Canada succumbs to host country South Korea at 2025 LGT World Women’s Curling Championship

UIJEONGBU, SOUTH KOREA — Canada’s Team Rachel Homan faced its stiffest test of the week at the 2025 LGT World Women’s Curling Championship, falling short in a game against the host team, South Korea’s Team Eunji Gim, on Wednesday morning.

After a back-and-forth first five ends, South Korea pulled away in the second half of the game, earning an 11-7 win over the Canadians. Team Gim takes sole possession of second place in the standings at 6-1, while Canada drops into a tie for third place at 5-2.

Homan, vice-skip Tracy Fleury, second Emma Miskew, lead Sarah Wilkes, alternate Rachelle Brown, and national coaches Viktor Kjell and Renée Sonnenberg mounted a late-game surge but were short of victory.

Homan made a thin double for three, trailing by four in the ninth. The Canadians attempted to set up a steal in the 10th end at Uijeongbu Arena, but couldn’t get the job done. Team Homan attempted to tuck a draw behind a top-eight South Korean stone but ticked. It left Team Gim with a hit for three and the win.

“Yeah, it hurts. We would have liked to have played a little bit better, but lots of learning to be done. There’s a lot that we’ll take away from that game,” Fleury said. “Just a little bit of rock placement, rock management, some line calling and some stuff with the sheet.”

Both teams put on a clinic, with Canada shooting 90 per cent and South Korea clocking in at 94 per cent efficiency.

Canadian lead Wilkes threw a perfect 100 per cent game. But South Korean skip Gim stood out as the most significant difference-maker in the game, shooting 94 per cent and outscoring Homan by 15 percentage points.

“They always play well,” said Fleury. “We know that they would come out strong and they did. They made a lot of shots out there.”

It is the second year in a row that Team Gim has bettered Team Homan in the round-robin at worlds. Last year, Canada bounced back to defeat the South Koreans in the semifinal, en route to winning the gold. Earlier this season, Team Homan beat Team Gim twice at the Pan Continental Curling Championships, including in the gold-medal game.

Homan faced an onslaught of challenging shots that she was close to making, such as in the second end when she played an in-off to try and score. The shot ran over the top of the target, resulting in a steal of one for South Korea. 

Canada replied in the third with a deuce after Miskew played a runback to open up the middle and get her team’s corner guards into play. However, Team Gim matched that in the fourth, scoring a deuce of its own and forcing Canada to a single in the fifth.

The South Korean, which calls Uijeongbu home, pulled away in the second half of the game. A combination of Canada being just off on rock placement and South Korea making two beautiful final shots led to Team Gim scoring a three in the sixth end.

Team Homan hoped to score a couple of points in the seventh but had to settle for a single after playing a double that bumped its own stone back a little too far. Canada could not limit the damage in the eighth, as Team Gim scored another deuce to extend its lead late in the game. 

Canada has the afternoon off and will return to the ice later today against Norway’s Team Marianne Roervik (4-3) at 6 a.m. (ET).

In other draw 12 action, Japan’s Team Sayaka Yoshimura (3-4) climbed up in the standings after an 8-2 win against Denmark’s Team Madeleine Dupont (4-3); China’s Team Rui Wang (4-3) controlled Team Tabitha Peterson of the United States (3-4) en route to a 7-1 win; and Sweden’s Team Anna Hasselborg (5-2) matched Canada’s record with a 8-2 victory over Lithuania’s Team Virginija Paulauskaite (0-8).

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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.