Thanks to a 7-3 win over the Czech Republic in the third session of round-robin play at the World Junior Curling Championships in Perth, Scotland, Norway’s Steffen Mellemseter stands alone, unbeaten at the top of the rankings.

Behind Norway, five teams share second place on just one loss.  These include defending champions Switzerland, who handed Canada’s Braeden Moskowy his third straight loss, delivering a perfectly-weighted draw in a tense tenth end, for a 9-7 win.

Afterwards, Swiss skip Peter de Cruz said, “we’ve had a good start to the tournament, but something was missing in our attitude and it completely changed in that game against Canada – we really got going and put our real game down. They had a bit of difficulty at the beginning of the game and we played better, that made a difference. We just hung on”.

Moskowy also conceded that his team had a poor start to the game, saying, “we started off pretty slowly, and couldn’t work out the ice at all.  But the second half was the best we’ve played since we’ve been here.  We battled back when we were down, so I guess that’s something we can build on going forward”.

On the next sheet China’s Jihui Huang brought the hosts’ winning start to an end when he played a perfect shot around a front guard with his last stone to score one in the tenth for a 5-4 win.

Afterwards, Scottish skip John Penny said, “I thought we’d done enough in that last end to win it.  I played two good shots in that tenth, but so did he, and he did enough to win...that’s curling”.

Finland beat Denmark by 8-6 after an extra end, a result that pleased skip Iiro Sipola, who said, “I felt good about the win but that was not particularly a great game.  The important thing for us is to keep our place at the World Championships and avoid relegation to the championship qualifying event. With two wins, we are beginning to feel more comfortable about that”.

In the fifth game of the session, Sweden’s Oskar Eriksson beat USA’s Aaron Wald by a comfortable 10-1 in just seven ends, including a score of five in the third.

Junior Men’s Standings after Day 2

Norway 3-0

China 2-1

Scotland 2-1

Finland 2-1

Switzerland 2-1

Sweden 2-1

Denmark 1-2

USA 1-2

Canada 0-3

Czech Republic 0-3

 

RESULTS

Men, round 3:  Norway 7, Czech Republic 3; USA 1, Sweden 10; Canada 7, Switzerland 9; Scotland 4, China 5; Denmark 6, Finland 8 (Extra End).

Photo: Henrik Leek of Sweden, courtesy of Tom Brydone