Olympic Curling-Clinical USA-edge Great Britain, perfect Sweden top men’s positions,
BEIJING (Reuters) – Reigning champions USA beat Great Britain as number one in the men’s curling, while favorites Sweden stormed to the top of the table with a perfect start to their round-robin campaign at the National Aquatics Center on Friday.
The British ice rink, led by Bruce Mouat, bounced back from an early 5-2 defeat but the Americans took the decisive lead in a clinically penultimate finish to win 9-7.
“(USA skips) John (Shuster) and his team have a lot of experience here. They know how to win matches,” Mouat said. “You can not give them any free throws and that’s what we did today.”
World champions Sweden eased to a 9-3 win over Italy and lead the round-robin position, having won all three matches so far. The Italians released with two finishes left after Swedish jumper Niklas Edin made an open draw for three.
“We felt no pressure at that moment,” Edin said. “I feel so far that it has been a pretty perfect start … If we do not make some big mistakes, the match is basically already over.
“So we’re just playing the scoreboard and not trying to lose our heads out there, we’re just trying to be accurate.”
Switzerland played out a rather defensive 6-3 victory over the Russian Olympic Committee, taking three points in the eighth end after both teams had broken the previous two.
China took their first victory in the campaign after taking a one-point lead into the final when Denmark skipped Mikkel Krause accidentally threw his last draw through the house to leave the hosts with an open hit to win a 5-4 victory .
In the women’s competition, South Korea’s “Garlic Girls” bounced back from their first night loss to Canada to overthrow the European champions Great Britain 9-7 after the British quartet conceded four in the penultimate end when they led by one.
Canada jumps Jennifer Jones suffered her first career loss at the Games when they fell 8-5 to Japan. Jones, 47, went through the 2014 Olympic campaign in Sochi to win gold and led his team to a 12-7 victory over South Korea in their opening match in Beijing.
Tabitha Peterson’s rink in the US followed up dominant wins against the Russian Olympic Committee and Denmark with an 8-4 triumph over hosts China, while Switzerland beat ROC 8-7 to keep its perfect record intact.
Teams play nine games in the round-robin stage, where the top four advance to the semifinals next week.
The men’s competition continues later on Friday.
(Reporting by Hritika Sharma; editing by Richard Pullin and Ken Ferris)