19 November 2024
Tuesday’s women’s action at the Le Gruyère AOP European Championships saw three of the four semi-final places locked up, while Lithuania made curling history by securing their first-ever A-Division victory – an 8-6 win over Hungary.
The three semi-final qualifiers are defending champions Switzerland, Sweden and Italy.
Switzerland’s 10-4 win over Türkiye in the morning was enough to see them progress to the play-offs. Then, they capped another perfect day in defence of their title with a 7-5 win over Sweden in the evening.
In the early session, Sweden sealed their semi-final spot with an 8-6 win over Norway before losing to the Swiss. Meanwhile, Italy joined Sweden and Switzerland in the semi-finals, thanks to two wins, by 6-5 over Denmark after an extra end and then by 12-6 against Estonia.
Behind these three qualifiers, Scotland lead the chasing pack. Two wins on Tuesday – by 8-1 over Estonia and then by 9-2 against Lithuania – leave them on four wins and three losses. After their victory over Estonia, skip Sophie Jackson said, “We’re definitely building. That’s the way this team works, and it’s nice to see us starting to peak towards the end of the week.”
Behind the Scots, Denmark, Norway and Türkiye could still grab that last semi-final slot.
Lithuania gained promotion from last season’s B-Division and have found their A-Division experience to be challenging. But that all changed when they completed a battling 8-6 win over Hungary.
Afterwards, their lead Ruta Blaziene said, “That’s our first win in the championship. We’ve made a few mistakes but when we don’t make mistakes, we can win. Coming up to the A-Division is a huge difference. In the B-Division, we can compete, but here, there are a lot of stronger teams – that makes it very hard for us. But we’re trying and we do our best. We didn’t think it would be easy, but a good game against a strong team – like we had against Switzerland yesterday – gives us hope and makes us stronger.”
Men’s action
The men only had one session on Tuesday. Switzerland took on England in this session. The Swiss dominated, with back-to-back four-point steals in the third and fourth ends to lead 10-0. England clawed back a point in the sixth end, but it wasn’t enough and they conceded the match at 11–1 to the Swiss, leaving England still in search of their first win.
Norway got off to an early lead against Netherlands, 3-0 after two ends. However, the Dutch then scored four points in the fourth, and were up 9-6 after the ninth end. Norway scored a final point in the tenth, but the game ended with a 9-7 win for the Dutch, who now look likely to avoid relegation.
Dutch skip Wouter Goesgens said after the game, “We knew we could come back on these guys, we just had to make our shots and that’s what we did.”
Sweden faced Austria in this session, another team in search of their first win. This was a back-and-forth affair with the Swedes leading 5-4 after six ends. They kept that lead going into the tenth, at 6-5, but the Austrians were able to capitalise on their last-stone advantage, scoring a point to force an extra end. Eventually, Sweden went on to win, 7-6, and are only one win behind Germany, Scotland and Italy who are joint top.
Czechia faced Germany — a team with sights on that top spot. The game was tight, tied at 3-3 at the break. Czechia then only held a one-point advantage, at 6-5, going into the ninth. However, a score of three in the tenth meant that Germany won the game, 8-6, putting them joint top alongside Italy and Scotland. After the game, German skip Marc Muskatewitz said, “We’re really happy, after yesterday it was really important for us to stay focused and stay with our plan. It’s really amazing.”
Italy handed the Scots their first defeat of the championship. The Italians held an early advantage, 3-2, in the fifth-end break. The game remained even with Scotland scoring two points in both the sixth and eighth end, and Italy doing the same in the seventh and ninth. This gave the Italians a 7-6 lead going into the tenth. Scotland scored a vital point to force an extra end. However, the Italians came out on top, scoring three in the extra end for a 10-7 win. After the game Italian skip Joel Retornaz said, “We know how good they [Scotland] are, we played them not too long ago in a Grand Slam and we lost. So it was very important to us as we wanted to have a good performance for our confidence and keep our momentum.”
B-Division
Czechia’s women lead the way, sitting on five wins and no losses at the top of the rankings. Their Tuesday afternoon victory saw them beat Germany by 7-4, to push the Germans into second place on the table on four wins and one loss.
Spain now sit unbeaten at the top of Group A in the men’s competition on four wins, having beaten Israel by 7-2 on Tuesday morning. Denmark are also unbeaten at the top of Group B, on five wins, following their 6-4 victory over Estonia on Tuesday evening.
Find all the B-Division results here.
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