GENEVA, Switz. — It wasn’t quite the finish Bruce Korte and crew were hoping for at the World Senior Men’s Curling Championship, but a successful one nonetheless.
Korte and his Saskatoon Nutana foursome of third Darrell McKee, second Kory Kohuch, lead Rory Golanowski and alternate Arlen Hall lost 6-5 to Scotland’s Tom Brewster in the semifinal on Saturday morning but rebounded with a 7-4 victory over Switzerland’s Christof Schwaller in the third place game.
As a result, the Korte rink will be bringing home the bronze medal after a week filled with success against one of the largest fields in senior world championship history.
“It was tough to come out, but we really wanted to bring a medal home, and we’re very grateful right now,” Korte said on the Curling Canada website “We still had a chance to bring home a medal, and we just didn’t want to give up. We wanted something to bring home, and we were going to give it our best, even though it was a tough game to be in.”
Things were looking good early for Canada in their semifinal against former Olympic silver medalist Brewster, as with the game tied 2-2 heading into the fifth end, they’d take the lead with one and then steal two more in the sixth for a 5-2 lead coming home.
Scotland took over from there, though, coming all the way back with three in the seventh and then getting the steal in the eighth to secure victory and advance to the gold medal game.
It was another close one in the bronze medal contest, as Korte picked up single points the first two ends, Schwaller came back with a deuce in the third and Canada scored one in the fourth to lead 4-2.
Switzerland took their first lead of the game with a pair in the sixth, but Korte saw to it there would be no late-game rally for their opponents this time around, scoring two in the seventh and then finishing things off with a steal of two in the eighth for the 7-4 win.
It had been a perfect run for Canada up until the semifinal, as Korte opened the tournament on Sunday with a 16-2 win over Nigeria before downing Slovenia’s Mitja Resman 9-2 on Monday and Latvia’s Ansis Regza 9-4 on Tuesday to close out the round robin at 4-0.
That gave Korte a bye into the quarter-final, where they’d roll to a 10-3 win over Australia
Geoff Davis to set up their semifinal match-up with Scotland.
The United States’ Mike Farbelow defeated Scotland 7-5 in the gold medal game.
