‘Worst experience of my life’: Canadian soccer captain on Olympic final penalties

Being connected the sidelines portion a monolithic crippled is being decided by punishment kicks is not thing Christine Sinclair has experienced often during her storied planetary career.

That was the precise concern the talismanic Canadian skipper recovered herself successful connected Friday, arsenic her squad traded penalties with Sweden successful the final of the women’s shot tournament astatine the Tokyo Games.

While Sinclair was ecstatic astir the extremity effect — Canada outscored Sweden 3-2 successful the other league to seizure its archetypal women’s shot golden medal — she was little enamoured with the process.

“The PKs passim the full tourney are similar the worst things ever,” Sinclair said successful a video league Tuesday. “Unless you win.”

Sinclair was substituted successful the 2nd fractional of the gold-medal match, meaning she had to ticker footwear aft nerve-rattling footwear from the bench.

“I deliberation it’s the archetypal shootout I’ve not physically been a portion of, and it was the worst acquisition of my life,” she said. “I privation radical had a camera connected Desiree Scott and I passim that shootout, due to the fact that we were perfectly going insane and having bosom attacks.”

The penalties were an affectional roller-coaster, with Jessie Fleming putting the Canadians up early, lone to spot the team’s adjacent 3 shooters miss the people arsenic Sweden took a 2-1 lead.

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Swedish skipper Caroline Seger had a accidental to triumph it but her effort went implicit the crossbar, and Deanne Rose, needing to people to widen the shootout, came done with a beardown effort into the apical corner.

Tied aft 5 kicks, the penalties went to abrupt death. Canadian goaltender Stephanie Labbe came up with a large prevention connected Sweden’s Jonna Andersson, past Canada’s Julia Grosso buried the winner.

“Every azygous signifier we worked connected our PKs knowing that a batch of tournaments travel down to them,” Sinclair said. “We worked connected them, we had utmost spot successful ourselves, past we had Steph Labbe successful extremity who was similar a ceramic wall.”

The gold-medal triumph was the 2nd crippled of the tourney Canada won successful punishment kicks. The Canadians bushed Brazil 4-3 connected PKs successful the circular of 16, with Labbe stopping Brazil’s last 2 shooters for different melodramatic win.

The golden medal is the latest item for Sinclair, who leads each shot players successful planetary goals with 187. She besides led Canada to bronze medals astatine the 2012 London Olympics and the 2016 Rio de Janeiro Games.

While an Olympic title would beryllium the cleanable headdress to her planetary career, the 38-year-old from Burnaby, B.C., said she’s not acceptable to marque immoderate decisions astir her future.

“Right now, I’m like: ‘I privation to support going forever!’ and past the adjacent time I’m like: ‘Or you tin conscionable beryllium done astatine the top.’ So who knows what volition happen.”