Quebec curler wins world gold 16 years after tasting silver

Canada’s Jean-Michel Ménard, who retired from men’s team play in 2017, led his Quebec foursome to victory at the World Mixed Championships in Aberdeen, Scotland.

Ménard, his wife Annie Lemay, third Marie-France Larouche and second Ian Belleau upended Scotland’s Cameron Bryce by a 7-4 count in Saturday’s championship final. Canada led 2-0 at the start, fell behind 4-2 before trying the score in the fourth end, and stole consecutive singles over the next three ends to salt the victory.

The Canadians, who won 10 matches in a row on the road to the title, had defeated Switzerland’s Yves Hess 9-4 in one semifinal while the hometown Scots beat Sweden’s Robin Ahlberg 6-5 in the other.

The bronze medal went to Switzerland, who were 6-4 victors over Sweden.

Ménard won the 2006 Canadian men’s championship—the Brier—with a surprise win over Ontario’s Glenn Howard in Regina. At the world men’s championship in Lowell, Mass. the squad lost the final to Scotland’s David Murdoch, settling for silver.

Ménard also won the 2001 Canadian Mixed title, in the era with no world championship.

Larouche and Lemay teamed to represent Quebec at six Canadian women’s team championships. They lost the 2004 final to Team Canada’s Colleen Jones and won bronze in 2009.

Scotland’s Bruce was supported by third Lisa Davie, second Scott Hyslop and lead Robyn Munro.

In Friday evening’s quarterfinals, Scotland defeated Germany 6-5, Switzerland defeated Japan by the same scoreline, Sweden took out Norway 8-3 and Canada overcame Finland 9-6 in an extra-end.

After 24 sessions of round-robin play, 12 teams had originally advanced to the playoff stage. Round-robin table-toppers Finland, Germany, Sweden and Switzerland qualified directly to the quarterfinals while eight other teams competed for quarterfinal spots in qualification games.

The winners of those games—Canada (9-5 over Italy), Japan (7-4 over Denmark), Norway (7-6 over Spain) and Scotland (6-4 over Hungary)—completed the final eight.

Luxembourg forfeited their final round-robin game scheduled against Austria on the Thursday, following positive COVID-19 results within the team.

The championship continued under UK National COVID-19 guidelines.