Canada’s Gushue defeats Australia, wins 4th straight at Pan Continental Curling Championship

Canada’s Brad Gushue gained a fourth straight recreation at the Pan Continental Curling Championship with an 11-5 victory over Australia on Thursday.

His St. John’s, N.L., crew moved right into a three-way tie for first place with South Korea and the United States all at 4-1.

After a loss to the U.S. to open the event at Calgary’s WinSport Event Centre, Gushue feels he and his teammates have discovered the all-important draw weight.

“We’re placing [rocks] in some good spots and making good freezes. We have a number of little issues to work on, however if you draw nicely on this ice, you do sometimes rating nicely and provides your self good probabilities.

“I feel we’re doing an excellent job at that, and so long as we are able to keep and sustain on the ice, I feel we’ll be O.Ok.”

The inaugural Pan Continental is a qualifier for all international locations exterior Europe for the 2023 males’s and girls’s world curling championships.

Finishing within the prime 5 secures berths, however Canada because the host nation of the boys’s championship in Ottawa is assured an computerized entry.

Kerri Einarson (5-0) has clinched a spot for Canada within the girls’s championship in Switzerland.

She was to face the U.S. and Gushue had a second recreation in opposition to New Zealand on Thursday.

Gushue prolonged a streak of scoring three factors within the first finish to 4 straight video games. The Canadians additionally counted 4 within the fifth finish to steer 9-3.

“We’re catching onto the ice a bit of bit higher every recreation,” vice Mark Nichols stated. “We’re additionally successful the draw to the button, which provides us a bonus in that first finish. We’ve been fortunate sufficient to transform a number of larger ends.

“We’re not sometimes a crew that goes tremendous aggressive, so after we get these larger ends, it’s good.”

‘We’ve been in a position to capitalize on errors’

Dean Hewitt, who throws fourth stones for Australia, competed in Olympic combined doubles in Beijing in February.

He and Tahli Gill had been the primary Australians to twist in any Olympic self-discipline.

Australia scored two within the second finish Thursday, however could not generate a multi-point finish after that. They shook palms after eight ends.

“We do restrict the massive ends too,” Nichols stated. “Any time you’ll be able to rating two or three after which pressure to 1, you flip the sport over fairly fast, and so they’ve bought to play a number of extra finesse photographs and some extra dangerous calls to get again into the sport, and we have been in a position to capitalize on errors.”

Australia has appeared in 11 males’s world championships all led by skip Hugh Millikin from 1992 to 1998 and most lately from 2005 to 2008.

The males’s and girls’s semifinals are Saturday adopted by Sunday’s finals.

In different A Division males’s video games, the U.S. defeated New Zealand 6-2, Japan downed Brazil 9-3 and South Korea recovered from the day past’s loss to Canada with an 11-5 victory over Chinese Tapei.

New Zealand was 3-2 behind the three front-runners, Chinese Tapei fell to 2-3, Japan was 1-4 and Brazil winless in 5 video games.