Canada’s Braeden Moskowy and his Saskatchewan team came into the 2001 World Junior Curling Championships in Perth, Scotland on a twenty-game winning streak, having gone through Canada’s province and national championships unbeaten, but this record was undone twice in the opening day’s play. 

First Norway’s Steffen Mellemseter beat the Canadians by 9-7 in an extra end, and then Sweden took a 6-5 victory when Moskowy’s last draw for his first win was heavy and long in the tenth end. 

Norway then went on to beat USA’s Aaron Wald by 8-3. “It’s our fifth appearance in a World Juniors,” said Mellemseter after the game, “we’ve never had two victories on the first day! So it’s a pretty good start.” 

Scotland’s debut boy, John Penny, followed up a morning 8-4 win over Finland’s Iiro Sipola with a 7-6 victory over Switzerland’s defending champions, led by Peter de Cruz. The game was only finally decided when an umpire’s measure gave the winning shot to the Scots.  These results mean that Norway and Scotland share top spot on the rankings, with two wins and no losses. 

After losing to Norway, which undid his winning run, Canada’s Moskowy said, “that wasn’t part of the plan to lose that one.  It sucks, but we knew our winning streak had to end sometime”, while after his second loss he said, “this is probably the worst day of my career.  We wanted to come in and have a strong first day, but there’s nothing we can do about it now.  When you’re playing against good teams like Sweden, all you can ask for is a shot to win. We gave ourselves that, but unfortunately I did not execute it and that’s too bad”. 

By contrast, Scotland’s Penny said, “that was absolutely great, we just went in to play our own game, the normal game the way we have been playing it, no different really”. 

Six teams – China, Denmark, Finland, Sweden, Switzerland and USA are now on one win and one loss, while, like Canada, the Czech Republic are still looking for their first win.

 Photo: Canada's Braeden Moskowy delivers in Draw 1. (photo courtesy of Tom Brydone)

Junior Men’s Standings after Day 1

Norway 2-0

Scotland 2-0

China 1-1

Denmark 1-1

Finland 1-1

Switzerland 1-1

Sweden 1-1

USA 1-1

Canada 0-2

Czech Republic 0-2

 

RESULTS

Men, round 2: Switzerland 6, Scotland 7; Finland 9, China 6; Czech Republic 3, Denmark 8; Norway 9, USA 3; Canada 5, Sweden 6.

 

Men, round 1: Denmark 2, China 9; Canada 7, Norway 9 (Extra End); Scotland 8, Finland 4; Sweden 6, Switzerland 7 (Extra End); USA 8, Czech Republic 3.