Canada’s Team Homan starts 2025 LGT World Women’s Curling Championship with a win

UIJEONGBU, SOUTH KOREA — Canada’s bid to defend its world title at the 2025 LGT World Women’s Curling Championship started with a win on Saturday.

On opening day, Ottawa’s Team Rachel Homan picked things up where it left off after winning the world title last year, earning a convincing win against a team making its debut at the world women’s championship. Canada bested Lithuania’s Team Virginija Paulauskaite with a 12-2 victory in six ends.

Skip Homan, vice-skip Tracy Fleury, second Emma Miskew, lead Sarah Wilkes, alternate Rachelle Brown and national coaches Viktor Kjell and Renée Sonnenberg continued their international dominance with the wire-to-wire win at Uijeongbu Arena. 

Canada pushed through a challenging first end to score two. Lithuania found its draw weight and was drawing behind some coverage in front of the house. Canada attempted some runbacks to clear out the Lithuanian stones but couldn’t stick behind the guards. However, Canada turned the end around later on, eventually setting up for a scrupulous hit for two.

“It was a bit of a weird end. You’re going to have to make some guesses in the first game of the tournament. Lines and speeds were not quite what we expected, so there were a couple of misses there. But we learned from them and figured out how to make the next ones. I thought we had a pretty good handle on the ice and were debriefing every shot to try and take as much as we could from everything,” Homan said.

From that point on, Team Homan ramped it up. In the second end, Lithuanian skip Paulauskaite forced herself to a single point after failing to roll out on the blank attempt.

Like a lion pouncing on prey, Canada seized control in the third. The Canadian crew sunk numerous stones into the four-foot throughout the end. Lithuania had an opportunity to raise its own into a pocket to limit the damage but picked its own stone out to leave Canada sitting four. Canada’s opposition attempted to salvage the situation with a few runbacks and double attempts but left Team Homan with a draw for five.

Canada stole another point in the fourth and forced Lithuania into one in the fifth for a 9-2 lead at the break. Team Homan ended the game in the sixth end with a draw for four, which elicited handshakes from its opponents. 

Lithuania is playing in its first-ever World Women’s championship after qualifying at the 2024 European Championships. The team was in a three-way tie for the final berth and earned it based on last stone draw. Skip Paulauskaite competed at the 2024 World Senior Women’s Championship alongside her third Olga Dvojeglazova. The team earned silver after losing to Canada’s Team Susan Froud in the gold-medal game.

It’s the start the Canadians have been waiting – and looking forward to – after arriving in South Korea last Monday. After nearly a week of adjusting to the new time zone and practising at the Uijeongbu Curling Rink next door, the Canadians are ready to focus on the task: defending their gold medal.

“We’ve been anxiously awaiting and practising hard. It’s nice that the day is finally here and we get to compete. The ice is good, and we just tried to focus on getting a good handle on the ice and be precise, so we’re happy with our start,” Fleury said.

In other opening draw action, Sweden’s Team Anna Hasselborg topped Norway’s Team Marianne Roervik with a 6-4 win; China’s Team Rui Wang defeated Team Dilsat Yildiz of Turkey with a 5-3 victory; and South Korea’s Team Eunji Gim, the hometown favourites, earned a 10-8 extra-end win against Japan’s Team Sayaka Yoshimura.

Team Homan returns to the ice later today against Scotland’s Team Sophie Jackson at 6 a.m. ET. Scotland had a bye during the first draw and will take on Canada in its first game of the event.

For Team Canada updates, go to www.curling.ca. Follow us on X, Instagram, Facebook and TikTok.

For live scoring, standings, and statistics, click here.

TSN, Curling Canada’s Season of Champions broadcast partner, will provide live coverage of all Canadian round-robin games and playoff games. Click here for the full broadcast schedule.

Non-Canadian round-robin games are available through World Curling’s streaming platform, The Curling Channel.

This story will be available in French as soon as possible here.