a fourth consecutive world championship with a 6-3 win over Norway in the gold medal game.