Curling, Women

Unlike the men’s events, which saw the failures of the Canadian team to win gold and the Scottish team to win any matches at all, the women’s curling tournament had a more limited fan base, received less media attention, and overall went much as was expected prior to the beginning of the Games. The Canadians were the favorites to win the tournament and they did so with relative ease, meeting their only serious challenges against eventual runners-up Sweden, who defeated the Canadians in round-robin play, but could not repeat that feat in the finals. The Swedes were captained by Elisabeth Högström, former World and multiple European champion. Canadian skip Linda Moore’s victory in the tournament did receive attention in the national press for being the only gold medal – albeit in a demonstration sport – that Canada acquired at the Games, but it did little to soften the blow of the country’s failure, for the second time, to achieve gold in an official event at an Olympics hosted on their home soil. Third place went to Norway’s Trine Trulsen, who had been a consistent competitor on the international scene since the mid-1980s and whose brother Pål and husband Lars Vågberg would win gold medals at the 2002 Winter Olympic curling tournament.