Canada evens record at Capital One World Women’s

Canada evened its record at 3-3 Tuesday morning at the Capital One World Women’s Curling Championship in Esbjerg, Denmark, downing Czech Republic, 7-4. Regina’s Amber Holland took control of the contest by counting three in the fourth end. After Anna Kubeskova’s Prague team had cut the margin to one, 4-3, with a steal in the sixth, Canada pulled away again with a deuce in the seventh end and a steal in the eighth. “She ticked and rolled out with her last and I had a nose-hit for three,” recalled Holland, about the momentum-changer in the fourth end. “We’re back in business. We’re just making sure we’re on top of everything that we need to work on. I’ve never said that this team’s done anything easy, so why would we start now? “The first couple of games that we lost, we lost because we just didn’t pick up on what wasn’t going well, and that’s key. This tournament feels pretty good…it feels like we’re curling. You know…we curl…we eat…we sleep, we curl…we eat…we sleep – that’s what we do. Anybody that we’re playing against doesn’t matter. We‘re just going to focus on making our shots.” Meanwhile, Sweden, skipped by two-time world and Olympic champion Anette Norberg of Härnosänd, maintained its hold on first place, easily besting Denmark’s Lene Nielsen of Hvidovre, 8-3, to move to 5-1 in the 12-nation round robin. Next is China’s Bingyu Wang of Harbin, the 2009 world champion, who dusted Scotland’s Anna Sloan of Lockerbie, 8-2 to improve to 4-2. Idle Russia (Liudmila Privivkova of Moscow) and Switzerland (Mirjam Ott of Davos) follow with 3-2 marks. Germany’s Andrea Schöpp of Garmisch-Partenkirchen, the defending champion who won the Ford World women’s title in Swift Current, Saskatchewan last year, stopped a three-game slide by routing Norway’s Linn Githmark of Oslo, 7-3 in the other Draw 9 game. “A day like yesterday just happens,” said Schöpp, about her team’s two drubbings on Monday, a 9-4 loss to the United States and a 9-3 defeat by Scotland. “We know we can play better and we just tried to give our best and that’s what we did today. Every game is a new one. As a team we’re really close together.” That now leaves five countries with 3-3 records: Canada, Denmark, Germany, Norway and Scotland. The United States (Patti Lank of Lewiston, NY) is next at 2-3, with Czech Republic at 2-4 and Korea (Mi-Sung Shin of GyeongGiDo) still winless at 0-5. Round robin play continues with afternoon and evening draws at the Granly Hockey Arena. Canada’s next game is against the United States, to be seen live at 2:00 pm ET on TSN.