News Tour Challenge

Homan bounces back to beat Gim in HearingLife Tour Challenge

GRANDE PRAIRIE, Alta. — Rachel Homan scored two for the win in the final frame to lift her Ottawa-based club to a 5-4 victory over South Korea’s Team Gim in their opening game of the HearingLife Tour Challenge on Tuesday night.

After giving up back-to-back steals in the sixth and seventh ends to fall behind by one, Homan recovered to pull off a short runback double takeout for the decisive deuce.

The HearingLife Tour Challenge, taking place at the Coca-Cola Centre, is the second stop on the 2022-23 Pinty’s Grand Slam of Curling tour.

Meanwhile, Canada’s Team Duncan also kicked things off in the win column with a wild 9-6 win over Team Fujisawa from Japan.

Duncan scored three-pointers in the first and third to lead 6-1 early into the contest. The teams traded pairs of points in four and five before skip Satsuki Fujisawa counted a three-ender of her own in the sixth to cut the deficit down to 8-6. Hollie Duncan added a single in the seventh and Fujisawa ran out of options in the eighth.

Sweden’s Team Wranå took two in the seventh and stole one in the eighth for a 6-5 come-from-behind victory over Canada’s Team Jones while Sweden’s Team Hasselborg scored three in the fourth and two in the seventh during a 6-2 decision over Germany’s Team Jentsch.

UP NEXT

The HearingLife Tour Challenge resumes Wednesday with Draw 5 at 8:30 a.m. MT.

Broadcast coverage begins Thursday at 2 p.m. ET / 12 p.m. MT on Sportsnet, Sportsnet NOW (Canada) and Yare (international).

NOTES

The HearingLife Tour Challenge features two tiers and a total of 64 teams. Both tiers feature 16 men’s teams and 16 women’s teams. … Round-robin play runs through to Friday as teams play four games against opponents outside of their pool. … The top eight teams overall advance to Saturday afternoon’s quarterfinals. The semifinals are set for Saturday evening with both finals on tap for Sunday.