Sweden and Norway to contend World Men's Curling Championship gold medal match
BySportsbeat
Updated 05/04/2014 at 13:09 GMT
Skip Oskar Erikkson believes Sweden have what it takes to retain their World Men's Curling Championship title after seeing off Canada 10-8 in their semi-final.
Curling, generic (Reuters)
Image credit: Reuters
With Norway already taking their place in the final with a 3-2 victory over Canada earlier in the day, Sweden and the Canadians met on the Beijing ice to see who would join them.
And it was Sweden who came out on top in this tight battle, meaning that Canada will now face off against Switzerland in the bronze medal match.
For Eriksson, who was alternate on last year's championship team led by Niklas Edin, this will be a second successive gold medal game and he believes Sweden could once again be celebrating when all is said and done.
"It feels so good � it�s such an awesome feeling, I can�t describe it," Eriksson said.
"I was a little bit nervous, but we felt confident with the in-turn. I played it a bit harder and let the sweepers hold it.
"We just need to play like we played here and the last five or six games. I think we've done really, really well so far to get to the final in our first World Championship. If we can defend the title it would mean everything to us."
Canada had last stone in the first end and used it to their advantage as skip Kevin Koe tapped out two Swedish stones to open with a 2-0 lead.
However in the second end, Sweden's skip Oskar Eriksson had a hit and stay with his last stone to score four points and take a 4-2 lead.
Sweden stretched their lead to 8-4 after six ends only for Canada to reduce the deficit by two points in the seventh.
In the eighth end, Canada crept closer and they trailed by just one point only for Eriksson to put some breathing space between the sides as Sweden went 10-7 ahead in the ninth.
Canada did score one point in the tenth end but it wasn't enough to propel them into the showpiece.
Earlier in the day, Norway advanced straight into the gold medal match with a 3-2 win over Canada.
Norway skip Thomas Ulsrud said: "We played a pretty good game. We got into a lot of trouble in the ninth but apart from that we had a really good game. We were lucky Canada only got one in the ninth because I was in heaps of trouble.
"It feels really good to have reached my first final. Some of the boys on the team have reached a final before so they were giving me a lot of stick about that, so it�s good to get that off my shoulders.
"It would mean the world to me. As I said before, we were really disappointed after the Olympics.
"We put in a lot of effort this year but a lot of other countries did as well and we ended up fifth, so this is kind of payback."
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