Canada, Switzerland and Italy top men’s table at Olympic Winter Games

Canada beat United States of America by 6-3 in Friday morning’s third men’s round-robin session, for a second win that puts them into joint top spot, along with Switzerland and hosts Italy.

Canada and the Americans swapped singles in the first two ends for 1-1. The Canadians then blanked the third end before scoring two in the fourth when their skip Brad Jacobs played a tap-back with his last stone. The Americans could only reply with a single point in the fifth end when, looking for a score of two, skip Daniel Casper was short with his final draw.

Brett Gallant and Marc Kennedy, Canada © World Curling / Stephen Fisher

After the break, good clearing play by United States of America forced Canada to draw for just one point in the sixth end, and a 4-2 lead.

The seventh end was blanked and then Canada stole two more points in the eighth, for 6-2, when Casper’s attempted take-out was unsuccessful. A take-out by Casper in the ninth gave the Americans a single point from the end, and then they conceded, finishing with a final score of 6-3 to Canada.

Daniel Casper, United States of America © World Curling / Stephen Fisher

Speaking later, Canadian skip Brad Jacobs said, “Those were two must-wins games. We circled these two on the schedule as games we certainly should win, and must win.”

Speaking about his team’s performance, he said, “We’re getting more and more comfortable, seeing the lines, hitting our weight, communication.”

Reflecting further on team performance he added, “This game is all about execution, and precision. We’re not quite playing to that yet, but it’s a long week and I think we just got closer in that game.”

Jacobs skipped Canada to Olympic gold at Sochi 2014 and he said, “It’s totally amazing to be back at the Olympics. It’s changed a little bit in twelve years, being here in Italy is exciting. You wake up every day and want this to last forever. You don’t even know what day it is, all you know is you get to play in the biggest sporting event in the world.”

Brad Jacobs, Canada © World Curling / Stephen Fisher

Italy beat Great Britain by 9-7 with the last stone of a high calibre game — a raise take-out by skip Joel Retornaz. But before that, the scene was set for a tense match-up in the first end, when Great Britain skip Bruce Mouat — looking to open the scoring for his team — misjudged a raise take-out, and gave up a steal of four instead.

The rest of the game saw the British team striving to get back on form.

With Italy leading by 5-1, Mouat played a double take-out to score two points in the fourth end, reducing the Italian lead to 5-3.

Bobby Lammie, Great Britain © World Curling / Stephen Fisher

Britain made further progress in the eighth, with another score of two points through a take-out by Mouat, and Italy now only led by 7-6.

In the ninth, Italy skip Joel Retornaz got the angles wrong on a double take-out to give up a steal of one that allowed the British team to level the game at 7-7. However, a raise take-out by Retornaz in the tenth gave Italy two more points and a 9-7 win.

Sebastiano Arman, Italy © World Curling / Stephen Fisher

Afterwards, Retornaz spoke about his early four-point steal saying, “I was quite surprised — I didn’t see that coming. An early lead is always nice but you also know that they’re going to go all in from the second end in, they’re going to come back for sure.”

“It’s good to see four on the board but you’ve got to be very careful. Things change in your head because you’ve got those four points, but you can’t rely on that. From the first end, you’ve still got to play ten ends — it’s too long. You’re playing the number one team in the world, so you know it’s going to be hard. Our goal was to stay tight and have hammer in the last end.”

More generally he added, “That was a very good curling game. It’s good for us, it’s good for the fans. Those are the games you want to be in. The extra focus has to be there; the team performance has to be there.”

Joel Retornaz, Italy © World Curling / Stephen Fisher

Switzerland beat Czechia 7-3 in this session. The Swiss opened with a score of two in the first end, through a draw by their fourth player Benoit Schwarz-van Berkel. They then scored two more in the fourth, this time with a take-out by Schwarz-van Berkel.

Czechia gave up a steal of one in the fifth end when their skip Lukas Klima got a raise take-out wrong, giving the Swiss a 5-1 lead at the break. Czechia then conceded after eight ends, with the score at 7-3 in Switzerland’s favour.

Yannick Schwaller, Switzerland © World Curling / Stephen Fisher

The fourth game of this session saw Norway beat People’s Republic of China by 8-6 after an extra end, when their skip Magnus Ramsfjell played a take-out and stay on a Chinese stone to score the two points.

With a three-way tie at the top of the table involving Canada, Italy and Switzerland, the opposite end sees both People’s Republic of China and Czechia still looking for their first wins, along with Sweden.