It wasn’t meant to be for Kerri Einarson in Calgary.
The Canadian skip and her team of Val Sweeting, Shannon Birchard and Karlee Burgess settled for silver at the women’s world curling championship after a 7-5 loss to Switzerland phenom Xenia Schwaller in the final on Sunday.
The game was decided by two misses by the Canadians and an overall lack of aggression. The Canadians were only able to bank two points in an end once, in the fourth, but costly mistakes gave Switzerland multiple chances to tack on points of their own.
The first miss came in the fifth end with the score tied 2-2. Einarson made a perfect hit-and-roll with her first shot to lay buried, leaving Schwaller just a soft-weight hit to move it away from the guards out front while losing her shooter.
This gave Einarson the chance to draw into the house, just needing the full eight-foot to sit two and force Switzerland. But she came up light and Schwaller was able to make the open hit for two.
The Canadians clawed back with scores in the sixth and seventh to tie the game at four, but a similar situation presented itself in the eighth and Einarson again missed her spot on her first throw to let Switzerland score two.
“Unfortunately, I think just a couple of my shots I came up just a hair too light and left them an opportunity for a deuce,” Einarson said on the broadcast after the loss. “We tried to generate deuces, and we had a little bit of a difficult time with that. But, yeah, we battled hard.”
While the result is disappointing for Einarson, the silver is her best finish at a world championship after previously winning bronze twice.
“I know we wanted to bring home gold for Canada, but silver is pretty amazing too,” Einarson said.
Rookie sensation
Xenia Schwaller is only 22 and she's already on top of the world.
The Switzerland skip and her teammates, Selina Gafner, Fabienne Rieder and Selina Rychiger, have an average age of just 22.5 but they took home the gold just two years after winning the world junior curling championship.
Schwaller is just the fifth rookie skip to lead a team to a world championship, joining a group that includes Elisabet Gustafson from Sweden (1992), Sandra Schmirler from Canada (1993), Kelly Law from Canada (2000) and Switzerland's Alina Paetz (2015).
“I don’t know (how we did it),” Schwaller said, still in shock at what just happened in her post-game interview with the broadcast. “Just hard work, I have the best coaching staff, my dad and (coach John Epping), they're amazing.”
Canada, Switzerland rivalry still going strong
Canada and Switzerland have now met in three straight gold medal games and even with a wide-open field filled with rookies and fresh faces this time around, this matchup seemed inevitable all week.
In fact, since 2014, only teams from Canada and Switzerland have won the gold medal at this event.
The run of success is a testament to the depth of the player pool in both countries, as Schwaller and Einarson were both playing in the final for the first time. In 2024 and 2025, Canada’s Rachel Homan defeated Switzerland’s Silvana Tirinzoni twice for gold, but before that Tirinzoni won a historic four titles in a row from 2019-2023 (the tournament was cancelled in 2020 due to the COVID-19 pandemic).
Overall, during this run, the Swiss have now won eight titles while the Canadians remain stuck at four.
Eighth end lifts Sweden to bronze
For the first time since 2019, Sweden reached the podium at the women’s worlds by winning bronze. They did it against Japan’s Satsuki Fujisawa, winning 8-5.
Skip Isabella Wrana, alongside teammates Almida De Val, Maria Larsson and Linda Stenlund, earned Sweden’s 26th medal overall at this event.
Against Japan, it was a battle to see which side would break first. Both teams play aggressively with a lot of rocks in the house and always look to score a huge end while with the hammer, or try for a steal when without it.
Even though the game was tied 3-3 through the first seven ends, it was clear Sweden was building towards a finish. The question was, just how big would it be?
In the eighth, it finally came together. The Swedes had Japan chasing from the start of the end, and before anyone could blink, Sweden had four rocks in the house along with one lonely Japanese stone.
Wrana, with her eyes lit up, made no mistake on her hit and hung a crooked five on the board. Japan scored two in the ninth before shaking hands.
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