Homan and Morris to join Gushue, Jones in Beijing
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Canada’s Olympic styling groups are finally full
Stones starting flying in Beijing in 20 time, but it grabbed until today for Canada to declare their final entry. John Morris and Rachel Homan will safeguard the blended increases gold medal that Morris obtained in 2018 with previous teammate Kaitlyn Lawes.
Homan and Morris had been among the 16 teams which were supposed to compete for Canada’s place into the Olympic event during the nationwide mixed doubles tests in Manitoba ahead of the event was cancelled last month. A Curling Canada-led committee spent the previous few weeks deciding which duo to send to Asia, considering aspects such as latest mixed-doubles show together with worldwide victory in old-fashioned straightening. Another flashy pairing from inside the flowing got reigning Scotties champ Kerri Einarson and 2014 Olympic men’s gold medallist Brad Jacobs. There was clearly furthermore substantial lobbying from people just who spend by themselves to blended increases and believe should depend.
But, overall, talent claimed out. In the event the goals is always to submit the team with all the finest threshold, then collection committee decided regarding the biggest pick. Morris, 43, are a well-known Olympic musician exactly who obtained a men’s silver medal due to the fact next for Kevin before taking the blended increases concept with Lawes in 2018. The 32-year-old Homan is one of the most effective curlers previously, with three Scotties brands and a global title inside her trophy circumstances. And theirs is not any shotgun partnership. Homan and Morris has played mixed increases along since 2015. Morris looked to Lawes four in years past after Homan acquired the Canadian ladies trials, which generated the woman ineligible for Olympic blended increases due to the Curling Canada rules prohibiting people from fighting in more than one curling event at the same video games.
As for Lawes, she is heading to Beijing too as a part on the Jennifer Jones-skipped rink that claimed the Canadian ladies’ studies in won the men’s room. In Gushue and Jones, Canada will have a former Olympic silver medallist at skip in with the old-fashioned straightening tournaments in Beijing.
Since we finally discover everybody who’s playing for Canada, let us take an instant look at the three Olympic curling competitions and precisely what the Canadian groups become experiencing:
1st, why don’t we value the simpleness regarding the Olympic straightening tournaments. All three happenings begin with a 10-team rounded robin, while the leading four advance towards semifinals. The semifinal champions wager silver. The semifinal losers play for bronze. No Page playoffs, no weird triple-knockout brackets to discover. Easy.
In 2018, when combined doubles made the Olympic first with an eight-team celebration, Morris and Lawes comprise a wrecking baseball. After shedding her opener to Norway, they reeled down eight right gains to simply take gold, such as a 10-3 demolition of Switzerland during the final.
The silver-medal Swiss duo of Jenny Perret and Martin Rios tend to be back once again for Beijing. So will be the Norwegian pairing of Kristin Skaslien and Magnus Nedregotten, have been given bronze following the people in the Russian personnel that defeat all of them hit a brick wall a doping examination. Besides Homan, the actual only real other big-name avoid involved in the combined increases competition is fantastic Britain’s Bruce Mouat, a two-time European men’s champ exactly who https://besthookupwebsites.org/fetlife-review/ grabbed sterling silver in the men’s room globes just last year.
A big storyline in Beijing is Homan’s make an effort to get by herself from a devastating exhibiting for the ladies’ celebration in 2018. Her team moved 4-5 and became the first Canadian rink to overlook the playoffs at the Olympics.
The combined increases celebration gets underway Feb. 2 at 7:05 a.m. ET, and Homan and Morris play her earliest online game that evening at 8:05 p.m. ET vs. Great Britain. The semifinals are on the early morning of elizabeth will be the overnight at 7:05 a.m. ET.
Canada in addition flopped within this event in 2018, with Kevin Koe’s teams losing into the semifinals to eventual champion John Shuster for the U.S. then acquiring disappointed by Switzerland from inside the bronze-medal games. Before these Games, no Canadian curling employees have actually ever failed to winnings a medal. In Pyeongchang, both traditional groups did.
For Gushue, a lot has changed since he acquired their Olympic silver medal in Italy 16 years ago. Back then, he was a talented yet still somewhat natural youngster exactly who put last stones but leaned regarding popular Russ Howard to contact games from 2nd position (when you look at the official Olympic files, Howard are detailed because the avoid). Today Gushue is all adult – a 41-year-old father of two who is totally in demand of his craft. He grabbed three Brier games from 2017-20 and some sort of championship in ’17. Gushue took proper care of business because favourite in the Canadian tests in age en route to beating Jacobs inside best.
The competition in Beijing are hard. It offers Shuster, Mouat and five-time community winner Nik Edin of Sweden, who’s in search of 1st Olympic silver after having bronze in 2014 and sterling silver in ’18. The tournament opens Feb. 8 at 7:05 a.m. ET, when Canada faces Denmark. The semis are day of age is Feb. 18 at 1:05 a.m. ET.
Jennifer Jones was curling royalty – the winner of a record-tying six Scotties, a two-time business winner and an Olympic gold medallist in 2014. But their victory on Canadian trials was actually a bit of a shock. At 47, Jones was actually regarded as past this lady finest, and a lot of perceiver ranked the woman behind Homan, Einarson therefore the red-hot Tracy Fleury. Affirmed, Jones missing to any or all of those inside circular robin. But when the chips had been down she came through, trouncing Krista McCarville during the semis before taking the final from an undefeated Fleury in an extra conclusion.
In Beijing, Jones is against all three medallists from 2018: protecting champ Anna Hasselborg of Sweden, South Korea’s Kim Eun-jung (sterling silver) and Japan’s Satsuki Fujisawa (bronze). There’s also the winner with the finally two world championships – Switzerland’s Silvana Tirinzoni – and 2013 community champ Eve Muirhead of good Britain, who got Olympic bronze in 2014.
