No Olympics for Jones

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This article was published 09/12/2017 (3045 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

OTTAWA — They had the experience. They had the momentum. And they had the talent.

But in the end, when it mattered most, Jennifer Jones and her Winnipeg team didn’t have the game — and their quest to defend their 2014 Olympic gold medal in women’s curling is now over because of it.

Jones lost 6-3 here to hometown favorite Rachel Homan in the women’s semifinal of the Roar of the Rings Saturday afternoon, ending her foursome’s quest to become the first curling team, men’s or women’s, to successfully defend an Olympic gold medal.

The win advances Homan and her Ottawa foursome to Sunday afternoon’s women’s final, where they will face former Winnipegger Chelsea Carey — with Manitoba curling legend Cathy Overton-Clapham at third — in a final that will determine who represents Canada in women’s curling at the Winter Olympics in Korea in February.

And Jones? She’ll be left to wonder how a team that had won five in a row to start this event — and which had a 19 game win streak that dated all the way back to late October — went so bad so quickly, dropping their last four games in a row to become just another event also-ran.

“It was just one of those weeks for us. But once an Olympian, always an Olympian. We’re okay,” Jones said here after the game.

“We probably just didn’t adapt to the ice as well as we needed to. And we tried really hard to. We had our chances and we didn’t make the big shot later in the week, whereas earlier we were making the big shots.

“And in order to be successful, you need to make the big shots when they matter.”

Jones was badly outshot by Homan at the skip position in the final — 93-76 — and had no answers in a game where she needed to be the best player on the ice if her team was going to have a chance against a Homan foursome that had won seven in a row coming into the semifinal and have been dispatching opponents with ruthless efficiency.

Homan led 2-0 after a third end steal and carried a 4-2 lead into the fifth end break. The game ultimately turned on the seventh end, when a Jones takeout attempt with the last rock of the end that might have yielded her a deuce instead jammed, resulting in another Homan steal and a three-point lead for the best hitting team in the game.

With Jones’ quest to repeat as Olympic champion now over, questions immediately turned to the future of the 43-year-old skip and her longtime team.

Jones said the squad will curl in the Manitoba women’s playdowns this winter and attempt to get back to a national Scotties next month, where Jones would be seeking to win her sixth Canadian women’s championship.

Both Jones and lead Dawn McEwen also have berths in next month’s Mixed Doubles Trials in Portage La Prairie, where Canada’s Olympic representatives in the new event of mixed doubles curling will be determined.

And beyond that? Jones has hinted before that she might retire after this OIympics quadrennial, but she was hedging her bets here on Saturday.

“Right now, I’m kind of gutted. But it’s still really fun. I still love to compete and I still feel like we can compete with the best. And I’ve always said, I wouldn’t continue unless I felt like we could compete. And I still feel like we can.

“Right now, I still feel like I’m going to keep playing.”

And her teammates? “Not many people get the chance to represent their country at the Olympics in curling and not many get the chance to try and repeat,” said Jones third Kaitlyn Lawes. “So I’m really proud of us for fighting these last four years to get back to this position and I wouldn’t want to do it with anyone else…

“We haven’t talked about the future right now. We’re really focussed on the present and we still have a lot left in the new year… I look forward to seeing what else we can accomplish.”

paul.wiecek@freepress.mb.ca

Twitter: @PaulWiecek