Whole World falling apart

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This article was published 16/01/2011 (5595 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

ST. ALBERT, Alta. — Call it a World-class butt kicking.

There is no other way to describe Team North America’s dominant performance in wrestling the World Financial Group Continental Cup of Curling back from Team World, leaving just some extra cash on the line for today’s play at Servus Credit Union Place.

Up 155-45 and requiring just 46 of a possible 90 points available on Saturday night, North America sealed the victory thanks to wins off final-end steals from Jennifer Jones of Winnipeg and Kevin Koe of Edmonton in skins competition and an extra-end draw to the button from John Morris of Edmonton, who skipped a mixed skins team.

North America, requiring 201 points to win, ended Saturday’s play up 217-73, taking home the Continental Cup and sharing the $52,000 top prize, while the runners-up netted $26,000.

There’s an extra $13,000 available to the winner of the final men’s skins game tonight between Olympic medallists Kevin Martin of Edmonton, who won gold, and Norway’s Thomas Ulsrud, who claimed silver at the Vancouver Games.

Team World had resigned itself to finishing second early on Saturday.

“Lots of our big names on Team World haven’t (responded) and I’m one of them. I haven’t had the best of weekends,” Ulsrud said of Team World’s play.

To be blunt, it wasn’t much of a fight over the first three days as North America overpowered its opponent right from the opening games on Thursday.

“It’s a little surprising and I’m sure the fans wanted to see it a little closer. But this event is a big momentum thing and it seems once things start going one way it’s hard for the other team to turn it around,” said Koe, the current Brier and world champion.

“It’s been a little different from our last experience from the Continental Cup, for sure,” added Koe’s lead Nolan Thiessen. “We weren’t quite as behind the 8-ball as the World is right now, but we were down the whole week, so we know what they are feeling.

“I don’t know what it is, but it seems like it’s a momentum thing right across the board for North America, everybody is playing well and everybody keeps playing well.”

In the last Continental Cup in Camrose, Ulsrud downed Martin to clinch the title as North America faced a huge disadvantage entering Sunday play. The roles are reversed here and the pounding continued Saturday.

“We got a good win there, we got the points, but we needed to take all the skins on all the sheets there to get back into this cup. That’s pretty much nailed our coffin there,” said Scotland’s David Murdoch, who won 12 points in morning skins play, but the other two world teams were swept.

North America received the full 20 points from American skip Erika Brown in her battle with Germany’s Andrea Schoepp in morning women’s play. Koe teamed up with third Susan O’Connor and lead Cori Morris of Cheryl Bernard’s team to swipe all 20 points from a rink skipped by Ulsrud in mixed skins. Thiessen played second for his skipper in that matchup.

In men’s skins, American Pete Fenson managed just three of the possible 20 points from Murdoch to make it a 133-35 overall advantage heading into afternoon singles skills competition.

“It seems to be that we’ve been half an inch from a lot of shots,” said Murdoch. “We’ve given them the big jump and we just haven’t made enough shots.”

— Postmedia News