Quick impressions of Draw 3

As goes the skip, so goes the team.  That's true for any curling team but especially so with this one.  Jim Armstrong is the powerful personality on the team and the player that the rest of the side look up to.  And he is calling a great game.  Today's problemswere that even though he gave himself a chance to bail his team out every end, too often he failed to execute.

Italy were very pumped for this game and even though their front end struggled, Tabanelli at skip remained calm and out shot Jim Armstrong.  That said, Italy nearly made the same mistake as China in the final end.  Canada threw a corner guard and Italy, rather than throwing through, chose to challenge Canada with draws.  Jim still had a chance to save the day if he could have made his first stone of the final end count.  But he came up short and Canada were out of rocks.

In other games, Scotland continued their erratic play in a 10-6 loss to USA.  Tom Killin and Michael McCreadie both struggled with weight control and the score would have been much worse than 10 -6 had Aileen Neilson not bailed them out a couple of times.

Norway's coach chewed out his team at the fourth end break.  Norway took 2 in the first but then gave up steals in the third and the fourth to go into the break down 4 - 2.  The Swiss team have a very experienced skip but are otherwise new to wheelchair curling, and Norway Coach Thoralf Hognestad was not happy to see his defending champions behind.

"I told the team I was angry at them.  They were not focusing.  I told them they had to visualize the path of the rock before every rock and not be looking into the stands."

His words took effect as Norway scored three in the fifth and had single steals in each of the last three ends.

Germany took on favoured Korea and beat them decisively 8 - 3.  Germany started with a 3, gave up 2, but finished with steals in the 6th and 7th ends for a decisive victory.  Germany lead the table at 3 - 0 and take on the USA this evening.  See you there!