VERNON, B.C. -- Fickle -- and phenomenally difficult.
Those are the two lessons to be drawn from Jennifer Jones's genuinely remarkable run to this year's World Women's Curling Championship -- a wild ride that came to an end Sunday with a relatively uneventful 7-4 victory over China.
Team Canada lead Dawn Askin, second Jill Officer, third Cathy Overton-Clapham and skip Jennifer Jones (from left) let it all hang out after striking gold Sunday.
The final was, perhaps, the only uneventful element in the unlikeliest of journeys Jones took to the top of this year's curling world -- a journey that served to illustrate both how fickle competitive curling at its higest levels can be and how phenomenally difficult it is to be the last team standing atop the world at the end of a winter.
Consider:
It's mid-week at the Scotties in Regina -- Wednesday morning to be precise -- and Jones is in deep trouble. She already has four losses and will be eliminated from the playoffs with another. And that's exactly what looks like is about to happen.
Newfoundland's Heather Strong needs only to throw a guard with her last rock of the 10th end and Jones will be extremely hard-pressed to manufacture the deuce she needs to send the game to an extra end. But Strong has mismanaged her clock -- as she did all week -- and she's almost out of time when she throws that last guard.
Predictably, the rock is heavy and instead of being a guard, it slides to the four-foot where it becomes the out Jones needed so badly. One rock later, Jones has made a double takeout for a game-winning three and her team lives to fight on another draw.
It all easily could have ended right there for Jones. And if it had, the story in Manitoba curling this winter would have been what a disappointing season it was for this team that had been so full of promise.
But it didn't end there for Jones. Just as it didn't end three days later when Sherry Middaugh couldn't make a nose-hit runback double with the last rock of the semifinal.
A day later, Alberta's Shannon Kleibrink had the same shot with the last rock of the Canadian final. If she'd made it, she would have been here the past week. But she missed, too.
And then once the Jones team got here to the worlds, it was more of the same. Game after game they fell behind, but game after game they battled back, climaxing with the semifinal against Japan in which the Jones team did nothing less than take two in the ninth end and steal the 10th and 11th ends to live to fight on.
Any misstep, anywhere along this circuitous path and the Jones team would have been done.
All of which is not meant, understand, to in any way demean the tremendous accomplishment of this Winnipeg team in winning a world title.
On the contrary, I mention all these fickle little quirks of the team's drive for a world title precisely because they illustrate so clearly how impossibly difficult it really is for a team to win a world curling championship.
Difficult, you see, because even if you can somehow master complete control of your team and your game and your rocks, there's still a myriad of other things beyond your control that can foil you at every turn.
Newfoundland's clock management, Middaugh's ability to throw the big rock, Kleibrink's emotional control in a final, the ability of the Japanese to hold a lead -- all of it was utterly out of the control of a very controlling woman, Jones. She could force the issue, sure, apply pressure, but at the end of the day, it was beyond her control.
It's precisely the same reason why after all these fabulous years of curling, Alberta's Kevin Martin will head to the men's worlds in Grand Forks this weekend still seeking his first gold on the world stage.
Because curling, no matter how good you are at it, is fickle. And winning world curling titles, no matter how great your team, is phenomenally difficult.
Just ask Jennifer Jones.
paul.wiecek@freepress.mb.ca
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