Pilsen, Czech Republic
Wednesday 6 December 2017
After Wednesday morning’s second session of women’s round-robin play in the Olympic Qualification Event in Pilsen, Czech Republic, only China and Denmark remain unbeaten to share top spot. Meanwhile, hosts Czech Republic recorded their first win, with a 9-5 victory over Latvia.
China faced Finland who were playing their first game having been given a bye in the opening session. This game was all one-way traffic. After opening the scoring with two points in the first end, China went on to steal points in each of the next five ends until, with the score at 9-0 against them, Finland conceded in the sixth end.
Denmark found themselves down by 7-3 after the seventh end of their game against Germany, but they brought themselves right back into it with a score of three points in the eighth end and a single point steal in the ninth end to tie the game at 7-7.
In the tenth end, German skip Daniella Jentsch was heavy with her final draw attempt to give Madeleine Dupont’s Denmark a further steal of two points for a 9-7 win.
Playing in front of a big home crowd in their game against Latvia, Czech Republic scored two points in each of the first, third, fifth and seventh ends, while Latvia could only score single points when they had last stone, giving the Czechs an 8-3 lead. Eventually, they ran Latvia out of stones in the tenth end, for their 9-5 win.
In this session, it was Italy’s turn to sit out the action.
The next live games, on national broadcasters and World Curling TV (note geo-blocking applies), at this event will be Italy v China and Denmark v Czech Republic men at 12:00, Central European Time (+1 hours, Greenwich Mean Time) on Wednesday (6 December) afternoon.
They said it
Madeleine Dupont; skip, Denmark (after 9-7 win over Germany): “We were pretty confident that we could come back. We felt we could steal three in the last two ends, so it’s not impossible even though it looks terrible. Joint leaders?... it feels good.”
Bingyu Wang; skip, China (after 9-0 win over Finland): “We really want to play well in this competition, it’s important for our team. You win and it builds your confidence, so we hope we can play our way and feel more confident. It’d be so exciting to go to another Olympic Games, but we’re focussed right now on one rock at a time, and one game at a time.”
Anna Kubeskova; skip, Czech Republic (after 9-5 win over Latvia): “We finished better today and we were focussed till the end. I think I made my shots better than yesterday in the second half and that made the difference. And we were making twos when they were making ones.
It’s great to play in front of a home crowd, the fans are really pushing us.”
Women’s session two results: Czech Republic 9-5 Latvia; Finland 0-9 China; Germany 7-9 Denmark
Standings after women’s session two (W-L):
China 2-0
Denmark 2-0
Czech Republic 1-1
Latvia 1-1
Finland 0-1
Italy 0-1
Germany 0-2
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