Canada start home Curling World Championships with a win
BySportsbeat
Updated 17/03/2018 at 22:48 GMT
Vancouver Olympic gold medallist Jennifer Jones led hosts Canada to an opening-day win in the Women's World Curling Championships in Ontario.
Jennifer Jones and Brent Laing
Image credit: Eurosport
Jones, a world champion in 2008, stole two points in the second end and scored four in the fourth as Canada led 10-3 after a lightning-fast start against the Czech Republic.
The teams shook hands at the end of the seventh end with Canada, who needed alternate Shannon Birchard, taking an 11-5 victory much to the delight of the home crowd.
Birchard said: "I was not expecting to come in this first game, so that was a little bit of a surprise. I've never had this feeling of playing as Team Canada and it's wonderful.
"I never want to take this jacket off. I'm going to be soaking up every moment."
Elsewhere, Olympic silver medallists Korea beat Germany 8-3 while two-time world champion Binia Feltscher saw her Swiss rink lose 6-5 to China.
With the scores level at 5-5 going down to the tenth end, skip Yilun Jiang was able to draw her final stone into the house to seal the victory.
Jiang said: "After this first game, the whole team is excited and we will play better [in future games]. This is my first time as skip, so I'm nervous, but excited.
"As we are a new, young team we will learn a lot form the big games and we will try to experience more."
Finally, two debutant skips - Victoria Moiseeva of Russia and Hannah Fleming of Scotland - went head-to-head, with the former taking an 8-4 success.
"Of course, it's really nice to start with a win, we really wanted to start and because all of these nerves inside, we wanted to give it our all and now we feel much better," said Moiseeva.
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