On This Day in Olympic Curling History: Feb 26

Only two Olympic curling dates remain in this month’s retrospective; both from Vancouver 2010.

The competition was certainly drawn out once the women’s and men’s team round robins concluded on Feb. 23. Organizers took another four full days to complete one tiebreaker, the semifinals (played concurrently) and the bronze and gold medal games.

Perhaps this was deserved, given the location of the Roaring Game’s showcase display at Vancouver Olympic Centre. 

As Canada’s first Olympic Winter Games hosted since Calgary 1988, 2010 marked the first time in history an official curling medal event was contested in the main urban host city. The driving distance between curling and four other ice sport venues was between four and 14 kilometres.

In comparison, curling in 1998 was hosted in Karuizawa, some 80 km from Nagano, although a Shinkansen (bullet train) line opened in time to reduce that travel time to 30 minutes (80-90 minutes from Tokyo).

Salt Lake 2002 saw curling hosted at Ogden (56 km north) and Torino 2006 offered curling in delightful Pinerolo, some 40 km away.

Feb. 26, 2010 saw the completion of the women’s team event, and it unfolded amid a growing global rush to the internet, which was beginning to offer multiple Olympic viewing options.

The Curling News provided a preview of both matches.

In the bronze medal game played at 9:00 a.m., China’s Wang Bingyu recovered from a disappointing semifinal performance against Sweden to post a rousing 12-6 victory over Switzerland’s Mirjam Ott.

China started with hammer and scored a three, added a deuce in the third end for a 5-1 lead and kept up the offence, even after the Swiss scored three in the fourth end and a deuce in the sixth.

A whopping steal of four Chinese points in the eighth end finished the match, and the nation had won its first-ever Olympic medal in the sport of curling.

For Ott, the 2002 silver medallist as a third, it was more disappointment at skip position following semifinal and bronze medal losses at Torino four years earlier.

The women’s final was an taut affair that offered some unexpected misses, and it eventually gave the home crowd a chance to watch a Canada victory unfold on the last stone of an extra end…

But it was not to be.

Canada’s Cheryl Bernard trailed Sweden’s defending champions skipped by Anette Norberg 2-1 and 4-2 before stealing a pair of points in the seventh end for her first lead of the match at 5-4. Her Calgary squad was then held to a single in nine, and missed a chance to salt the game away in the 10th end, on their final stone.

Norberg grabbed her tying deuce to force the extra.

Bernard then faced an in-house double and stick for the win. The stones were close together but in an awkward position, and Bernard was tight on her delivery and merely grazed the Swedish shot stone after initial impact.

The Swedes erupted in shock and joy, and the Norberg foursome became the first curling team to win two Olympic medals, both gold. 

Here is The Curling News story from that day, Olympic Pressure Takes a Toll.

Twelve years later, the 10th-end scenario Canada and Sweden faced was the subject of a strategy discussion involving global fan input.

The men’s medal games would conclude Vancouver 2010 the following day, Feb. 27.