[ritchiebaby]

Summer is officially over! The inaugural World Mixed Curling Championships got under way this weekend in Bern, Schweiz or Suisse (or Berne, Switzerland as we know it). The competition started yesterday with all four home nations competing. The Scots team get a special mention because Cameron Bryce, the skip, plays out of my home rink in Kelso. He's one of Scotland's up-and-coming stars and is skipping the youngest team in the event.

Unfortunately this thread is only going to be an occasional results thread owing to my own commitments, but I'll be keeping it up to date for the quarter-finals and semi-finals on Friday and the final on Saturday. No fancy draws for this competition - the qualifiers will be involved in a straight draw for the Friday games. Well, apart from the fact that no teams from the same group will play each other in the quarter-finals. They'll probably get a FIFA official from along the road in Zurich to make sure that it is all done to get the right result.

GROUP A - Belgium, Denmark, France, Ireland, Italy, Lithuania, Romania, Slovakia, Sweden.

Johnjo Kenny, Marie O'Kane, Tony Tierney and Jen Ward.
Results so far - v Denmark 3-11, v Lithuania 11-5, v Romania 10-3.

GROUP B - Australia, Canada, Spain, Finland, Germany, Israel, Latvia, Norway, Wales.

Adrian Meikle, Dawn Watson, Andrew Tanner and Laura Beever.
Results so far - v Germany 2-10, v Australia 9-3, v Norway 9-3.

GROUP C - China, Czech Republic, England, Kazakhstan, New Zealand, Poland, Russia, Slovenia, Switzerland.

Arthur Bates, Lana Watson, Harry Mallows and Sara Jahodova.
Results so far - v Russia 4-5, v New Zealand 5-7,

GROUP D - Austria, Belarus, Brazil, Estonia, Hungary, Japan, Scotland, Turkey, USA.

Cameron Bryce, Katie Murray, Bobby Lammie and Sophie Jackson.
Results so far - v Brazil 13-2, v Estonia 12-4, v Japan 4-2.

[St Charles Owl]

Scotland have started well and boy that is one young looking team!!! Any of the home nations in with a chance of winning a medal??

[Lord Snooty]

That girl on the right is no more than 12 year old. 

Good to have a bit of curling back again. 

[ritchiebaby]

Scores updates
Ireland v Slovakia 4-6,
Wales v Israel 5-10,
England v Czech Republic 3-6, v China 3-4,
Scotland v Belarus 12-1.

All of which means that Ireland have 2 wins and 2 defeats in Group A, with Wales having the same record in Group B. England have yet to win a game in Group C after 4 attempts (although all their defeats have been by small margins), but Scotland continue their good form with 4 wins out of 4 in Group D.

All teams play 8 games, so Ireland and Wales have to get some wins under their belts to progress into the quarter-finals. Even at this early stage, it looks as though England will not make the play-offs for the quarter-finals, although all their defeats have been by small margins.

I'll not be on tomorrow night and might not be here on Wednesday, but I'll be back on Thursday with another update.

[ritchiebaby]

More results for you, with more mixed news from the mixed championships.

Ireland - v France 7-6, v Sweden 5-6, v Belarus 6-2.
Wales - v Finland 8-6, v Canada 3-6.
England - v Slovenia 3-7, v Kazakhstan 10-4, v Poland 2-4.
Scotland - v Turkey 9-2, v Hungary 11-3.

Tomorrow, Ireland play Italy, where a win might still not be enough to see them into the 2nd/3rd play-offs with the potential of 4 teams (Ireland, France, Italy and Denmark or Slovakia) tying for 2nd place. Wales play Spain and Latvia and only 2 wins and then Germany and Norway beating Finland and Canada will be good enough for them to qualify. England are already out, having only 1 win, but it's all good experience for a team new to Championship Curling, and they finish with a game against Switzerland. Scotland have qualified with 2 games to go against USA and Austria and have a great chance to go straight into the quarter-finals draw.

[ritchiebaby]

Today saw the final games in the round robin games to decide qualification for the quarter-finals to be played tomorrow.

Results
Ireland - v Italy 2-8.
Wales - v Spain 4-5, v Latvia 1-8.
England - v Switzerland 4-7.
Scotland - v USA 3-9, v Austria 6-3.

The poorest day so far for the home nations with the only win being recorded by Scotland. This means that USA and Scotland tied for first place in Group D, but USA go straight into the tomorrow night's quarter-finals, having beaten Scotland in the group. The Scots play Switzerland in the 2nd v 3rd play-offs to decide who joins Sweden, Germany, Russia and USA for the draw. The other play-offs are Italy v Canada and China v Hungary with Norway awaiting the winners of a tie-breaker between Denmark and France.

Ireland finished with 4 wins, Wales with 3 and England with 1. Scotland had 7 wins and from now on, only a win will do.

[ritchiebaby]

It's now all over for Scotland as well, but the Scots team have had a reasonably successful first World Championship. They're all aged 18 to 20 and will have more chances to progress to the very top. Switzerland beat them by 6-4 in a game that could have gone either way. In the other play-off games China beat Hungary 5-4, Canada beat Italy 7-4 and Norway beat Denmark 10-5.

Tonight's quarter-finals saw Norway beating USA 7-5 and Sweden beating Switzerland 5-4, both Scandinavian teams scoring 2 shots in the last end to clinch the victory. The other two games only went to 7 ends, with China beating Germany fairly comfortably by 8-3, only losing two ends in the process, and Russia repeating that scoreline over Canada, but Russia only managed to score in two ends - a 3 in the fourth end and then a 5 in the seventh end.

Tomorrow morning's semi-finals are Sweden v Russia and Norway v China. The games to decide the medals will be played late tomorrow afternoon.

[ritchiebaby]

In this morning's semi-finals, Sweden raced into a 5-1 lead after 3 ends, but had to hold off a spirited Russian fightback to edge through 6-5, scoring with the last stone of the game. Norway made a similar positive start against China, leading 5-2 after 3 ends and they managed to ease through comfortably by 7-3.

The Bronze medal game between Russia and China saw only 1 shot scored in the first four ends - obviously a very tactical game - and China scored another single in the fifth end to lead 2-0. Then scores of 2, first by Russia, then China and Russia again tied the game at 4-4 after eight ends. In the extra end China sneaked the win with a single shot.

In the much more straightforward Gold/Silver medal game, Norway scored a 2 in the first end and were never caught, winning by 5-3.

Final Results
Gold - Norway
Silver - Sweden
Bronze - China

[St Charles Owl]

Would never have considered China as a contender in curling, but I suppose with over 1.3 billion people they must have people somewhere who play every sport!!

Well done to Scotland for getting through the groups, shame they could go a bit further but as you say it's a very young team and one that should improve from the experience.

Cheers for the updates Ritchie, great to follow your reports!!

[ritchiebaby]

The winning Norwegian team - Sander Roelvaag, Pia Trulsen, Julie Molnar and Steffen Walstad.

This is the only photo I could find and I only used it because I like men with beards. Honest!!!

Wait a minute, I tell a lie.   Here's one where you can see them all.