The 30th and final edition of the Pacific-Asia Curling Championships began Sunday at the Almaty Arena in Almaty, Kazakhstan.
The championships will see two Women’s teams and one Men’s team qualify for their respective World Championship 2022.
This will mark the end of the Pacific-Asia Championships as next season; a new event named the Pan-Continental Curling Championships will replace this event and the America’s Challenge. The two events will merge as one and see both Men’s and Women’s teams qualify from the Pacific-Asia zone and the America’s zone.
Day one in Almaty
Round-robin play got underway today with three sessions played.
Japan women played two games, winning both, the first against Hong Kong and the second against hosts, Kazakhstan. The current Olympic silver medallists, Korea’s Eun-Jung Kim, faced Kazakhstan in their opener and won 12-2.
Skip Eun-Jung Kim commented on the goal of their first game, “First of all we try to feel comfortable on the ice and we also focus on reading ice and weight control. We are focused on [Olympic] qualification in December, so we try to have some experience in our games from the Grand Slam and in Europe for some competitions before this.”
On the men’s side, Saudi Arabia took to the ice for their first ever appearance in an international Men’s competition. The team faced an experienced Korean side and managed to score each time they held the last-stone advantage, despite their 9-3 loss.
“It was just fantastic!” said a delighted Hussain Hagawi, second for Saudi Arabia. “We played a great team, Korea, who are well experienced. This is our first international game for men and I am happy with the score.
“We learned a lot from playing Korea and curling is new in Saudi Arabia, so you see, this is the Saudi team and this is going to be really fantastic for the people home to see!”
Hosts win opener
Kazakhstan’s team skipped by Viktor Kim began their quest in the third session of the day, against Chinese Taipei. It was a back-and-forth affair, with Chinese Taipei leading 4-3 after five ends. But with two excellent draws by Kim in the eighth end, the hosts took their first lead of the game, 6-5. They then forced their opponents to a single point in the ninth end to tie the game 6-6.
In the tenth end, Kazakhstan had two shot stones buried around a pack of centre-line guards. Chinese Taipei wrecked off a guard on their final shot, meaning Kazakhstan didn’t need to throw their final stone and won the game, 8-6.
Japan men also won their first game, against Hong Kong, 12-6.
Results
Session one
Women: Japan 10-7 Hong Kong
Men: Japan 12-6 Hong Kong
Session two
Women: Kazakhstan 2-12 Korea
Men: Saudi Arabia 3-9 Korea
Session three:
Women: Japan 11-3 Kazakhstan
Men: Chinese Taipei 6-8 Kazakhstan
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