Not keeping up with the Joneses

Tonight Jennifer Jones is getting a second chance due to the WCF rule that gives the loser of the 3-4 game a shot at the bronze medal.
If she misses out on this opportunity by losing to Denmark’s Angelina Jensen, then Jones will do something that has only happened four times before — leave Canada without any medal at the World Women’s Championship.
Canada’s women’s teams have been extraordinarily successful at bringing home some kind of medal from the world’s but there have been those few occasions without any success and there’s been one common denominator in those four previous failures. And that common denominator is there again this year.
The common denominator is simple — the last name Jones.
All four of those rinks that have failed to bring Canada home a medal in the past 30 Women’s World Championships have been skipped by a woman with the last name Jones, just like this year’s crew.
In 1982, in Geneva, Switzerland, Colleen Jones’s young team from Halifax found itself in a four-way tie for second at 6-3. Back then, the top four teams made the playoffs with 1 playing 4 and 2 playing 3 in the semis.
Now, in games played between those four who were tied, Scotland and Sweden were 2-1 while Norway and Canada were 1-2. In other situations, Scotland and Sweden would have been given second and third and played off against each other in a semifinal while Norway and Canada would have played in a tiebreaker with the winner advancing to play first place Denmark, skipped by Marianne Jorgenson, in the other semi.
However, organizers instead put the four teams through a series of tiebreakers.
In the tiebreakers, Scotland, skipped by Isobel Torrance, defeated Canada 8-6, while Sweden, skip by Elisabeth Hogstrom topped Norway 6-4. That left Scotland and Sweden in second and third to face off in one semifinal while Norway and Canada would then play in a tiebreaker to decide who would play Denmark (where have we heard this scenario before?)
Jones lost to Norway, Trine Trulsen (with Dordi Nordby at third) 8-6 and was eliminated, leaving Canada without a medal for the first time.
From 1983 to 1998, Canada won a medal of some colour every year.
In 1999, after a 17-year drought, Colleen Jones won a second Scott Tournament of Hearts crown and headed back to the world’s, this time in St. John, New Brunswick.
This time, for the first, and only time in World Women’s history, Canada didn’t even make tiebreakers as Jones finished in fifth with a dreadful 4-5 record. What was sad was that Jones started 3-1 with just a 9-5 loss to Japan’s Akiko Katoh as her only blemish in her first four games before losing four of her final five games to finish out of the playoffs. She was actually at 3-5 and out of the playoffs when she won her last game against Denmark.
After finally winning a world title in 2001, Colleen Jones returned again in 2002, this time in Bismarck, N.D. In a three-way tie for fourth at 5-4, Jones watched Switzerland’s Manuela Kormann defeat Denmark’s Lene Bidstrup in the first tiebreaker.
The Canadians then knocked out the Swiss 6-5 in the second tiebreak only to lose to Margaretha Sigfridsson of Sweden in the semifinal. She then lost to Norway’s Nordby in the bronze medal game to come home empty-handed a third time.
In her last two worlds, Jones would medal — a silver to the U.S. in 2003 and a gold in 2004. But, in 2005, Canada was again represented by a Jones and would again come up empty-handed.
This was the first world championship for skip Jennifer Jones of Winnipeg. Held in Paisley, Scotland, it would definitely not be memorable for Jennifer Jones.
In this event, this first world’s to have 12 teams and a page playoff, Jones finished third at 8-3 but lost to Norway’s Dordi Nordby in the 3 vs. 4 game. In 2005, the bronze medal went to the loser of the semifinal and thus Jones did not get a second chance to win a medal, like she is getting tonight.