Curling news - Switzerland and Japan book semi-final places

In a tight game, Switzerland beat China 7-6 to book their place in the last four, while Japan downed Russia 11-3 to also make it through.

Japan will now face Olympic champions Sweden while the Swiss team will come up against Korea.

Switzerland opened strongly against China with two points in the opening end.

They improved their position with a steal of one point in the second when a China take-out attempt took out one of their own stones by mistake.

In the eighth end, and down 5-4, China's Wang Rui scored two points to move her team into a 6-5 lead.

And after blanking the ninth end, Switzerland's Alina Paetz delivered a last-stone draw in the tenth end that just got around a front guard and came to rest in the four-foot to score two points and win the game 7-6.

In the other game, Russia blanked the first end, and, in the second end, their skip Alina Kovaleva played a hit on a Japanese stone to score two points.

But the key point of the game came in the fourth end when Kovaleva came up short of the house with her final draw, to give up a steal of four to Japan, who moved into a 6-2 lead.

Russia later conceded with the final score at 11-3 to Japan.

Japan's second Seina Nakajima said: "For this game we had really good communication and that's why we were able to play well."

Sportsbeat 2019