[ritchiebaby]

NEVER IN DOUBT!!! 

Scotland got their act together to beat Switzerland by 9-7, despite doing their best to throw away a 5 shot lead with 4 ends to go. They lost two 3s in the last 4 ends but managed to keep the Swiss at bay with 2 perfect draw stones from Ross Paterson in the other 2 ends. Paterson increased his shot percentage to 81, which made all the difference.

Canada and Sweden progressed directly to the Semi-finals with 10 and 9 wins respectively. italy finished 3rd with 8 wins, Scotland and United States tied with 7 wins, but the Scots finished in 4th courtesy of their previous win over the States. Switzerland, Korea and Germany tied in 6th place with 6 wins. They had 1 win each over their opponents, so the remaining place was decided on the Draw Shot Challenge, whch Switzerland won comfortably.

Now Scotland play United States at 10pm tonight for the chance to play Canada in the Semi-final, with Italy playing Switzerland at the same time for the chance to play Sweden in the other Semi-final. Both Semi-finals will take place at 3am tomorrow.

[ritchiebaby]

You'll have noticed in my speed in posting this, that Scotland failed in their Qualifying Game against United States, losing 4-6. Despite this the Scottish players competed well as, after being 1-5 down after 5 ends, they came back to 4-5 with one end to play. A long raise shot by Ross Paterson missed the US stone by an inch or so - if successful Scotland would have had lain 3 shots (and game) with one stone to come from US.

In the other game, Italy beat Switzerland by 10-4, greatly helped by scoring 4 shots in the 1st end. However, the 2 winners didn't get the chance to contest the Gold/Silver Medal Game, as Canada defeated United States by 8-5 and Sweden beat Italy by 8-4.

The Bronze Medal Game is as good as finished with a comprehensive lead built by Italy over United States by 13-4 after 7 ends.  Italy once again scored 4 shots in the 1st end and have just scored 6 shots in the 7th end to surely secure the Bronze Medal. I have no idea what happened to the United States team tonight, but the US 2nd, 3rd and 4th players scored 61%, 61% and 59%, absolutely horrendous figures for players in a World Championship. For goodness sake, I'd be gutted at scoring those percentages in an ordinary club game.

I would like to point out that I did predict the top 2 teams in the round-robin and the 2 teams in the Final, as well as 3 of the 4 other Qualifiers. Embarrassingly, one of my picks, Korea, were replaced by Scotland in the final reckoning.

The Gold/Silver Medal Match between Canada and Sweden will take place at midnight tonight. And United States have conceded their game in the 8th end.

[ritchiebaby]

And my prediction success goes on with Sweden beating Canada 8-6 to win the Gold Medal. Niklas Edin and his team of Daniel Magnusson, Rasmus Wranaa and Oskar Eriksson have now won the last 4 World Championships and Edin has 6 World Titles to his name.


Canada started off the better team having a lead of 3-0 after 2 ends, and led 4-3 after 5 ends, but once Sweden edged ahead in the 6th end they never were behind again. In the last end with the scores tied at 6-6, Canadian skip Brad Gushue chose to play a strange shot by trying to draw behind 2 counting Swedish stones, but was far too wide leaving Sweden to pick up Gold. Gushue had his poorest game all week, so perhaps the pressure proved too much once Sweden took control.