In the Olympic curling gold medal, Sweden beats American men
BEIJING (AP) – The US men’s curling team does not think about when it last played against Sweden in the Olympics.
That’s something to think about next time.
In a rematch of the Pyeongchang gold match, Sweden beat John Shusters foursome 7-4 on Thursday to take an early lead in the round-robin position and give the defending champions their first loss in the Beijing Games.
The result made the Americans hope for a rematch against Niklas Edin’s foursome, which can only happen if they both qualify for the playoffs.
“I can not think of so many Olympics or world championships where Niklas does not hang out anywhere at the end of the week,” said Chris Plys, a newcomer to Shuster’s team since Pyeongchang. “We hope to be there with them and I would love to get a new feel for them, of course.”
Four years after Team Shuster won five straight elimination matches – including a victory over Edin that took the first American gold medal in Olympic curling history – it was the Swedes who celebrated.
After 7-4 in the 10th and final end, Shuster released after Edin left the Americans with only one stone in the goal area and only one more to play.
“When you play against the reigning world champions and you get opportunities, you have to take advantage of them,” Shuster said. “We will have to fight with beaks and claws to win every win here.”
The Swedes improved to 2-0 in Beijing and the defending champions fell to 1-1. Edin also took a 5-4 edge against Shuster from the 2018 gold medal match.
“We play them a lot of times. It’s always close fights, always good games,” said Edin. “So we knew it was going to be a big one – both our teams are playoff challengers – so winning this is big.”
The Americans started the match with the advantage of the last stone called the hammer, but they missed a chance for a big point in the first end and settled for one point. Sweden took two with the hammer in the second, two more with the hammer in the fourth and then stole one point in the fifth when the USA would have the edge.
It was a two-point game in the quarterfinals when Edin made a tricky double takeout over the house and Shuster could not complete one of his own. The Americans deliberately extinguished the ninth end to retain the advantage of the last stone.
But in the end, they ran out of stones.
“They are good friends of ours. It’s really nice to beat them and just get ahead in that head-to-head battle that is going on, especially since the last Olympics,” said Edin, a five-time world champion who also won a bronze medal. in Sochi. with the silver from Pyeongchang. “We know they are one of the gold medalists here.”
In other results from the men’s game on Thursday, the Russian team beat China 7-4 in nine finals, Canada beat Norway 6-5 and Great Britain beat Italy 7-5.
The women’s game began on Thursday morning with Tabitha Peterson’s American team winning twice and beating the Russian team 9-3 in seven finals in the morning and Denmark 7-5 at night.
“It’s a great position to be in,” Peterson said. “We worked hard out there. I think we deserve it. So hopefully we can continue with what we do in the coming matches.”
In the other women’s matches, the defending champion Sweden beat Japan 8-5 in the morning but lost 8-2 against Great Britain in seven finals. Great Britain is 2-0, after defeating Switzerland 6-5 in extra time in the morning.
In other matches, Canada beat the reigning silver medalist South Korea 12-7 and host China lost twice, 7-6 against Denmark in the morning and 7-5 against Switzerland at night.
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