Escape artists looking dangerous

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 09/04/2011 (5491 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

REGINA — There’s nothing like being strapped into the electric chair and having the phone ring with a death row reprieve from the governor to make a person feel fully and completely alive.

All of which is precisely why Norway’s Thomas Ulsrud just might be the most dangerous man remaining in the field here at the 2011 World Men’s Curling Championship this weekend.

Norway 5 France 4

Ulsrud, the 2010 Olympic silver medallist, defeated France’s Thomas Dufour 5-4 in a playoff tiebreaker game Friday afternoon to advance to this afternoon’s Page playoff 3 vs. 4 game against Sweden’s Niklas Edin.

The win was Norway’s sixth straight sudden-death victory — which included stealing a 7-6 win from Canada on the final round-robin draw Thursday — and Ulsrud was still having a hard time believing his good fortune Friday.

“If you had asked me two or three days ago if we’d be playing on Saturday, I’d have said no way,” Ulsrud said after the win over France. “But here we are. We hung in there.”

And after a 2-4 start that had everyone asking what was wrong with the Norwegians, they are now playing like a team for whom every new game is a bonus and who thought they were done Thursday night when Canada’s Jeff Stoughton went to throw the last rock of the 10th end — a draw to the four-foot that ended up too heavy.

“I was talking to my vice-skip (Torger Nergard) when Jeff was getting in the hack to throw his last,” Ulsrud recalled. “And I said, ‘It’s too bad it’s over because I thought we were clicking now…’ “It was like we couldn’t get any breaks (early in the week). But it evens out. Now we get all the good stuff at the end of the week.”

Ulsrud still has formidable challenges in front of him, however. And that begins this afternoon (TSN, 1:30 p.m.) when Norway takes on Sweden, with the winner advancing to tonight’s semifinal (TSN, 6 p.m.).

The Edin foursome also had a difficult start to the week but appear to have found their game as the roundrobin drew to a close. Ulsrud is very familiar with his Scandinavian rival and said the secret is not to fall behind early. “They’re a tough game. I don’t want to be down. If you are two or three down, they are like playing all these tough Canadian teams.

“They’re a hitting team, but hopefully our draw game will win us the match.”

Meanwhile, it was a disappointing finish, but a great week, for a French team from whom little was expected at the start of this event.

“We cannot say we are disappointed. We did not expect to play so good,” said Dufour. “It’s faster than we thought and maybe next year it goes the same or even better. For the future, it is ‘Wow!’ What can we expect after (this)?”

This year marked the first time a French team had made the playoffs at the men’s worlds since 1973.

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LOOSE HAIRS: Winnipeg’s Derek Oryniak has been named to the curling team for the inaugural Winter Youth Olympic Games in Austria next January.

The team was picked by the Canadian Curling Association based on everything from on-ice performance to academic excellence and unveiled here last night. Oryniak, a Grade 11 student at Miles Macdonnell Collegiate, was the second on the Manitoba team that recently won bronze at the 2011 Canada Winter Games.

paul.wiecek@freepress.mb.ca