12 December 2025
China win last ticket to Milano Cortina Olympic Winter Games 2026
China earned the last place in the line-up at February’s Olympic Winter Games with a 9-4 win over Japan, in the second men’s qualification game.
China had hammer in the opening end and their skip Xu Xiaoming played a nose-hit to open the scoring with two points.
Japan’s fourth player Yanagisawa Riku hit and rolled out his last stone of the second end to blank, but then was forced to hit and stay for just one point in the third end, to reduce China’s lead to 2-1.
China then blanked the fourth end. In the fifth, China’s Xu split the house early and then Japan’s Yanagisawa missed a cross-house double take-out attempt, leaving Xu a straightforward draw for two points and a 4-1 lead.
In the sixth end, Xu had a miss, leaving Japan’s Yanagisawa with a tap-back for two points, to reduce China’s lead to 4-3.
China could only take one point from the seventh end, when Xu got the angles wrong on his second shot, for a 5-3 lead.
In the eighth, China had two stones counting in the house when Yanagisawa made a draw to the button to score one point and reduce the China lead to 5-4.
With the last stone of the ninth, Xu played a raise at the front of the house to pick out the sole Japan stone sitting in a cluster there, to score four points from the end and take a 9-4 lead. Japan then conceded.
After this win, China’s Xu said, “we’re very excited. We’ve had to work so hard this week. We’ve had to come back extremely tough from two losses and fight for that win.”
This result means that China’s Xu will be appearing at his third Olympic Games, having been a member of the China team that finished fourth in 2014.
This now leaves the Olympic Qualification Event to the Mixed Doubles contestants, whose competition starts on Saturday.
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