Curling

EDMONTON - She came in as the favourite but left with disappointment and heartbreak.

Jennifer Jones, the winner of the last two Canadian championships, was dealt a final blow Thursday, ending her chance of representing Canada at the Vancouver Olympics. Jones lost an extra-end thriller to Shannon Kleibrink 10-9, but by the time the game ended, her dream had already died.

Jones came into the contest needing a combination of wins and losses from other teams to get into a tiebreaker, but when Amber Holland beat Kelly Scott 10-4, it was all over for the photogenic Winnipeg skip.

"We're hugely disappointed," Jones said. "We worked three years for this but we just came out and things just didn't go our way."

The Jones team struggled throughout the week, finishing 2-5. Their play was uncharacteristically mediocre and they never seemed to be able to find the stride that has made them the most dominant team in the world the last three years.

"Sometimes I think it's just not meant to be," Jones said. "I mean, we didn't play as well as we liked and I don't know why. It was really just one bad end, a couple of bad shots every game and we just couldn't recover.

"Only one team gets to win and unfortunately it's not going to be us."

While Jones is heading home, Cheryl Bernard is still right where she wants to be - one victory from a trip to the Olympics.

The Calgary skip lost a last-round game 6-5 to Stefanie Lawton to drop to 6-1 on the week, but it was a meaningless contest. Her team of Susan O'Connor, Carlyn Darbyshire and Cori Bartel had already locked up top spot and a berth in the tomorrow night's final.

"I don't know if we played with as much intensity, and Lawton's team played with a lot of intensity that game," Bernard said. "It does matter. I think it would have been better to win it, but we still have our spot on Saturday."

The match came down to last shot, when Lawton executed a delicate tap back on a Bernard stone in the four-foot to score two. Lawton, who needed the win to stay in contention, pumped her fist above her head when the final rock came to rest. Bernard, however, wasn't worried that there would be any power failure from her team in their next game.

"I think there will be no issue with [the intensity] whatsoever," she said when asked about the final. "I'm not worried about that."

Still, Bernard, a proponent of the mental side of the game, who co-authored a book about the psychological aspect of curling, will also be trying to keep things in check when she steps on the ice for her next game.

"I guess a big thing I've been working on all year is to put everything in perspective," she said. "That it is just a game and our lives will go on whether we win that final or not. It would be a lot more exciting if we do, life would be great, but it will go on and we've got all great things in our lives."

Bernard will now sit back and await her challenger in the final and that will be a long process to determine. Three teams tied for third spot at 4-3 and will meet in two tiebreakers on Friday with the survivor meeting Kleibrink in the semi-final.

Krista McCarville, who knocked off Crystal Webster 6-4 in her last round-robin game, will meet Lawton in the first tiebreaker. The winner of that contest will play Holland in the second match.

"It's pretty crazy to think about," McCarville said. "There were eight teams here and how many of us are still alive. I never thought it would come down to this."

McCarville's team includes 53-year-old Lorraine Lang, who would become the oldest Canadian curler to go to the Olympics, surpassing Russ Howard, who was 50 when he won gold in 2006.

"I don't have a problem with [holding that record] at all," said Lang, who won the world championship 20 years ago.

Holland got the bye to the second tiebreaker by virtue of her record in a draw-to-the-button competition used to break ties. After getting off to a 1-3 start this week, her team picked up momentum and was impressive in a 10-4 thrashing of Kelly Scott.

"We said that right after we got down to three losses, that this was in our control, that four wins would at least get you into a tiebreaker, if not into the playoffs," said the Regina resident, "and we knew we just had to string the wins together."

Like Bernard, Calgary's Kleibrink, the bronze-medal winner from the 2006 Games, had already locked up a spot in Friday night's semi-final, but ended up her round robin at 5-2 with her win over Jones. Tied at four in the sixth end, Jones tried to run one of her own rocks back into a catch of Kleibrink stones, but ended up chipping it out, leaving Kleibrink a draw for four and an 8-4 lead.

The big end prompted one fan to mock one of Jones's commercials by yelling: "Shannon, what's in your wallet?"

Jones climbed back in the game to force an extra end, but Kleibrink scored a single in the extra end to finish Jones off.

The final round of the men's draw featured what many believe are the two best teams in the world playing for first place and a bye to Sunday's final. And Kevin Martin and Glen Howard didn't disappoint, delivering the best match of the week that featured big shot after by big shot.

In the end, however, it was a pick that may have determined the outcome. Playing a draw around a centre guard with his first in the ninth end, Howard's rock picked up debris and made a right turn, crashing into a guard. Two rocks later, Martin delivered a gem, driving his own guard back into a pile of stones, chasing two Howard rocks from the rings and leaving him counting three. That gave him a two-point lead heading home where he closed out the match.

"He had control for the whole game until the ninth," said Martin. "If Glenn's first one doesn't crash, the most we're getting is two."

"It's too bad that stuff has to happen," said Howard. "We haven't had two or three picks all week. It's frustrating when that happens."

Martin is now in the driver's seat, one win away from another trip to the Olympics.

"We've got hammer in the final and we'll see who we play," said Martin, summing up his position. He will now await the winner of Saturday afternoon's semi-final between Howard and Jeff Stoughton. Stoughton won a nail-biter of his own, 8-6 over Pat Simmons to secure third place. That victory eliminated Kevin Koe, who won his game over Randy Ferbey and was hoping for a Stoughton loss that would have forced a tiebreaker.