Another COVID scare did not hinder Switzerland from reeling off its 11th victory Friday at the BTK Tires & OK Tire Women’s World Curling Championship.
Swiss skip Silvana Tirizoni had no trouble defeating a depleted Japanese team that had just three players available for their morning game after two members of the team failed their rapid antigen tests and were placed in isolation.
With their 11-3 win, Switzerland is poised to become first team to go undefeated in the round robin since 2018, when Jennifer Jones of Canada went 12-0 on her way to winning the title in North Bay, Ont. The Swiss finish their round-robin schedule tonight at 7 p.m. against Germany and will advance to a semifinal playoff Saturday at 7 p.m.
“Undefeated is nice but the main thing is to finish first so that was the goal, and we reached that,” said Tirinzoni. “It’s a good feeling to be undefeated.”
The three Team Japan players who passed their rapid antigen tests Friday – skip Ikue Kitazawa, second Minori Suzuki and lead/vice-skip Hasumi Ishigooka – wore masks during the game. Although the World Curling Federation did not release the names of the players who did test positive, Japan came to the rink missing third Seina Nakajima and alternate Yusauke Morozumi.
“It’s too bad for them,” said Tirinzoni. “You know it could happen to anyone, it goes so quick and I just feel bad. I just hope we won’t get it. I’m not afraid we will get it from them, but it’s just like the whole environment, you never know. It’s a little nervewracking.
“The longer the week goes, the closer you get to the end and the safer we are. I’ll be glad when this is finally over but we’ll probably have to live with that virus for a long time.”
Scotland was forced to withdraw from the 13-team event Sunday due to players tested positive for COVID.
Tirinzoni was the only Swiss player who chose to mask up for the game. Her teammates, third Alina Patz, second Esther Neuenschwander and lead Melanie Barbezat did their best to avoid getting close to the Japanese players on the ice.
“It’s just me in the house being closer to the other team and for me it was not that bad to wear a mask,” said Tirinzoni. “But for the sweepers it’s not very comfortable so that’s what we decided. When I saw (Japan) was wearing a mask I kind of felt like I’m going to do the same.”
The Swiss are two-time defending world champions and are coming off a fourth-place finish at the Olympics in Beijing. They went 8-1 in the preliminary round, then lost in the semifinal 8-6 to Japan and dropped the bronze-medal game 9-7 to Sweden.
“The Olympics are over and I’m just proud we recovered from that,” said Tirinzoni. “I didn’t quite expect that we were going to perform on that high level, to be honest, I felt like we would still be a little bit tired but that doesn’t seem to be the case so that makes me really happy.”
In Saturday’s semifinal, Switzerland will play the lower seed to advance from the third-versus-sixth and fourth-versus-fifth qualification games Saturday at 1 p.m.
