Italy captures historic world curling bronze
Alina Pavlyuchik
Italy defeated hosts United States 13-4 in bronze medal game this week at the 2022 World Men’s Curling Championship in Las Vegas, NV.
The win marks Italian curling’s best-ever world performance, and it follows the European bronze won by this team—skip Joel Retornaz, third Amos Mosaner, second Sebastiano Arman, lead Simone Gonin, alternate Mattia Giovanella and coach Claudio Pescia.
It’s also a third medal of the season for Mosaner, who took Olympic gold in mixed doubles at Beijing in February.
Before the championship final between Sweden and Canada, Gonin was presented with the Collie Campbell Memorial Award, which goes to the male curler who best exemplifies “the traditional curling values of skill, honesty, fair play, friendship and sportsmanship” during the men’s world championship.
Gonin was selected by his fellow competitors, and is the second Italian to win the award following former Retornaz teammate Marco Mariani in 2005.
This is surely the first time the award was given to a player who was also ejected from a match at the same championship.
The Italians set the tone in the first end when skip Retornaz brought his last stone through a port to score four points.
The Americans responded with a score of two in the second end when their skip Korey Dropkin played a draw. In the third end, Retornaz missed a double takeout attempt and handed USA a single steal to reduce Italy’s lead to 4-3.
In the fourth end, nine stones were clustered around the four-foot rings when Retornaz came to play his last stone. He threw it away for fear of doing damage, and after this, an umpire’s measure confirmed a further score of two for Italy and a 6-3 lead.
In the fifth end Dropkin came up light with his final draw to give Italy a steal of one and a 7-3 advantage.
Dropkin made up for this mistake with a nose-hit tap-back for one point in the sixth end before disaster struck in the seventh, where
Retornaz squeezed through three front guards to tap out an American stone and score six points for a 13-4 lead.
After this, with the game effectively over, both teams entertained the crowd with throw-throughs and novelty deliveries in the obligatory eighth end to finish off Italy’s historic win.
“It feels sweet at this moment,” said Retornaz. “I’m full of emotions because it’s a medal at the world championship, and we’ve achieved something very important for us and our country, and for everybody following us.
“It is a dream season for Italian curling. Being in the best three teams in the Europeans, being in the best three teams at the worlds, and having an Olympic gold medallist on the team is very important. It is the right moment to have this achievement because we host the Olympics in Italy in four years. It’s also the right moment if anybody want to invest in or promote curling even more in our country. I think it’s all a very good advertisement.”
Italy finishes the world championship with a 10-5 won/loss record and USA 8-7.
