Turkey Wins at Curling Worlds
Turkey has made curling history by recording their first ever world championship victory.
The Turkish women, who have made great strides in recent years, defeated Czech Republic 7-5 for their first win in their debut appearance at the 2022 world women’s championship in Prince George, B.C.
“Now, we’re feeling that we’ve had a full world championship,” said skip Dilsat Yildiz. “We’ve had three matches where we only just lost. Now we have our first win of the tournament and we’re happy. We feel good now and want to win the rest of our games.”
Michael Burns-Curling Canada
The Canadian crowd gave the Turkish team an outstanding reception after the victory.
“We are happy that the spectators supported us so well,” said Yildiz. “It was very exciting to play in this atmosphere. Now we’ll work harder in the future, but we’re happy for today.”
Switzerland’s Silvana Tirinzoni became the first side to qualify for the playoffs after a pair of Thursday wins, 7-3 over Denmark and 8-5 over Korea. The Swiss, who won the Olympic women’s round-robin in Beijing before losing two playoff matches to finish fourth, are 10-0 and have secured a guaranteed first-place finish.
Sweden became the second team to secure a playoff berth after their win in the afternoon session, where they defeated Germany 6-5. However, the Olympic bronze medallists lost their Thursday evening tilt against Cory Christensen’s USA foursome by a 5-4 count.
“We’ve not been playing our best in our last couple of games, so to come out today and have such a good game against a great team is really good,” said Christensen. “We felt really good about our performance tonight.”
Seven teams are all fighting for the remaining four playoff places.
Switzerland’s Alina Paetz • Jeffrey Au-WCF
Canada and Korea sit in joint third-place with seven wins and three losses. The host team skipped by Kerri Einarson could have claimed the third playoff berth on Thursday night, and held a 7-6 lead with hammer over Korea, but dropped steals in the 10th and 11th ends to fall 8-7.
Behind them is a three-way tie for fifth place, with Denmark, Japan and United States all on six wins and four losses. Following them are Germany and Norway, tied for eighth place at 5-5.
“Six and four sounds good, doesn’t it?” said Danish veteran Madeleine Dupont, whose squad defeated Italy’s Stefania Constantini 7-5. “It sounds pretty good to me. I’m very happy. It’s going to be a good day (Friday), a close day.
“We don’t have too many chances to play in games like this, so I’m excited to get the chance.”
Italy, Czech Republic and Turkey follow in the rankings, while Scotland were forced to withdraw at the beginning of the championship due to COVID-19 positives and are forfeiting their games.
