Hosts Italy beat defending Olympic Champs Sweden in opening round at Olympic Winter Games

Italy gave themselves and the enthusiastic home crowd the best possible start to the men’s competition when they defeated defending Olympic champions Sweden by 7-6 in Wednesday evening’s opening round-robin session.

The Italians showed their intent from the start, stealing one point in the opening end. Sweden then blanked the next two ends before, in the fourth, Sweden’s Niklas Edin was facing four Italian stones in the house and was forced to draw for one to level the game at 1-1.

Niklas Edin, Sweden © World Curling / Stephen Fisher

In the fifth end, Italy’s Joel Retornaz played a raise take-out to score three points and take a 4-1 lead into the break.

Sweden bounced back with a hit by Edin for two points that reduced Italy’s lead to 4-3. A single point in the seventh improved the Italian lead to 5-3 before Sweden levelled the score at 5-5 with a double take-out for two points by Edin.

Amos Mosaner and Mattia Giovanella, Italy © World Curling / Stephen Fisher

Italy regained the lead in the ninth end when Retornaz scored two points with a hit-and-stay, for 7-5, and when Sweden could only score one point in the tenth, Italy chalked up their opening win.

After this win, Italy’s Retornaz said, “I don’t think I’ve won an opener in my previous Olympic appearances. It was good and that’s exactly the way we wanted to start the Games. We knew we were facing a strong team — the other teams are strong, but they are the Olympic and European champions. It’s a boost to our confidence, so we’re happy.”

“The other teams know that they will have a hard time playing us and we’ll do our best to defeat any team out here. We were just showing that we’re ready and now is the time to shine.”

Speaking about playing in front of a home crowd, he added, “It’s amazing to play in front of our crowd — my family is here. We’re not used to it, I’m sure we’ll show what we can do.”

Joel Retornaz, Italy © World Curling / Stephen Fisher

Elsewhere, Czechia made their first Olympic men’s appearance when they faced the United States of America. However, despite taking a 4-2 lead into the fifth end break, they could not celebrate with a win, as the Americans, on this team’s Olympic debut, clawed their way back into the game.

They scored two in the sixth to level the score at 4-4 and then added a score of three in the eighth when their skip Daniel Casper played a raise take-out, taking a 7-5 lead. The Czechs levelled with a score of two in the ninth, but Casper produced a raise take-out in the tenth to score one point and win by 8-7.

Daniel Caspar, United States of America © World Curling / Celine Stucki

After this win, Daniel Casper, skip of United States of America, said, “It’s super important [to start with a win]. I mean, especially at a first Olympics, it’s important in any event, but we’re the young team, we haven’t been here before, it can make it easy to snowball a little bit if you find that first win but we’ve got it under our belts, it opens a lot up.”

Meanwhile his teammate Luc Violette said, “It’s so special out there, it’s everything we could have ever dreamed of. And we won! And that’s all that matters.”

Ben Richardson, United States of America © World Curling / Celine Stucki

Great Britain were the first team off the ice with a nine-end 9-4 win over China, helped by scores of three in both the third and seventh ends. Meanwhile, it took Canada all the way to an extra end to beat debutants Germany by 7-6.