In my column last week, I talked about walking over to CN Centre on the Friday before the World Women’s Curling Championship to get my media accreditation.
Well, last Friday I was back at CN Centre, but I didn’t walk, and I wasn’t alone.
Mom and I went over to catch Canada against Germany in the morning draw. We got seats in Section D, which put us at the end of the curling sheets.
It turned out there were only three sheets in action, since one of them was supposed to be the United States versus Scotland, but Scotland was forfeiting all its games because of COVID hitting most of the team members. The players from the U.S. were still out on the sheet for about half an hour, just getting in some practice.
Most of our attention, of course, was focused on the Canada-Germany game. The other two games were Denmark against Norway and Switzerland against Japan.
At this point, I feel I should mention that after more than 20 years in the newspaper business, being trained to observe things, it took me until about the sixth end to realize Japan only had three players. Going up against the undefeated Swiss would have been hard enough with a full team. With three players, Japan had really no chance.
They did get one very nice cheer from the fans when, with the Swiss up 10-1 after four ends, the Japanese skip executed a very nice angle raise to score a pair of points.
They went to the fifth-end break, came back and played the sixth end, then shook hands.
Meanwhile, in the Northern Europe showdown on Sheet 1, Denmark scored three in the first, gave up one to Norway in the second, then put up three more in the third.
At this point this was looking like a repeat of the Switzerland-Japan game, until Norway scored one in the fourth, stole one in the fifth and stole another in the sixth.
All of a sudden it was 6-4 and looked like being a great game. Until Denmark scored one in the seventh and stole four in the eighth to wrap up an 11-4 win.
Team Canada, meanwhile, was finding an easy way to build up a lead. Every time Germany had the hammer, Canada held them to one point; every time Canada had the hammer, they scored two.
Canada never really seemed to be in trouble, eventually running Germany out of rocks in the 10th for an 8-5 win.
It was a lot of fun being in the stands at an event like the World Championships, being able to chat about the game with Mom and the fellow sitting next to me on the other side.
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