‘Six bad ends’ equals bad trip for Jones

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This article was published 30/03/2009 (6331 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

GANGNEUNG, South Korea — Before leaving for the world women’s curling championship, Jennifer Jones declared the field one of the deepest in history.

Jones discovered the hard way that she was right.

The 34-year-old Winnipeg skip failed to reach the podium, losing a 7-6 heartbreaker to Denmark’s Angelina Jensen in Sunday’s bronze-medal game.

The third-place Danes go home with just their second medal in the last eight years, while the Jones foursome returns to Canada with the feeling they let the tournament slip away.

“We knew the field was going to be really tough,” said a dejected Jones, who came in as defending champion. “I thought we played really well. I thought it was the combination of about a handful of ends that gave us a few losses here or there.”

Canada played well, for the most part — the team finished the round-robin 9-2 before dropping its two playoff games. Yet, while Jones, third Cathy Overton-Clapham, second Jill Officer and lead Dawn Askin showed flashes of their world championship form, they struggled to adjust to changing ice conditions late in games — and lost because of it.

Jones was particularly guilty of that. In her round-robin game against Sweden, Jones was heavy on a draw with her final shot of the eighth end, giving up the deciding steal of two in a 7-4 loss. She followed with back-to-back bad ends against Denmark, the second resulting in the game-winning steal for Jensen in a 7-5 victory.

Her worst gaffe came in the Page playoff against Norberg, when she rubbed on a stone in front of the rings with her final shot of the ninth end to give Sweden a steal of two. Norberg went on to win 5-4 in 11 ends.

Two more Jones mistakes took Canada out of the bronze-medal game.

After wrecking on a guard to give Denmark an open draw for three in the fifth end, Jones was off by a fraction on the line call in the 10th, and her rock didn’t co-operate, straightening out just enough to leave the Danes with the winning stone on the button.

A hint of frustration tinged Jones’s assessment of the team’s performance.

“Honestly, you can count up six bad ends we had, and that cost us the championship, really,” said Jones, a three-time Canadian champion.

Those errors resulted in Canada missing the podium for the first time since 2005, when Jones finished fourth in Paisley, Scotland.

“You feel like you let people down when you go home without a medal,” Jones said. “But we played our hearts out and we tried as hard as we could and it just wasn’t meant to be.”

Though Jones remains a favourite to represent the country at next year’s Olympics, she’ll need to be a lot sharper than she was in Korea. Seven other women’s teams will join the Jones rink at the December trials in Edmonton, and the competition will be fierce.

Whichever team wins the trials will have to deal with a number of serious medal contenders in Vancouver. The discussion starts with Wang. China was soundly beaten in its opening round-robin game against Canada, then reeled off 12 consecutive victories, the final one earning it gold.

Danish fourth Madeleine Dupont acknowledged that China stands out above the rest.

“We played China twice, and I think that’s the only team that you can say is a little bit better or a little bit stronger,” Dupont said.

Norberg, a two-time world champion, will also be a favourite to defend her Olympic title in Vancouver. She had a steady showing in Korea, her only real hiccup coming in an uncharacteristic 10-1 drubbing at the hands of Germany’s Andrea Schopp.

Then there’s Jensen, who won silver at the 2007 world championship and would have done better here had it not been for a seventh-end collapse against China in the 1-versus-2 Page playoff game.

— The Canadian Press