KAMLOOPS — Six-time Canadian curling champion Jennifer Jones exudes a poise that’s propelled her young Manitoba team to the playoffs at the Scotties Tournament of Hearts.
The 48-year-old Jones and her under-25 teammates reached the championship round in Kamloops, B.C., by stealing a point in an extra end for a 7-6 win Wednesday over Casey Scheidegger’s wild card team.
“An absolute massive win,” Jones said with a relieved laugh. “Needed that one.”
The top three teams in each pool of nine advance to Friday’s championship round.
Jones, Northern Ontario’s Krista McCarville and defending champion Kerry Einarson were assured three of the six spots. The other three are still in play Thursday.
Last year’s Hearts finalist McCarville secured first place in Pool B with a 7-1 record Wednesday.
Jones (6-1), with a game remaining Thursday against New Brunswick, will finish second.
Ontario’s Rachel Homan (4-2) and New Brunswick’s Andrea Kelly (3-3) with two games remaining will battle for third.
Defending champion Kerri Einarson was the lone unbeaten team atop Pool A at 6-0 followed by Quebec’s Laurie St-Georges (5-2) and Alberta’s Kayla Skrlik (4-2).
A three-way tie at 4-3 included B.C.’s Clancy Grandy, Nova Scotia’s Christina Black and Kaitlyn Lawes’ wild card 1.
From winning an Olympic gold medal in 2014, to her two world titles, to playing in her 17th national women’s championship, there’s scarcely a strategy or shot Jones hasn’t played in her curling career.
Facing four opposing stones clustered on the four-foot rings in the fifth end at the Sandman Centre, Jones’s businesslike demeanour gave no indication her team was in trouble.
She got rid of two to give up a steal of two and trail 4-2.
Jones then got to work plotting stolen points, which her team produced in the seventh, eighth and extra ends.
The skip’s tricky double takeout attempt to score two nearly won the game in the 10th end for Manitoba.
With a Manitoba stone on the four-foot rings behind cover in the extra end, Scheidegger’s draw attempt for the win was light.
“The experience of Jenn playing in so many tight games, pressure games, going down two early in the game, we still have lots of game left,” third Karlee Burgess said.
“She’s just calm, confident, and pressure doesn’t really bother her, so I think we’re a really good mix.”
MacKenzie Zacharias, who is Jones’s vice throwing second stones, Burgess and co-leads Emily Zacharias and Lauren Lenentine appeared in the 2021 and 2022 Hearts going 3-5 in their debut and losing a tiebreaker game last year.
“We’ve always wanted to win,” MacKenzie Zacharias said. “This year, with Jenn, we know she’s been here a bunch of times. She’s been able to help us with that experience we don’t have.
“We’ve played a lot of up and down games. She settles it with some of those big shots.
“We know that we’re never out of it.”
When Jones, Kaitlyn Lawes, Jocelyn Peterman and Dawn McEwen disbanded last spring, the veteran skip joined the young Winnipeg foursome and employed a five-player rotation this season.
“I really wanted them to take my experience and maybe shorten their experience time, right?” Jones said.
“If I can show them all the things I’ve learned a long the way, then maybe they don’t have to go through 20 years learning everything I’ve learned.”
The championship round’s six teams are seeded by their pool records.
The top seed in each pool earns a bye to the championship round finals Friday night, while the second and third seeds cross over to meet earlier in the day.
The championship round final determines Saturday’s Page playoff seeding, so McCarville was assured of continuing into Saturday by winning her pool.
“It’s huge being number one,” McCarville said. “One less game, the less pressure of the do-or-die. That two versus three game, you lose, you’re out.”
The semifinal and final are Sunday.
Ties for third will be solved by tiebreaker games Friday morning.
Only one tiebreaker per pool will be played, so head-to-head results and then last-stone draw ranking will eliminate teams if more than two are tied for third.
McCarville capped pool play stealing a point in the 10th end for an 8-7 win Wednesday evening over Stacie Curtis of Newfoundland and Labrador.
Quebec was a 9-6 winner over B.C. and wild-card Lawes defeated Nunavut 10-4.
Kerry Galusha of Northwest Territories dropped to 3-4 with a 7-6 loss to Scheidegger’s wild-card team.
Jones, her former teammate Jill Officer and Colleen Jones are the only women to own six Canadian women’s championships.
Jones is well-versed in the execution level needed for her young teammates to claim their first.
“They’re ready,” she said. “We’re almost there. We just have a couple of ends, where they’re a couple of sloppy ends.
“If we can just get away from those, we’re feeling pretty good.”
With COVID-19 restrictions preventing the sale of tickets the last two years, Jones’s teammates will experience Hearts playoffs in front of spectators for the first time Friday.
“It’s fun to see the sparkle in their eyes,” the skip said. “I’m loving every second of this.”
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Feb. 22, 2023.
TORONTO – Singles star Leylah Fernandez and doubles specialist Gabriela Dabrowski will anchor Canada’s five-player lineup when the team tries to defend its Billie Jean King Cup title in mid-November.
The 26th-ranked Fernandez, the 2021 U.S. Open finalist from Laval, Que., is the lone Canadian in the top 100 of the WTA Tour’s singles rankings.
Dabrowski, from Ottawa, is ranked fourth on the doubles list. The 2023 U.S. Open women’s doubles champion won mixed doubles bronze with Felix Auger-Aliassime at the recent Paris Olympics.
Marina Stakusic of Mississauga, Ont., returns after a breakout performance last year, capped by her singles win in Canada’s 2-0 victory over Italy in the final. Vancouver’s Rebecca Marino is also back and Bianca Andreescu, the 2019 U.S. Open champion from Mississauga, Ont., returns to the squad for the first time since 2022.
“Winning the Billie Jean King Cup in 2023 was a dream come true for us, and not only that, but I feel like we made a statement to the world about the strength of this nation when it comes to tennis,” Canada captain Heidi El Tabakh said Monday in a release. “Once again, we have a very strong team this year with Bianca joining Leylah, Gaby, Rebecca and Marina, making it an extremely powerful team that is more than capable of going all the way.
“At the end of the day, our goal is to make Canada proud, and we’ll do our best to bring the same level of effort and excitement that we had in last year’s finals.”
Fernandez, who beat Jasmine Paolini to clinch Canada’s first-ever title at the competition, is ranked No. 42 in doubles.
Canada, which received an automatic berth as defending champion, will play the winner of the first-round tie between Great Britain and Germany on Nov. 17 at Malaga’s Martin Carpena Arena.
Australia, Italy and wild-card entry Czechia also received first-round byes. The tournament, which continues through Nov. 20, also includes host Spain, Slovakia, the United States, Poland, Japan and Romania.
Stakusic is up 27 spots to No. 128 in the latest world singles rankings. Marino is at No. 134 and Andreescu, the 2019 U.S. Open champion, is ranked 167th.
Canada will look to become the first team since Czechia in 2016 to successfully defend its Billie Jean King Cup title.
Malaga will also host the Nov. 19-24 Davis Cup Final 8. The Canadian men qualified over the weekend with a 2-1 victory over Great Britain in Manchester.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Sept. 16, 2024.
PITTSBURGH – Sidney Crosby plans to remain a Pittsburgh Penguin for at least three more years.
The Penguins announced on Monday that they re-signed the 37-year-old from Cole Harbour, N.S., to a two-year contract extension that has an average annual value of US$8.7 million. The deal runs through the 2026-27 season.
Crosby was eligible to sign an extension on July 1 with him entering the final season of a 12-year, $104.4-million deal that carries an $8.7-million salary cap hit.
At the NHL/NHLPA player media tour in Las Vegas last Monday, he said things were positive and he was optimistic about a deal getting done.
The three-time Stanley Cup champion is coming off a 42-goal, 94-point campaign that saw him finish tied for 12th in the league scoring race.
Crosby has spent all 19 of his NHL seasons in Pittsburgh, amassing 592 goals and 1,004 assists in 1,272 career games.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Sept. 16, 2024.
MONTREAL – Tadej Pogacar was so dominant on Sunday, Canada’s Michael Woods called it a race for second.
Pogacar, a three-time Tour de France champion from Slovenia, pedalled to a resounding victory at the Grand Prix Cycliste de Montreal.
The UAE Team Emirates leader crossed the finish line 24 seconds ahead of Spain’s Pello Bilbao of Bahrain — Victorious to win the demanding 209.1-kilometre race on a sunny, 28 C day in Montreal. France’s Julian Alaphilippe of Soudal Quick-Step was third.
“He’s the greatest rider of all time, he’s a formidable opponent,” said Woods, who finished 45 seconds behind the leader in eighth. “If you’re not at your very, very best, then you can forget racing with him, and today was kind of representative of that.
“He’s at such a different level that if you follow him, it can be lights out.”
Pogacar slowed down before the last turn to celebrate with the crowd, high-five fans on Avenue du Parc and cruise past the finish line with his arms in the air after more than five hours on the bike.
The 25-year-old joined Belgium’s Greg Van Avermaet as the only multi-time winners in Montreal after claiming the race in 2022. He also redeemed a seventh-place finish at the Quebec City Grand Prix on Friday.
“I was disappointed, because I had such good legs that I didn’t do better than seventh,” Pogacar said. “To bounce back after seventh to victory here, it’s just an incredible feeling.”
It’s Pogacar’s latest win in a dominant year that includes victories at the Tour de France and Giro d’Italia.
Ottawa’s Woods (Israel Premier-Tech) tied a career-best in front of the home crowd in Montreal, but hoped for more after claiming a stage at the Spanish Vuelta two weeks ago.
“I wanted a better result,” the 37-year-old rider said. “My goal was a podium, but at the same time I’m happy with the performance. In bike racing, you can’t always get the result you want and I felt like I raced really well, I animated the race, I felt like I was up there.”
Pogacar completed the 17 climbs up and down Mount Royal near downtown in five hours 28 minutes 15 seconds.
He made his move with 23.3 kilometres to go, leaving the peloton in his dust as he pedalled into the lead — one he never relinquished.
Bilbao, Alaphilippe, Alex Aranburu (Movistar Team) and Bart Lemmen (Visma–Lease) chased in a group behind him, with Bilbao ultimately separating himself from the pack. But he never came close to catching Pogacar, who built a 35-second lead with one lap left to go.
“It was still a really hard race today, but the team was on point,” Pogacar said. “We did really how we planned, and the race situation was good for us. We make it hard in the last final laps, and they set me up for a (takeover) two laps to go, and it was all perfect.”
Ottawa’s Derek Gee, who placed ninth in this year’s Tour de France, finished 48th in Montreal, and called it a “hard day” in the heat.
“I think everyone knows when you see Tadej on the start line that it’s just going to be full gas,” Gee said.
Israel Premier-Tech teammate Hugo Houle of Sainte-Perpétue, Que., was 51st.
Houle said he heard Pogacar inform his teammates on the radio that he was ready to attack with two laps left in the race.
“I said then, well, clearly it’s over for me,” Houle said. “You see, cycling isn’t that complicated.”
Australia’s Michael Matthews won the Quebec City GP for a record third time on Friday, but did not finish in Montreal. The two races are the only North American events on the UCI World Tour.
Michael Leonard of Oakville, Ont., and Gil Gelders and Dries De Bondt of Belgium broke away from the peloton during the second lap. Leonard led the majority of the race before losing pace with 45 kilometres to go.
Only 89 of 169 riders from 24 teams — including the Canadian national team — completed the gruelling race that features 4,573 metres in total altitude.
Next up, the riders will head to the world championships in Zurich, Switzerland from Sept. 21 to 29.
Pogacar will try to join Eddy Merckx (1974) and Stephen Roche (1987) as the only men to win three major titles in a season — known as the Triple Crown.
“Today gave me a lot of confidence, motivation,” Pogacar said. “I think we are ready for world championships.”
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Sept. 15, 2024.
