18 February 2026
Switzerland second to qualify for women’s semi-finals at Olympic Winter Games
With a score of three in the tenth end of a close game, Switzerland beat Denmark by 6-4 in Wednesday evening’s eleventh women‘s round-robin session to qualify for the semi-finals.
The Swiss blanked the first end and then opened the scoring with two points in the second when their fourth player Alina Paetz drew her final stone to join another Swiss stone already sitting in the house.
Denmark then blanked the next two ends until, in the fifth, their skip Madeleine Dupont drew her final stone near the button to join another Danish stone just biting at the front edge. This scored two and levelled the game at 2-2 as the teams went into the break.
Denmark then took a 3-2 lead in the sixth end, when Switzerland did not deliver their last stone, content to give up just one point rather than risk more damage.
Switzerland blanked the seventh then levelled the score to 3-3 in the eighth when Paetz drew inside two Danish stones. Denmark took one point from a busy ninth end to take a 4-3 lead.
Then, in the tenth, good build-up play by the Swiss meant that Paetz did not have to deliver her last stone of the end, as Switzerland scored three for a 6-4 victory and that all important semi-finals qualification.
Afterwards, a delighted Swiss skip Silvana Tirinzoni said, “Qualified sounds very good to me. It was hard to get there, so we’re relieved that we made it — on a game early actually. Tomorrow is still important but now not life or death.”
Looking forward, she said, “I have huge trust in my team and I believe in my team. I think we’re strong enough to face every opponent. I think we have played well enough to win this to be honest, even though we’ve had close games, but the opponents always play this hard. So, I am confident and we just have to go out there and play our best.”
Switzerland will now complete their round-robin programme on Thursday with a game against United States of America, who are still battling for a semi-final slot.
Great Britain is another team battling against the odds to make it to the semi-finals, and they beat Japan by 9-3, a fourth victory overall that keeps their mathematical chances alive.
Great Britain blanked the first end and then opened the scoring in the second with three points when their fourth player Rebecca Morrison played a tap-back on a Japanese stone. They followed that up with a steal of one for a 4-0 lead when Japan’s skip Yoshimura Sayaka was short with her final draw in the third end.
Yoshimura was short with her final draw of the fourth end too, but managed to open the Japanese account with one point through another of her stones that was lying in shot position.
Great Britain’s Morrison then played a double take-out in the fifth to score two points and improve her team’s lead to 6-1 at the break.
Japan scored two points in the sixth end with a double takeout by Yoshimura, to reduce the British lead to 6-3, but Great Britain responded in the seventh with another score of two for 8-3, through a draw by Morrison.
A steal of one by the British quartet in the eighth end was enough to persuade Japan to concede, with a final score of 9-3.
After this win, British skip Sophie Jackson said, “That was a great evening at the office. We debriefed the game earlier, figured out what we needed to do better and yeah, we just did it!”
Speaking about playing with no margin for error, she said, “We love that pressure. The resilience of this team when we’re kind of down and out is just amazing. I wish we could produce it earlier, but that’s just the way it is. Tomorrow we will just be trying to put in another performance like that, get the win and then see where that takes us.”
Great Britain will face Italy in their last round-robin game, an Italian team that went down by 7-8 to Canada in this session, when, in an extra end, Canada skip Rachel Homan managed to get her final draw just inside the counting Italian stone.
The fourth game of this session saw Sweden — already qualified for the semi-finals — beat People’s Republic of China by 9-4, thanks to a score of two in the second end, a steal of two in the third and a score of three in the eighth, to finish off their victory.
As the teams go into Thursday afternoon’s final round-robin session with two teams — Sweden and Switzerland — guaranteed their places in the semifinals, four other teams — Canada, Republic of Korea, United States of America and Great Britain could still join them.
Follow the live scores from the women’s team curling at Milano Cortina 2026 here.
Find the full women’s team curling schedule and results here.
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