[ritchiebaby]

The KUNTAI World Wheelchair Curling Championship 2021 will begin on Saturday 23 October and end on Saturday 30 October at the National Aquatic Centre, also known as the Ice Cube, in Beijing, China.

In addition to competing for a world medal, teams will be aiming to secure as many Paralympic Qualification Points in order to qualify for the Paralympics in March 2022. The 11 teams with the most points cumulated from their performance at the 2019, 2020 and 2021 World Championships will get through to the Games, with China qualifying as hosts. The 12 teams competing in the coming week are Canada, China, Italy, Korea, Latvia, Norway, RCF, Scotland, Slovakia, Sweden, Switzerland and United States.

The championship will begin with a round-robin stage from Saturday until Thursday. A six-team play-off will then take place. In that play-off the teams ranked first and second at the end of the round robin progress directly to the semi-finals. Each of their opponents will be decided by a qualification round where the third ranked team will play the sixth ranked team and the fourth ranked team will play the fifth. The winners of these games advance to the semi-finals on Friday, with the bronze medal game on Saturday morning and the final on Saturday afternoon.

Scotland's team is Hugh Nibloe (Skip), Gregor Ewan (Vice-Skip), David Melrose (Second), Meggan Dawson-Farrell (Lead) and Charlotte McKenna (Alternate). Nibloe and Melrose won Silver Medals at these Championships in 2019, with Nibloe also winning Bronze in 2017, but Scotland have never won Gold since 2005, so another Gold is long overdue.

Scotland's first game is against Norway on Saturday and play Italy and then Korea on Sunday. I could quote times, but the ones on the WCF website don't make sense, unless they're playing through the night.

[ritchiebaby]

Right, it's all making sense now. The article on the WCF website quotes Beijing time, but the playing schedule quotes UK time, with a time difference of 7 hours.

So, Scotland's games in UK time are as follows:-
v Norway on Saturday at 07.05
v Italy on Sunday at 02.05
v Korea on Sunday at 12.05
v Canada on Monday at 07.05
v Switzerland on Monday at 12.05
v Sweden on Tuesday at 07.05
v Latvia on Tuesday at 12.05
v RCF on Wednesday at 02.05
v China on Wednesday at 07.05
v Slovakia on Thursday at 02.05
v United States on Thursday at 12.05

Then the top 6 teams continue to the next stage. The top 2 qualifiers go directly to the Semi-finals at 12.05 on Friday. Teams 3 to 6 will play a qualification game at 07.05 on Friday with the winners going into the Semi-finals. The Semi-final losers will play for the Bronze Medals at 03.05 on Saturday and the Semi-final winners will play for the Gold and Silver Medals at 07.35 on Saturday.

No sign of any TV broadcasts yet. It's probably not considered important enough or too costly compared to churning out interminable repeats of old snooker games.

[ritchiebaby]

Scotland had a good solid finish in their opening game against Norway, winning 6-4 after being 2-4 down at the halfway stage. Statistically, every Scotland player bettered their opponent, which is very satisfactory.

Norway are ahead of Scotland in the World Rankings, so the Scots have got off to a good start.

[ritchiebaby]

Once again Scotland came from 2-4 behind, this time after 3 ends, to score the next 4 ends to run out easy 10-4 winners against Italy. To be honest, it was an expected win, but Scotland need to get off to a better start against higher-ranked teams.

Korea provided the higher-ranked opposition in the next game and the Scots did indeed get off to a much better start, winning the first 2 ends. But the loss of 3 shots in both the 3rd and 4th ends, gave Korea the leeway they needed to see out the game and get their 1st win. The final score was 6-8, but Scotland scored in 3 of the last 4 ends, although they were too far behind to seriously challenge the Koreans.

[ritchiebaby]

Another good solid performance from Scotland in their 7-4 win over Canada. In general, Canada's wheelchair team are not considered as strong as their able-bodied counterparts but will still take a few scalps along the way.

After that good performance, Scotland continued where they left off against Switzerland by storming into a 8-2 lead after 5 ends. Restricting the Swiss to a single shot in the following end was in the overall game plan, but in the 2nd last end, the Scots threw the game plan out of the window by losing 4 shots to set up a nervy last end. However Scotland held their nerve, scoring 3 shots to eventually win by 11-7.

The result of all this drama leaves the Scots with 4 wins and 1 loss to put them into 1st equal position with China, RCF and United States. Sweden went into today's sessions unbeaten with 3 wins, but lost 2 games on the trot to leave them joint 5th with Canada and Latvia.

[ritchiebaby]

Scotland played Sweden earlier and suffered their second defeat, losing 2-9 with 2 ends to go. They lost 5 shots in 3 ends followed by 4 shots in the 6th end, prompting the concession. The Scots made a couple of changes after the 4th end, but that brought no real improvement. The statistics make sorry reading with only Gregor Ewan managing to successfully compete against a dominant Swedish team.

In an almost complete reversal of their earlier game, Scotland swept aside Latvia by 10 shots to 1, after losing the 1st end. They reverted to their original line-up for this game and obviously reverted their original form.

The Scots now occupy equal 2nd place with RCF, Sweden and United States with 5 wins and 4 games to go. China lead with 6 wins and Norway are on 4 wins in 6th, with Canada and Latvia on 3 wins. A big day to come tomorrow with games against RCF and China, when 1 win might be enough to qualify in the Top 6 and still have ambitions over the next 2 days to be in the Top 2 to qualify directly into the Semi-finals.

[ritchiebaby]

Scotland's first crunch game came against RCF, where the Scots eventually lost 4-8, despite being 4-3 up after 5 ends. To be fair each of the Scots was outplayed by their immediate opponent and that pressure told in the 7th end. Russia/RCF are well above Scotland in the rankings, so there's no need to be downheartened about the defeat.

At the top of the rankings, even well ahead of RCF, sit China, who the Scots managed to beat 3-2 in an extremely low-scoring game. In the last end China had the choice between drawing the shot for 1 to level the game or take out Scotland's only stone and lie shot to level the game. They decided to take out which they did but didn't lie, giving Scotland the win.

This leaves China, RCF and Sweden leading on 7 wins, with Scotland and United States 4th equal on 6 wins. Canada and Norway are tied for 6th on 5 wins and Korea and Latvia are both on 3 wins. Theoretically none of the above teams are guaranteed qualification yet with 2 games to go.

[ritchiebaby]

Scotland reverted to their type by losing to Slovakia by 3-8 in a game which gradually drifted away from them. Already 1-5 down after 5 ends, the Scots lost 3 shots in the 7th end and conceded the game. This is yet another loss to a team well below them in the rankings and league table - certainly not medal-winning form. Recently the Women's team have been similarly guilty of falling into this trap, but the Men have generally avoided it.

Thankfully for Scotland, Norway were defeated by both China and Sweden, guaranteeing Scottish qualification, despite currently losing their game against United States by 5-7 with 2 ends to play.

The other teams guaranteed qualification are China, RCF, Sweden, United States and Canada.

[ritchiebaby]

Scotland didn't last much longer in the game against US losing 5-8. RCF and Sweden also lost their last games against Korea and China.Tomorrow's Qualification Games at 07.05 are Sweden v Scotland and Canada v United States with RCF and China respectively awaiting the winners in the Semi-finals at 12.05.

Cometh the hour, cometh the man/woman. No messing about now. Every stone and decision is vital at this stage.

[ritchiebaby]

Every stone was vital at this stage and it was Sweden who played them all. Once again Scotland changed their 3rd and 4th players round and also changed the lead player during the game and once again it made no real difference. Sad to say they didn't even manage to score a single shot and went down 0-10 to a dominant Swedish team.

In the other completely different and extremely competitive game, Canada and the United States were tied at 4-4 with one end to play. United States made full advantage of having last stone and won by 6-4.

In the first Semi-final this afternoon, China played United States and got off to a good start, opening up a 6-3 lead at the halfway stage. Although they were never further behind, the US team eventually lost by 5-8 to a last-stone takeout by China.

Sweden played RCF in the second Semi-final and, to show you what Scotland were up against, Sweden demolished the reigning World Champions by 12-3, including 6 shots in the 5th end.

Tomorrow's games
BRONZE - United States v RCF
GOLD/SILVER - China v Sweden