31 October 2024
All eyes on world qualification at Pan Continental
United States women followed up a morning 6-2 win over New Zealand by beating Chinese Taipei by 19-0 in Wednesday evening’s sixth round-robin session, to keep their semi-final chances alive.
After their morning game, American skip Cory Thiesse said, “that was an important win and it felt good. We had a great game last night against Korea that we felt that we should have won. So, we wanted to take that momentum into today and have a good game. I think we’ve been playing OK for the most part. We’re still alive and it’s still in our own hands.”
Meanwhile China followed up their 14-2 morning win over Chinese Taipei with a 9-4 win over New Zealand, and these results set up a final round-robin showdown on Thursday afternoon between China and United States, with only the winner joining already-qualified Canada, Japan and Korea in the semi-finals. Even with a loss, the fifth place team will have the consolation of qualifying for the LGT World Women’s Championship 2025 in Korea.
At the same time, New Zealand will face Chinese Taipei in another winner-takes-all game, with the winner staying in next season’s A-Division and the loser going down to the B-Division.
In other games, world champions Canada had two wins, beating Korea by 8-2 and then Mexico by 10-1. Japan beat Mexico by 11-3 and defeated Korea 6-4 on the last stone.
Japan men join play-off teams
The men had their second-last round-robin games on Wednesday, and the results from this session determined Japan the final qualifier for the semi-finals.
Canada, United States and China had all previously secured their semi-final berths, but the last place was up for grabs as Japan faced New Zealand.
As it turned out, Japan dominated this game and led by 6-1 as the teams played the sixth end. Their fourth player Shimizu Tetsuro then played a hit, to score three points and increase his team’s lead to 9-1. New Zealand then conceded to give Japan the fourth semi-final place. Afterwards, Abe Shinya, Japan’s skip said, “that was a good win, we feel great about that. Reaching the semi-finals was a main goal for us, so I feel happy about that. We’re reading the ice quite well, and we’ll be ready for the semis now.”
Elsewhere, Canada kept their unbeaten run going, with a 13-8 win over Australia, who, despite this loss, can still qualify for the world championship. They face Korea – who had a 5-4 win over Japan – in their last round-robin game on Thursday, with only the winner qualifying for the BKT Tires World Men’s Curling Championship 2025 in Canada.
After this game, Canada skip Brad Gushue said, “I’m really critical of myself. I’d probably give us a B+ – I don’t think we’re playing as well as we’d like to. I don’t think we ever play as well as we’d like to, but certainly it’s been good.”
Korea beat China by 5-4, thanks to a tenth end single steal when China’s skip Xu Xiaoming just missed an attempted double take-out to win the game. Korea skip Lee Jaebeom then said, “we knew the importance for sure. We knew going into this game that we must achieve the win to give us one more chance at the world championship.”
In the fourth game of this session, United States, already qualified for the semi-final beat Chinese Taipei by 9-3. Chinese Taipei now sit alone in the bottom.
B-Division
In the men’s B-Division, Qatar scored a historic 8-ender against Nigeria. Meanwhile, Philippines kept their unbeaten record with a 16-0 win over Kenya, with Kazakhstan in second place behind them.
In the women’s B-Division, Australia, Kazakhstan and Philippines all share top spot – qualified for the semi-finals, as are fourth-placed Jamaica.
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