[St Charles Owl]

It seems their protocols couldn’t stop the virus but they certainly have made it possible to contain an outbreak and continue the tournament!! If Eurosport have anything else more pressing at 4am than the final of a live event then they need to pack in being a sports broadcaster!!

[ritchiebaby]

Following on from that press release, the various authorities have decreed that for the remainder of the tournament, all players on the ice must wear face-masks and will also receive PCR tests before and after each game.

Following on from Scotland's victory over Canada, Switzerland kept up the European domination by beating USA 7-6. The score might have been tight, but the Swiss were generally in control of the game.

That means that tonight's late night Semi-finals, starting at 11pm and probably finishing around 2am, will be Sweden v Switzerland and Scotland v RCF. The winners will play for the Gold/Silver Medals with the losers playing for the Bronze Medal, both at 4am.

Eurosport 1 will be broadcasting the Semi-finals from 11pm to 2am and the only definite broadcast scheduled of the Final is a highlights programme from 1pm to 3pm tomorrow (and also on Eurosport 2 at various times on Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday). Unbelievably the programme scheduled for 4am tomorrow on Eurosport 1 is the 2014 World Snooker Championship Final.

[ritchiebaby]

In the Semi-finals Sweden earned their route to the final with a confortable 11-3 win over Switzerland. The Swiss had an early lead of 3-2, but suffered a loss of 5 shots in the 5th end and then 3 shots in the 8th, leading to the concession.Scotland had a tight match against RCF and eventually won 5-3 with a perfect last stone draw.

Sweden and Scotland battled out a really tight game, with the scores tied at 5-5 after 8 ends, before a slightly short stone set up a double for Niklas Edin to play perfectly and score 5 shots once again and clinch the victory - his 5th World Championship in all (along with Oscar Eriksson) and the 3rd consecutive World Championship for Sweden.

In the Bronze Medal Match Switzerland beat RCF 6-5 with a last stone draw to gain the victory.

MEDALLISTS
GOLD - Sweden
SILVER - Scotland
BRONZE - Switzerland

All in all, an excellent performance from Scotland, and one step up from Mouat's Bronze in 2018.

[St Charles Owl]

So please answer the burning question - did Eurosport show the final of this or the snooker??

Great performance by Scotland and good experience and preparation for the GB & NI Winter Olympic team!!

[Lord Snooty]

We watched the highlights this afternoon on Eurosport. Great shot from the Swedish skip to win it.

[ritchiebaby]

So please answer the burning question - did Eurosport show the final of this or the snooker??

Great performance by Scotland and good experience and preparation for the GB & NI Winter Olympic team!!

SCO, I've no idea and I couldn't care less. I watched it on WCF TV.

---

Very true, Snooty, but if Mouat's stone had travelled a couple of feet further, Edin would have had an extremely difficult shot to even score a single shot. These double take-outs are a feature of Edin's play and I'm sure the Scots knew that was game over even before he played. Many games are won or lost on a single shot and Edin is the one player I'd expect to always succeed.

[ritchiebaby]

Apologies once again for my laziness, but it's much easier to let the experts do the talking.

"After extensive reviews conducted with Alberta Health, the testing facilities, event medical officers and an expert in infectious disease, four positive tests for COVID-19 that put the World Men’s Curling Championship 2021 on hold for a day are now considered “False Positives” resulting from potentially contaminated samples.

The four athletes, who cannot be identified, were tested on Friday (9 April) as part of exit testing as they were preparing to leave upon the conclusion of the Championship. Three of them have since been retested twice, while one athlete who was participating in Sunday’s play-offs has been retested three times, and all tested negative each time.

Every athlete in the bubble, along with event officials deemed to be in close contact with the four athletes who tested positive, underwent testing on Saturday (10 April), and all tested negative.

On Sunday (11 April), athletes participating in the play-offs were tested before and after each of their games, and again, all tests returned negative.

Additionally, all staff working in the hotel hosting the athletes were tested on Sunday, and all tested negative.

All of the tests undertaken were PCR throat swabs.

According to Alberta Health, PCR testing remains the gold standard for COVID-19 testing. Very rarely, there are occurrences through sampling or testing processes when samples may become contaminated and a false positive may result.

Following an investigation over the weekend, it appears that this may have occurred in this case and follow-up testing was undertaken.

With the original four positive test results now deemed as “False Positives”, the integrity of the Calgary bubble remains intact."

If you've read every word of this, well done, and if you have any comments on the "contamination", keep them to yourselves. You can't believe a word officialdom tells you - making a mountain (and there's plenty of them in Alberta) out of a molehill.