[ritchiebaby]

This year's Championships are being held in Richmond, British Columbia from Saturday 4 March to Sunday 12 March. Richmond is the home of Vancouver Airport and interestingly (to me anyways) over half of the residents identify as Chinese.

The competing teams in the Fours event are Canada, China, Czech Republic, Denmark, Italy, Japan, Korea, Latvia, Norway, Scotland, Sweden and United States.

Scotland is represented by Gregor Ewan (4th and Vice-Skip), Hugh Nibloe (3rd and Skip) Gary Logan (2nd) and Joanna Butterfield with Alternate Meggan Dawson-Farrell. They will play Korea and United States on Saturday, then Sweden and Denmark on Sunday.

Briefly, the format is that the top six teams after the round robin advance to the play-off stage, where the teams ranked first and second progress directly to the Semi-finals. The third-ranked team will play the sixth-ranked team in one qualification game, while the fourth-ranked team will meet the fifth-ranked team in the other qualification game with the winners going into the Semi-finals.

Running concurrently with the Fours event is the Mixed Doubles event and the teams are split into two groups. Group A is China, Estonia, Finland, Hungary, Norway, Poland, Scotland, Slovakia, Switzerland and United States with Group B consisting of Canada, Denmark, England, Germany, Italy, Japan, Korea, Latvia and Sweden.

Scotland's Double is Charlotte McKenna and David Melrose and England is represented by Stewart Pimblett and Rosemary Lenton.

Scotland play Hungary on Saturday and China on Sunday. England are up against Italy on Saturday, then Latvia on Sunday.

The top teams of each group progress directly to the Semi-finals. The teams ranked second and third in each group play in qualification games for the other Semi-final places.

[ritchiebaby]

This time Scotland got off to a poor start in the Fours Event, losing 4-6 to Korea, then 4-7 to United States yesterday. On each occasion the Scots had a chance but just didn't quite execute the necessary shots. Today they demolished Sweden 10-1 after only 6 ends with tonight's game at 7pm (Vancouver time) isn't due to start until 3am tomorrow (UK time). All future times will be UK times.

The Day 3 games are against Latvia at 8pm tomorrow and Czech Republic at 3am on Tuesday.

In the Mixed Doubles Event Scotland were well beaten 3-9 by Hungary with 1 end to play. England on the other hand have started very well, sneaking a 7-6 win against Italy in an extra end yesterday, followed by a 9-4 win over Sweden earlier today. At midnight tonight Scotland play China and England play Latvia.

Tomorrow the Scots play Slovakia at 5pm and Norway at midnight. The English Double are on at midnight against Korea.

[ritchiebaby]

In the Fours Event Scotland continued to climb the table with a hard-fought victory over Denmark by 6-4. According to the WCF website and FB page, Denmark "retired" and only showed a Scotland win with no score, but I must admit I'm getting a bit fed up with their poor coverage of this event. They seem far more interested in promoting their live streams than actually telling you what is going on.

Following on from their poor display against Latvia tonight, losing by 3-6, they are now mid-table with only 2 wins. At 4am, they will play Czech Republic to try to get their campaign back on track.

Scotland are going even worse in the Mixed Doubles Event, losing 3-10 against favourites China, then 0-8 against Slovakia, an unheard of defeat in Scottish curling. They will now play at 0.30am against  Norway for one of them to lift themselves off the bottom of the table.

Meanwhile England are doing much better. They had their first reverse early this morning, losing 4-8 against Latvia in a fairly close game, but have the chance to bounce back at 0.30am against Korea. Then they play Japan at 5pm tomorrow in another winnable game.

[ritchiebaby]

Early this morning in the Fours Event Scotland beat Czech Republic 9-3 to get back on track. In their second game just finished, they downed Japan 6-2, scoring single shots all the way, still leaving them in mid-table after 7 games. Tomorrow they are up against two of the stronger teams - Canada at 4am, then Norway at 8.30pm.

In the Mixed Doubles, Scotland's woes continued, losing 6-11 to Norway, despite being 6-4 ahead with 3 ends to play. They have still to win a game and now play Estonia at 0.30am and are in great danger of having no chance of progress in the competition at the half-way stage.

England kept up their good form pipping Korea 6-5 with 2 shots in the last end, then nipping past Japan 6-4 in another tight game. Their next game is against Canada, the group leaders, at 5pm tomorrow with England currently 2nd in the group.

Due to prior commitments I might not be back on here until Friday, so be prepared for a splurge (technical term there) of results then.

[ritchiebaby]

In the absence of some other sports programmes today, I'm filling the void with my Super Saturday Sports Splurge - well, just curling actually.

In the Fours Event, Scotland made the necessary adjustments to give themselves the chance of a medal. As feared, they were hammered 1-8 by Canada after only 6 ends, but made a great recovery later to defeat Norway 6-5. Afterwards they then suffered a huge reverses of 2-9 against China, losing 5 shots in the 7th end and 6-9 against bottom of the table Italy.

Amazngly, even with a record of 5 wins and 6 losses, they still qualified to contest the play-off games, solely because of their wins over the other teams on 5 wins - Norway and Czech Republic. Scotland then came to life in the first play-off game beating Korea by 6-2, seeing them into the Semi-final against Canada at 10pm tonight. Given their staggering level of inconsistency it might be difficult to see a win, but who would dare bet against them? The other Semi-final is China v Sweden.

Scotland also finished their games in the Mixed Doubles Event with a less than 50% record with 4 wins and 5 losses, just missing out on qualification by 1 win. Firstly they scraped through against Estonia by 10-9, scoring 3 shots in the last end, and trounced Switzerland 11-3 before losing narrowly to Finland by 6-7. Their campaign finished with excellent wins over United States by 6-1 and Poland by 9-8. They just started their good form too late for their own good.

England on the other hand continued on their merry way and although being defeated heavily 1-9 by Canada in their next game, they beat Germany 8-6 and then Denmark by the same score, to qualify in 3rd place with 6 wins out of 8. They now play United States in the Play-off Game at 5pm tonight, with the Semi-finals for the winners at 3am tomorrow. Given the standard of their play so far, there is no reason why they can't progress further.

[ritchiebaby]

Sad to say I've planted the kiss of death on England's cheeks this evening. Please forgive the vivid imagery coursing through your minds after that description, but in a wildly fluctuating game, they lost 10-11 to United States. The US scored 4 shots twice and England scored a 3 and a 5 leaving them 9-11 down coming into the last end. Unfortunately they only managed 1 shot but can take solace in the fact that they had played very well, probably above general expectations, throughout the competition.

[ritchiebaby]

Scotland continued their week of inconsistency in the latter stages of the Fours Event by losing 2-5 against Canada with a weak second half performance in the Semi-final. China beat Sweden by the same score in the other Semi-final.

Then the Scots came good in the Bronze Medal Game to beat Sweden 7-4, despite being 0-3 down after only 2 ends. They dominated the game thereafter to win comfortably. China beat Canada by 5-2 in the Gold Medal Game.

MEDAL WINNERS
GOLD - China
SILVER - Canada
BRONZE - Scotland

In the Mixed Doubles Event, the Semi-final results were as follows :- United States 7 Canada 6, Latvia 10 China 7. The Medal Games start at at 10.30pm, so it will be a brief report on Monday.

[ritchiebaby]

The Final Games in the Mixed Doubles Event saw another couple of high-scoring games. The Gold Medal Game was won by Latvia, who beat United States by 11-8 after an extra end. In the Bronze Game this score was exceeded by Canada beating China by 13-11.

MEDAL WINNERS
GOLD - Latvia
SILVER - United States
BRONZE - Canada

Scotland's Bronze Medallists in the Fours Event