The bitter disappointment of their fourth-place Olympic finish behind them, Switzerland can now look ahead to getting back to what they do best – winning world championships.
They got themselves within a victory of accomplishing that goal for the third consecutive time after their 7-5 semifinal win Saturday night over Sweden at the BTK Tires & OK Tire World Women’s Curling Championship.
In a repeat of the Olympic bronze medal game a month ago in Beijing, a game the Switzerland lost 9-7 to Sweden, given a chance at a do-over, the Swiss would not be denied. They walked out onto the ice at CN Centre a perfect 12-0 in the tournament and continued on their path to making curling history.
“It's special to win the semis against Sweden and have a chance to defend our title and that's really what we came here for,” said Tirinzoni. “It’s been such a long week and now that we’ve actually reached that goal it’s amazing, I have no words.”
“We train like crazy and we work so hard and we get along so well," she said." I’m so proud how over those years we’ve became such a strong team, we did a lot of things right.
"When you become world champion you don’t look back at how many games you’ve won or lost in the round-robin, but to go undefeated is still a good feeling. It’s almost like you forgot how to lose a game and it builds up confidence, for sure.”
Dating back the first world women’s championship in 1979, only four other teams went undefeated in the round-robin – Colleen Jones for Canada in 2003, Anette Norberg for Sweden in 2005, Rachel Homan of Canada in 2017 and Jennifer Jones of Canada in 2018.
Switzerland has won six of the last nine women’s championships. No team has ever won the title three times in a row.
The Swiss will play South Korea for the championship Sunday at 7 p.m.
The semifinal draw drew a crowd of 2,198, the largest of the event so far. Most of the fans came to see the Canada-South Korea semifinal and they were treated to another thriller. Unfortunately for the Canadian fans backing Kerri Einarson and her team’s efforts to get to the gold-medal game, they left disappointed after South Korean skip Eun-Jung Kim scored two in the eighth, stole one in the ninth and counted another two in the 10th to defeat Canada 9-6.
The other semifinal was a tight game right to the end. With third Alina Paetz throwing skip stones for Tirinzoni, Switzerland took a 4-3 lead in the fifth end and Sweden followed that up by blanking the sixth. It was a jam-packed house in the seventh with six stones in the four-foot zone. Sweden, holding hammer, had one on the button. Two spins of the measuring stick were needed to determine who was next-closest and by a fraction of a millimetre Sweden got the extra point to take its first lead of the night, up 5-4.
In the eighth, Hasselborg froze and was sitting with a buried shot-rock close to the button. After conferring with skip Tirinzoni, Paetz raised one of her own on her first shot and with two Swedish rocks behind it she picked out Sweden’s rock. Hasselborg then executed a corner freeze and Paetz had to make the same shot again and she did it perfectly to score two and give her team a 6-5 lead.
“That was probably the key of the event really, if they steal another one there they have a big advantage,” said Tirinzoni. “Alina made two pistols there for us and it gave us a turnaround.”
Sweden blanked the ninth and Hasselborg tried for the tie in the 10th but was heavy on her draw, which gave Switzerland the steal that ended the game.
“I’m thrilled for the girls,” said Swiss coach Pierre Charette. “It was such a heartbreaker at the Olympics to go 8-1 and then you see two teams at 5-4 playing for gold. It really hurt, and we came right back from there to Geneva to play nationals and we were on fumes and played eight games in three days and got out of there to come here because they wanted to defend their title.”
Charette could scarcely believe his eyes when he saw what happened in the eighth end with Paetz coming through in the clutch.
“The deuce we got in eight is the best-skipped deuce I’ve ever seen in my life,” said Charette, now in his third year with the Swiss team.
The Swiss have shown no weaknesses throughout the tournament. Paetz made 93 per cent of her shots in the semifinal and Tirinzoni shot 86 per cent. Second Esther Neuenschwander (84 per cent) and lead Melanie Barbezat (83 per cent) also did their jobs with precision, and that’s a good sign, after not performing up to their own standards in the Olympic medal round.
“Alina was off in that game,” said Charette. “We were so disappointed about the semifinal against Japan, the whole team wasn’t there. Hopefully this is redemption for her and the team, because they deserve better.”
Switzerland beat South Korea 8-5 on Thursday. Charette, a 66-year-old native of Masson, Que., who played in 13 Brier championships, was obviously hoping to match up against Canada in Sunday’s final and Tirinzoni echoed that sentiment.
“To play Canada in the final would have been a dream come true maybe,” she said. “For sure, Korea is a fantastic team, too , so we will have to play our A-game for sure.”
Canada will play Sweden for bronze Sunday at 11 a.m., followed by the Switzerland-South Korea game for gold at 4 p.m.
The bronze medal game between Sweden and Canada will be played Sunday at 4 p.m., followed by the championship game at 7 p.m.
