Thursday, March 18, 2010

Tie-break to decide who plays Canada in semi

Italy played themselves into a tie-break with a spectacular last shot 8-7 win over Canada in the final round robin draw. In a replay of yesterday's game against Korea, Canada had shot stone on the button, and Jim Armstrong's attempt at a guard slightly over-curled. But while the Korean skip over-threw his take-out sending the stone wide, Italian skip Tabanelli threw a controlled weight hit and stick to score the winning point.

"I didn't think it was makeable," Armstrong said. "But those rocks are so lively. I wouldn't give him any chance to make it quite honestly. But it was a great shot."

The result didn't change Canada's position as they were already guaranteed first place. They will play either Italy or Sweden, the only two teams to have beaten Canada this week.

Ina Forrest, who led all seconds during round robin, sat out to give her sore shoulder a rest and Alberta's Bruno Yizek had an opportunity to play.

Italy earned a tie-break game against a resurgent Sweden, who saw off Germany 10-3. Jens Jager sat out to give his alternate a game. Marcus Sieger skipped.

Great Britain finished on a win, 10-4 over Japan, with Michael McCreadie sitting in favour of alternate Jim Sellar. It's been a very disappointing tournament for the all Scottish rink, and hopefully Michael will not have ended his curling career on the bench.

The line-up change meant that Aileen Neilson became the first female to skip at the Winter Games. "It was good to come out and finish with a win,'' Neilson said, praising her teammates for setting up the ends for her.

Switzerland lifted themselves from the foot of the table with a win over Norway 10-4.

The tie-break game is at 2pm Friday, with the semi-finals on Saturday at 10am and the medal games at 3.30pm.

For tables and schedule see our Paralympics page.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Actually, Jim covered the rock he was worried about, since he was frozen on the button, and was worried about an in - off from the side. Italy hit anyway, and surprised themselves and everyone else that Canada's rock moved far enough. This was Tema Canada, second game this week on that sheet with yellow rocks, and yellow never won.....everyone was complaing about that set of rocks....ironically, with Canada being the only team to play with them twice, they accounted for BOTHE Canada losses.

Jim is back to playing great the last few games, and Darryl is showing steady improvement.