6 April 2024
Medal games set at World Men’s
Canada will play Sweden for the world title in Sunday’s final at the LGT World Men’s Championship.
The Canadians beat Scotland by 9-4 and Sweden emerged as 5-3 winners over Italy in Saturday’s semi-finals.
To reach their semi-final against Canada, Scotland had earlier beaten United States by 8-4 in Saturday morning’s qualification game.
Canada versus Scotland
In the first end, Canada’s skip Brad Gushue played a hit to open the scoring with two points. Then, in the second, Scotland’s skip Bruce Mouat brought his final stone through a gap in the front guards to tap out a Canada stone and score two, 2-2.
Then in the sixth end, with the game level at 3-3, Mouat came up short with his final draw attempt, to give Canada a game-changing steal of three and a 6-3 lead.
In the eighth end with Canada now leading by 6-4, Gushue played a draw to score three and take a 9-4 lead. At this point, the Scots conceded, with a final score of 9-4 to Canada.
After the game, Canada’s Gushue said, “We gave up a two in the second end, we got an unexpected miss from Bruce and that steal of three turned the game around and put the game totally in our control.”
Italy versus Sweden
Sweden had topped the round robin to take the direct route to the semi-final while Italy reached this game by beating Germany by 8-3 in the qualification game.
In the third end, with the score still at 0-0, Sweden’s skip Niklas Edin played a hit on an Italian stone to open the scoring with two points.
Then, in the fourth end, Italy’s skip Joel Retornaz responded with a nose-hit to score one, 2-1 to Sweden.
In the seventh end, with the score still 2-1 to Sweden, Edin played a draw to score three points and improve his team’s lead to 5-1.
In the eighth end Italy’s Retornaz could not find a way to score two points with an attempted raise, and had to settle for just one, reducing Sweden’s lead to 5-2.
Sweden then went on to win by 5-3 to head for the final.
After this win, Sweden’s Edin said, “It was almost perfect there, we started well and played a really solid game.”
Looking to the final against Canada, he said, “It’ll be another tough battle tomorrow, for sure. We’ve got to play really well again. We have a huge motivation now, and we need to keep firing on all cylinders.”
Canada and Sweden will play for the world title and gold medals on Sunday at 15:00. Scotland and Italy will come back onto the ice to play for bronze medals, at 10:00 (CEST).
Click here for all the results and the playing schedule.
For information about streaming, click here.
Engage with World Curling during the LGT World Men’s Curling Championship 2024 on TikTok, Twitter/X, Instagram, Facebook, and Weibo and by searching the hashtags #WMCC and #curling
