Einarson wraps memorable season with fourth-place finish

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This article was published 23/05/2021 (1575 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Kerri Einarson is eager to return to routine house work — and not the skipping kind.

“I’ll be back in mom mode as soon as I get home. Just being with my family, cooking and cleaning, all the normal stuff,” she told the Free Press on Sunday. “I’m so excited to get home. My girls have been counting the days until mom’s home, and I have, too.”

Indeed, after three months on the road, it’s finally time for the sensational curler from Camp Morton to return to the Interlake.

“I’m ready to see different walls other than my hotel rooms,” joked the 33-year-old married mom of twin daughters. “I’m back to work (at the Betel care home) after my quarantine is over June 8 and I’m super excited to see my residents and co-workers.

“I will admit now that I’m finally done, it kicked in, I’m mentally and physically exhausted. I’ve definitely hit that wall.”

Einarson’s condensed, hectic and profoundly memorable 2021 competitive season finally concluded in Aberdeen, Scotland after she and playing partner Brad Gushue of St. John’s, N.L., finished off the podium at the world mixed doubles curling championship.

Team Canada suffered a 7-4 defeat to Swedish duo of Almida de Val and Oskar Eriksson in the bronze-medal game Sunday. The Swedes were near-perfect, each shooting above 92 per cent.

Hours later, Bruce Mouat and Jennifer Dodds of Scotland posted a 9-7 triumph over Norway’s Kristin Skaslien and Magnus Nedregotten to capture the gold medal for the host country.

Einarson and Gushue finished round-robin play at 7-2 and then registered an exciting come-from-behind win over Switzerland on Saturday before falling 7-4 to Mouat and Dodds in a semifinal game later that day.

They had attempted to win Canada’s first gold medal in the 13-year history of the world mixed doubles event.

“(Sweden) didn’t miss anything. They were really sharp. It’s never a good start when you give up a big end early,” Einarson said.

She needed a perfect hit and roll behind protection to bail out the team in the very first end, but hit and stuck to give Sweden a routine shot for a huge count of four.

“We kept plugging away and tried to make our shots, trying to get mistakes from them, and we didn’t get any. We weren’t as sharp as we could have been all week. We had our ups and downs, but we left it all out there, we gave it our all and we had a lot of fun, too,” Einarson said.

Since late February, Einarson has won a second consecutive national Scotties crown, a Canadian mixed doubles title and a lucrative Grand Slam event victory.

She also has the heartfelt thanks of a grateful nation.

Despite finishing fourth, the Einarson-Gushue tandem secured a berth for Canada at the 2022 Winter Olympics in Beijing. Just weeks before, Einarson’s four-player women’s team — with third Val Sweeting, second Shannon Birchard and lead Briane Meilleur — did likewise at the world women’s championship in the Calgary bubble.

Einarson’s crew lost to Sweden’s Anna Hasselborg on May 8 at WinSport Arena to miss the medal round.

“Of course, we wanted to medal in both and it’s tough to know we didn’t,” she said. “You know what you need to do and you know what it takes, and then it’s like, ‘I thought we were prepared enough for this.’ But I’m so grateful to have these opportunities, to get this feel for being Team Canada on the world stage.

“We wanted to get Canada to the Olympics in both events, and to be a part of that is pretty special.”

jason.bell@freepress.mb.ca

Twitter: @WFPJasonBell