Sweden beat Finland by 7-2 to stand alone at the top of the Men’s rankings with five wins and one loss after the sixth session of  round-robin play at the World Junior Curling Championships in Perth, Scotland on Tuesday.

Afterwards Swedish skip Oskar Eriksson (who still has to face China, Czech Republic and Scotland) said, “we have to win at least two more games in order to qualify for the 1v2 playoff game, the goal is to go the playoffs and win a medal and hopefully it’s a Gold one”!

While Canada cruised to their third straight win – beating Denmark by 8-1 in just six ends – to bring themselves back into the mix, an illness-induced three-man Scottish line-up battled to an 8-4 win over USA. 

After his bout of illness, Scottish skip John Penny came back onto the ice against USA and said “that was very important, it was a result we needed.  I was really struggling for five ends but after I had something to eat at the break, I started to play more again”. 

Meanwhile, USA skip Aaron Wald said, “We’ve had a tough week, but we’re just going to go out for the last few games, have fun and try to win ’em.  We’ve not been consistent.  We had trouble with the ice on the first couple of losses and still haven’t gotten it back yet”.

China emerged as 6-5 winners over Norway after an extra end, a result that was heavily influenced when Norwegian skip Steffen Mellemseter slipped with the delivery of his final stone of the eighth end, to let China score three.  Afterwards, Chinese skip Jihui Huang was gracious about the incident. “The most important thing is that curling is a team game and all members of the team should be ready to forgive any mistakes made by any member of the team.”

More generally, he added, “I tried to be as relaxed as possible to play the final shot.  Every team here is playing at a high level, this is a world championship with the best teams in the world. Every team merits being here. Yesterday we lost to the Czech Republic and gave them their first win. Today, we beat Norway who were at the top of the table.”

In the fifth game of the session defending champions Switzerland beat the Czech Republic by 6-4 to keep their title defence alive.

Men’s Standings after Round 6:

Sweden 5- 1

China 4-2

Norway 4-2

Scotland 4-2

Switzerland 4-2

Canada 3-3

Finland 3-3

Czech Republic 1-5

Denmark 1-5

USA 1-5.

Photo: Colton Flasch of Canada in action this afternoon. Photo courtesy of Tom Brydone.

RESULTS

Men Round 6: Czech Republic 4, Switzerland 6; Sweden 7, Finland 2; Denmark 1, Canada 8; China 6, Norway 5 (extra end); Scotland 8, USA 4.