16 February 2026
First win day for People’s Republic of China at Olympic Winter Games
People’s Republic of China scored their first round-robin win against hosts Italy in this afternoon’s eighth men’s round-robin session.
Italy had hammer in the first end, but build-up from People’s Republic of China meant they had two counting stones spread across the house. With his last stone, Italian skip Joel Retornaz played a take-out, but only managed to remove one stone, allowing People’s Republic of China to steal their first point.
People’s Republic of China stole two more in the second end when Retornaz’s attempt to draw was too heavy and went on to steal another in the third, giving People’s Republic of China a 4-0 lead.
Italy finally managed to get points on the board in the fourth end. They had two stones lying and when Chinese skip Xu Xiaoming’s attempted to remove them, he could only remove one. This allowed Retornaz to draw for two, bringing to score to 4-2.
A game-changing score of four came for People’s Republic of China in the fifth end. They were only lying one counter when skip Xu Xiaoming played a promotion take-out to remove a single Italian stone that was stopping three other Chinese stones in the house from scoring. His shooter also stayed, and People’s Republic of China scored four.
After this, Joel Retornaz was able to score another two in the sixth end with a nose-hit, but People’s Republic of China responded in the seventh, scoring another three when Xu played a double take-out. With the scoreboard at 11-4 after the seventh end, Italy conceded in the eighth, handing People’s Republic of China their first win.
Following the game, People’s Republic of China’s skip Xu Xiaoming said, “Firstly, everyone is so excited, especially today as it’s the Chinese New Year, we got our first win beating Italy on home ice with a large crowd cheering for them. It’s a lot of pressure on our side, but we just kept calm, focussed on our performance and won the game.”
When asked what changed within his team to lead to this success, Xu said, “Everybody desires medals and feels this pressure, but for today we forgot that and just focussed on our performance, kept our peace and played our game.”
Germany kept their semi-final hopes alive when they beat 2022 Olympic champions Sweden 7-3 in this session. In this game, Niklas Edin became the curler with the most Olympic games played at 51, passing previous record holder United States of America’s John Shuster, who has played 50 games.
After a blanked first end, Sweden were first to put a point on the board when Niklas Edin played a nose-hit to score one in the second. Germany put themselves on the front foot in the third when skip Marc Muskatewitz played a double take-out on two Swedish counters to ensure his two stones lying in the house counted, securing a 2-1 lead.
Sweden levelled the score to 2-2 in the fourth end through a draw from Edin, and by the fifth-end break, Germany were ahead with a score of 3-2, thanks to a draw from Muskatewitz.
The sixth end saw Sweden’s Edin attempt to play a hit-and-roll with his last stone to push one of their lying stones further to the button, but it didn’t go to plan and he knocked a German stone into scoring position. This allowed Germany to steal one and up their lead to 4-2.
The teams then swapped singles for the seventh and eighth ends until, in the ninth end, Edin’s attempt to play a promotion take-out into a busy house went the wrong way and Germany stole another point.
In the final end, Sweden needed three points to have a chance of winning. With his last stone, Edin attempted to play a promotion take-out, but his angle was wrong and ended up removing two of his own stones in process, allowing Germany to steal another single and win the game 7-3.
When asked how it felt to beat reigning Olympic champions Sweden, German skip Marc Muskatewitz said, “It feels really good, we play the guys pretty often during a season. The last year it’s been a little bit back-and-forth so it’s pretty nice playing against these guys. They are really gentlemen guys on the ice.
“For us, as we said yesterday, we need to win now to still have the chance, and that’s what we’ll do.”
This win keeps Germany in play-off contention, and when asked what’s needed to keep this winning momentum, Muskatewitz said, “I think we have to stay patient and go into every game as we did in this one. Yesterday we had a really good meeting where we settled the half-time of the tournament. What was going good? What was going wrong? What can we do better? And today we were just sharp on the ice. We did everything we wanted, so it worked out and this is what we’ll do in the next games.”
This session also saw Canada beat Czechia, who are still searching for their first win. After scoring one in the first end thanks to a draw by Brad Jacobs, Canada went on to steal three more singles over the next three ends. Czechia got their first point on the board in the fifth end when Lukas Klima played a promotion on his own stone to score. However, after good build-up, Canada’s Jacobs played a promotion take-out on a Czech stone to leave three of his own counters, bringing their lead to 7-1. In the ninth end, Czechia conceded with Canada winning 8-2.
In the final game of this session, Norway defeated Great Britain, 7-6 to shake up the rankings. In the eighth end, the teams were level 4-4, and with his last stone Great Britain skip Bruce Mouat clipped a guard, allowing Norway to steal two points. Norway then scored the winning single point in the tenth, securing their fourth win and pushing them to joint third on the rankings with United States of America. Great Britain now sit fifth.
Find live scores from the men’s team curling at Milano Cortina 2026 here.
Find the full men’s team curling schedule and results here.
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