Canada downs Sweden to capture second straight world women's curling bronze medal

SANDVIKEN, Sweden -- 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."

Norway was slated to take on defending-champion Switzerland in the tournament final later Sunday.

This report by The Canadian Press was first published March 26, 2023.