The U.S. girls’s curling workforce was stunned to be taught that their defeat of Canada on Friday marked an Olympic first.
“If that is true,” Minneapolis native Taylor Anderson-Heide mentioned after the 9-8 nailbiter, “I believe we simply performed a extremely good recreation. They’re No. 1 on the planet.”
Tara Peterson of Shoreview, Minnesota, chimed in: “It simply all the time feels actually good to beat (Canada skip) Rachel Homan. So any workforce to beat them, that is fairly spectacular.”
Till Friday, the American girls had by no means overwhelmed Canada — a perennial favourite that has medaled in each Winter Video games since curling was added to the Olympics in 1998. The U.S. males beat the Canadians for the primary time within the 2018 round-robin and once more within the semifinals en path to their gold medal victory in Pyeongchang.
Canada’s Group Homan has for years been thought-about the most effective on the planet.
Misper Apawu / AP
In Friday’s match, the U.S. managed to capitalize on just a few weak photographs by Canada. After the win, the People walked collectively down the ice and again to their coaches, elevating fists in triumph.
Peterson, like Anderson-Heide, could not assist however add a qualifier to her response to questions from The Related Press: “Apparently, we have by no means beat them within the Olympics earlier than. That makes it simply further particular.”
This yr’s American girls’s curling workforce — like their Gen-Z males’s counterparts — meld approachability with ambition. Alongside Anderson-Heide and Peterson, the workforce contains skip Tabitha Peterson, who’s Tara’s older sister, in addition to cool-as-a-cucumber Cory Thiesse, who has already received a silver medal within the blended doubles occasion. Aileen Geving, from Minnesota, is an alternate.
Three of them have jobs aside from curling, and three are moms to younger kids. Tara is a dentist, Tabitha a pharmacist and Thiesse a lab technician.
Tara gave delivery to her son, Eddie, in September 2024 and some months later, Tabitha had a daughter, Noelle. Geving had daughter Sienna following the 2018 Video games.
“That is the cool factor concerning the sport of curling. Your common Joe is enjoying in opposition to Olympians and we’re buddies,” Tara Peterson instructed CBS Information Minnesota forward of the Olympics. “And after the sport we’ll sit down, we now have dinner. We’ve got a beer. It is only a regular life.”
Tabitha Peterson instructed CBS Information Minnesota she thinks of the Olympics “as simply one other match.”
“It is one other competitors. And take a look at to not focus like, oh my God, we’re on the Olympics,” she mentioned.
They’ve a number of matches left within the round-robin earlier than the semifinals subsequent Friday. The are 2-1 after Friday’s match, with a win in opposition to Korea and loss to Sweden alongside the milestone.
