No tiebreakers uproar for one nation
Canadian curling fans awoke Thursday morning to the bad news: For the second straight Olympic Winter Games, their women’s four-player team had failed to qualify for the playoffs.
Jennifer Jones and her Winnipeg squad, champions eight years ago in Sochi, won their final round robin game 8-4 over Denmark to finish 5-4 along with Great Britain and Japan, but were eliminated from the semifinals due to their low score in the Draw Shot Challenge (DSC).
Eve Muirhead’s GBR had a combined DSC score of 35.27 centimetres and Japan’s Satsuki Fujisawa notched an even 36.00. Canada’s score was 45.44.
The DSC was used since the head-to-head battles between the three teams in the round robin failed to show a clear winner.
The Canadians could only watch as their last chance to advance, a Korea win over Sweden, came to crashing halt.
“It was totally out of our control,” said Jones.
“There is probably about six shots that I can really remember that I’d probably like to have over again, but we’re really sorry that we don’t get to play again. We tried our hardest and we had a ton of fun.
“It’s devastating to not move on, but at the end of the day we have no regrets.”
There were no less than 16 different playoff permutations in play for the final round-robin draw, and only two of them would see Canada eliminated.
Japan lost their final round robin match 8-4 to Switzerland, who finished first at 8-1. Meanwhile, Great Britain took out ROC by a 9-4 count.
In the fourth and final round robin match, Eun-Jung Kim’s defending Olympic silver medalists kept Sweden at bay during the first half of the game, but collapsed late, dropping five unanswered points over the final three ends to fall 8-4.
Anna Hasselborg’s defending Olympic champions claimed second place with a 7-2 won/loss record.
The World Curling Federation lowered the number of potential tiebreakers after the Sochi 2014 quadrennial to a single match, then did away with tiebreakers entirely after PyeongChang 2018. The organization had first tried to eliminate tiebreakers after Vancouver 2010, but were unsuccessful.
Back in 2010, Jones was adamantly against the proposal to eliminate tiebreakers. She didn’t like the idea of elimination from a tournament if her round-robin record is as good as the fourth-place team.
Canada has not eliminated tiebreakers in their domestic championships. And Jones has not changed her mind about the fate of tiebreakers in Olympic and world championship competition.
“I’m never going to be of the opinion that the draw shot challenge should be how playoff teams are decided,” said Jones. I’ve been pretty vocal about it before this. It’s too bad that it happened but we knew where we were at.
“We knew we had to win last night to control our fate, and we lost.”
“This morning we knew that we had to win and then we needed to kind of hope that a couple games went our way,” said an elated Eve Muirhead. “Of course we concentrated first on our game and then fingers crossed that Sweden and Switzerland or Denmark would do the job, and of course they did. I’m absolutely delighted.”
Muirhead has appeared in the last two Olympic women’s team semifinals. She lost both games—the first to Jones at Sochi 2014—and captured the bronze medal eight years ago.
“Everybody’s got a different view on (Draw Shot Challenge), of course. We know how important that draw shot challenge is; it’s one thing that we practise a lot at home.
“It came in handy at the Europeans, it came in handy at the Olympic qualifiers, and it came in handy here for us.
“We knew what the rules were. We knew we had to work hard on that and it’s paid off.”
The Japanese were shocked to learn that despite their loss, they were advancing to the playoffs.
“I can’t believe that,” said Japan third Chinami Yoshida. “We thought that our LSD is not good, that’s why we thought that this game was our last game. But now I’m so happy to get another chance to play against Switzerland.”
Sweden will face Great Britain in one Friday night semifinal, while Switzerland meets Japan in the other.
The winners advance to the championship final, while the losers will meet in the bronze medal game.
The men’s semifinals were scheduled for Thursday night.