 World number one ranked Team Homan (Photo: Anil Mungal) kicked off the Milano Cortina Games in dominant fashion. By: Cameron Sallaj Thursday morning saw the first women's curling action of the Milano Cortina Olympic Games with eight teams competing in the opening draw. Among them were world number one ranked Canada's Team Rachel Homan as they went against Denmark's Madeleine Dupont in a battle of two experienced veteran skips. It was a good start for Canada in the match as with hammer, Rachel Homan just needed a draw to the rings to put two points on the board. Denmark then took advantage of a missed runback by Homan in the second to draw for two points of their own, leveling the score. In the third, a difficult runback on Canada's last did not connect as it resulted in a steal of one for the Danes. Then in four, Homan drew the button facing five counters on her first rock, ultimately scoring one when she could not replicate it on her second. Despite the shaky start to the match, Canada kicked into high gear in the fifth when they took advantage of several Danish mistakes to sit five all in the four-foot on Madeleine Dupont's last. Trying to limit the damage, Dupont could only remove one counter, resulting in a steal of four for Canada and a commanding 7-3 lead heading to the second half. From that point on, Canada was dominant, forcing Denmark to one in the sixth before scoring three more in the seventh to bring the game to an early concession, 10-4 the final score. This is a first Olympic appearance for Canadian third Tracy Fleury, lead Sarah Wilkes and alternate Rachel Brown. Meanwhile, second Emma Miskew competed in 2018 while Homan has represented Canada twice before in 2018 and 2022 (mixed doubles). With no Olympic medals to her name in two outings, Homan is looking to rewrite history with a gold medal performance in Italy. With the evening draw bye, Canada's next game will be Friday afternoon as they take on the United States' Tabitha Peterson. They will then meet Great Britain's Sophie Jackson Saturday morning before facing off with their biggest competition, Switzerland's Silvana Tirinzoni. Olympic Women's Standings - Draw 1 Sweden (Hasselborg): 1-0 The United States (Peterson): 1-0 Canada (Homan): 1-0 Switzerland (Tirinzoni): 1-0 China (Wang): 0-0 Great Britain (Jackson): 0-0 Denmark (Dupont): 0-1 South Korea (Gim): 0-1 Italy (Constantini): 0-1 Japan (Yoshimura): 0-1 |
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World number one ranked Team Homan (Photo: Anil Mungal) kicked off the Milano Cortina Games in dominant fashion.
