Canada’s wheelchair curlers avoid relegation at World Champs

The twelfth session of round-robin play featured the two remaining games, China v USA and Germany v Canada. The session would end with victories for China and Canada. 27 Feb 2016

Jim Armstrong; Canada Skip and his team on the ice

Canada record vital win to avoid relegation at the World Wheelchair Curling Championships 2016

ⒸWCF / Céline Stucki

By World Curling

"We’ve been on a horrific struggle and it is situations like that late in the week, and I can speak from experience, it’s much tougher to get tough when you haven’t got anything to build on from earlier in the week."

Canada reigned supreme against Germany (6-3) with both teams needing to win to remove themselves from the relegation battle on the twelfth session of round-robin play at the World Wheelchair Curling Championships 2016 in Lucerne, Switzerland.

"It was a big win today,” said Jim Armstrong; Canada Skip. “It was a big game yesterday against Norway, they were having such a good week. We’ve been on a horrific struggle and it is situations like that late in the week, and I can speak from experience, it’s much tougher to get tough when you haven’t got anything to build on from earlier in the week.

“I think it really speaks to the team, I personally had a terrible week and they hung in. They’re grinders, they’ve always proven to be grinders since I’ve been in the programme. There’s just no quit in them.”

Canada opened the scoring with a single point in the first, followed by a steal of one point in the second. The teams then traded single points giving Canada a 3-1 lead at the break.

Germany levelled the scores in the fifth end with two points, before Canada would score a single in the sixth - a steal of single points in the seventh and eighth ends for the 6-3 win. This result means that Canada move up to seventh in the table and because of their head-to-head record avoid a relegation tie-breaker.

In the other game of the session China and the USA traded two point scores in the opening ends of their game. China with the hammer scored three points in the third end, before USA responded with two points in the fourth end. The score at the break was 5-4 in China’s favour.

In the fifth end, USA skip, Patrick McDonald, in an attempt to get shot stone, nudged a China stone in to scoring position leaving them with three shot stones. China fourth and vice-skip, Yulong Sun, would draw into the house with his last stone for a score of four points.

USA scored a single point in the sixth end when McDonald missed an open takeout that would have seen them score at least three points. It was a miss that would prove costly as China would score a further four points in the seventh end for the 13-5 win.

With this result Korea have now qualified for the play-offs and will face Switzerland in the 3v4 game.

The results from session 11 mean that Norway will play Russia in the page play-off 1v2. This session would also see Finland officially relegated to the B-Championship next season.

Slovakia and Germany will play on Saturday (27 February) at 14:00 local time in that tie-breaker with the losing team relegated to the World Wheelchair-B Curling Championship next season.

RESULTS Session 12:

China 13-5 USA; Germany 3-6 Canada.

RESULTS Session 11:

Germany 8-2 Finland; Switzerland 4-7 China; Russia 10-7 USA; Canada 8-5 Norway.

RESULTS Session 10:

Canada 2-7 Russia; Germany 3-6 Slovakia; Switzerland 2-7 Norway; USA 8-6 Korea.

STANDINGS after 12 sessions (W-L):

Norway (7-2) Qualified for 1v2 Game

Russia (7-2) Qualified for 1v2 Game

Switzerland (7-2) Qualified for 3v4 Game

Korea (5-4) Qualified for 3v4 Game

China (4-5)