Canada’s Chelsea Carey improves to .500 with win over Russia at women’s worlds

SILKEBORG, Denmark — Chelsea Carey’s Canadian rink stayed in the playoff hunt with a 9-6 win over Russia’s Alina Kovaleva on Thursday at the world women’s curling championship.

The Calgary-based team of Carey, third Sarah Wilkes, second Dana Ferguson and lead Rachel Brown had lost 9-3 to Switzerland’s Silvana Tirinzoni earlier in the day.

Carey (5-5) was tied with Japan and the United States for sixth in the 13-team event heading onto the final day of preliminary-round action. The top six teams make the playoffs after the round-robin concludes on Friday.

“We made it a goal early the season to be a grinding team,” said Carey. “We had a bad loss at an early event (in September) where we kind of gave up after we got a few points down, and I said to the girls, ‘This needs to be our identity. We need to own this and work really hard to be a team that grinds out wins.’

“We’ve done it all year, we did it all through the Scotties, in the final, and it’s been like that all week here, too. It’s been tough, we’ve been fighting for every inch, but we’re good at that and we’re just rolling with it.”

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Reigning Olympic champ Anna Hasselborg of Sweden led the way at 9-1. Russia, which rebounded with a 7-4 win over Scotland in Thursday’s late draw, was next at 8-3. Both Sweden and Russia have qualified for the playoffs.

South Korea and Switzerland were tied for third at 7-3, followed by China at 7-4.

Canada battled back from a 3-0 deficit against Russia, scoring three in the fourth to tie it at 5-5.

Carey notched another three in the ninth to break a 6-6 tie, making a draw on her final stone.

Two big shots from Wilkes — a runback triple takeout and a draw behind a corner guard — set things up for the big ninth.

“In other games, that would happen (giving up a big end like the three in the first against Russia) and it would kind of snowball,” said Brown. “In this game, we were just like, ‘You know what? Let’s just get our deuce back, and we’re right back in it.’ That was our mindset — just keep plugging away, like we did in the Scotties final. We felt like the old Team Carey.”

Against Switzerland, Carey gave up four in the eighth, all but sealing it for Tirinzoni. 

Canada wraps up the round-robin with games against Sweden and Denmark on Friday.

“Unfortunately, we keep putting ourselves in this situation where we need the big wins,” said Carey. “But we pulled one off (Thursday). We have a tough day (Friday) with two really good teams, and we have to keep doing this.

“I can’t guarantee we’re going to win, but I can guarantee we’ll give it everything we have on the ice, and we won’t quit until the last rock is thrown.”

Carey is trying to avoid becoming the first Canadian team to miss the playoffs at the women’s worlds in 20 years.

She’s also trying to give Canada a third consecutive world women’s title after Ottawa’s Rachel Homan and Winnipeg’s Jennifer Jones went undefeated at the event the past two years.

The Canadian Press