Holland bows to Sweden in final

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This article was published 28/03/2011 (5605 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

It was a finish worthy of a silver medal for Canada’s Amber Holland at the Capital One Women’s World Curling Championship.

Sweden’s Anette Norberg took advantage of a series of 10th-end misses by Holland’s rink to steal two en route to a 7-5 victory in Esbjerg, Denmark, on Sunday.

The blunders left Holland with a tough draw to the four-foot against four Swedish counters. Holland was light and Norberg was able to claim her third gold medal at the women’s world championship since 2005 and the eighth for Sweden overall.

“It would have been nice to end on a positive note,” Holland said Sunday from Esbjerg. “We worked pretty hard to get there. The 10th end is there and you can’t take that away. I had a shot — it was a difficult shot, but I had a shot (to win). You can’t take it back and we have to focus on all of the positive things that we did throughout the week.

“We had control of that game and we just needed to have a little better execution when it counted.”

Holland had come through when it counted leading up to Sunday’s 10th end. The Kronau, Sask., squad bounced back from a 1-3 start at the world championship to qualify for a tiebreaker with a 7-4 record.

Holland beat Switzerland’s Mirjam Ott in the tiebreaker, then ousted Denmark’s Lene Nielsen in the 3 vs. 4 Page Playoff game and China’s Bingyu Wang in the semifinals.

“I think there were a few people who had written us off after we were one-and-three,” said Holland, who was backed by sisters Kim and Tammy Schneider, Heather Kalenchuk, alternate Jolene Campbell and coach Merv Fonger. “We just stuck with it.”

Holland had the hammer heading into the final end Sunday after Norberg took one in the ninth to tie the contest 5-5. That’s when the pressure seemed to get to Holland’s team. The usually reliable Kalenchuk was light on a draw to the rings, which eventually led to the front of the house getting crowded with rocks.

Tammy Schneider followed with two key misses, including a flash on her second shot. Kim Schneider then came within inches of executing some game-saving hit-and-rolls to remove some of the clutter in front of the house. If those shots had been executed, Holland’s final shot might have been easier.

That didn’t occur, which increased the pressure on Holland’s final two stones. On the skip’s second shot, Tammy Schneider and Kalenchuk had to wait for Canada’s final rock to clear a long Canadian guard before trying to drag the rock into the full four-foot. The rock finally died while heading into the house, leaving Norberg with her steal of two.

“There are a lot of things that go into not executing shots,” Holland said. “I don’t think you can say it was just one thing. It might have been nerves or adrenalin or any number of things. Each person is totally different.”

Holland felt all the misses contributed to the outcome.

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“We had our chances to get out of it, but we didn’t make some double peels,” said Holland, who was bidding to become Canada’s first world champion since Winnipeg’s Jennifer Jones in 2008. “It was just a combination of errors.”

Those errors meant Holland was left with a silver medal in her worlds debut.

“(Our performance in the 10th end) wasn’t good enough for gold,” Holland said. “But if someone told us before we came here that we would walk home with a silver medal and have a great time and experience, and look forward to all of the great things we can do with this team in the future, I think we would have taken it.”

Wang earned a bronze medal earlier Sunday after beating Nielsen 10-8 in an extra end.

— Postmedia News