Canada and China book Olympic spots with quarter-final wins at world champs
BySportsbeat
Published 29/04/2017 at 14:48 GMT
Canada, China, Switzerland and the Czech Republic will fight it out for the Curling World Mixed Doubles title after fighting their way through to Saturday's semi-finals.
Eurosport
Image credit: Eurosport
Home favourites Canada dispatched Latvia 10-5 in the quarter-final courtesy of a four-scoring seventh end that saw the contest brought to a premature end.
That win for Canada earned them enough points to secure Olympic qualification for PyeongChang next year – alongside China – and Joanne Courtney was happy with her day on the ice.
"We're extremely pleased with the day," she said. "We knew we had to make the semi-final here for Canada to have a spot in the Olympics and we're just thrilled we got the job done.
"We took all of our lessons from the week and brought them into today's game. We want to bring a medal back to Canada.
"We've only won one bronze medal so we'd love to get a medal tomorrow, so we'll be playing just as hard as we did today and hopefully we come out on the right end."
Switzerland also doubled Norway's score in their 8-4 win, courtesy of a trio of stones in the decisive eighth end.
And there was another easy route into the semi-finals for China, who needed just seven ends to beat Korea 8-2.
But the Czechs were made to work for their final-four spot as they came from 5-4 down in the final end to take a nip and tuck game 6-5 over Finland.
Earlier in the day China had beaten Russia 8-3 in the round of 16, while Latvia beat Sweden 6-4, Canada defeated Scotland 8-3 and Korea eased past Ireland 6-3.
The remaining round of 16 ties saw Switzerland beat Spain 8-5, while Norway beat Italy 9-5, Finland beat USA 6-5 and the Czechs came through 8-6 against Hungary.
Friday's penultimate session saw the losers from the last-16 face off with Sweden succumbing 9-2 to Scotland, while Russia beat Ireland 7-5, Italy went one better and downed Spain 8-5, while USA hammered Hungary 11-0.
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