Esbjerg, Denmark
March 19, 2011

Defending champion Andrea Schöpp and her German team beat Switzerland’s Mirjam Ott by 10-7 in their second round-robin game of the Capital One World Women’s Curling Championship on Saturday afternoon in Esbjerg, Denmark.

At the same time, Norway’s Linn Githmark beat Korea’s Mi-Sung Shin by 5-2, and these two teams now top the rankings with two wins and no losses.

Against Switzerland, Schöpp had the advantage from the start, scoring two in the first end and then stealing a single in the second. Eventually she sealed her win by scoring four points in the ninth end.

The first half of the Norway- Korea game was low scoring, but Githmark finally made the break-through by stealing two in the eighth end and added a further single steal in the ninth before Korea conceded. Afterwards, Githmark said, “we’re really happy. It’s really nice to get the two wins, that was what we were going for. We’ve been practising really hard. We have a personal trainer now and we have two coaches who train us two times a day, so we’re working really hard”.

USA’s Patti Lank bounced back from a Saturday morning 3-5 loss to Switzerland by handing Denmark’s Lene Nielsen her second loss. In this remarkable game, all sixteen stones remained in play throughout the ninth end, when Lank just missed a draw for two and had to settle for one to go into the last end 5-6 down without last stone. However, Denmark’s Nielsen had a complete miss with her final stone, handing USA a steal of two and a most unexpected 7-6 win.

Afterwards, USA second player Jessica Schultz acknowledged that the result was fortunate. “We got lucky” she said. “It wasn’t the prettiest win, but we’re just warming up. It’s taking us a little while to get our sea legs. We definitely have to work on rock placement and execution.” She added, “they came back strong after the fifth end, and we tapered off and they picked up on that”.

Earlier, Anna Kubeskova led her Czech Republic team onto the nice for her nation’s first-ever World Championship game, and topped off her historic day with a 6-5 win over Scotland’s Anna Sloan.

An unfortunate pick-up for Scotland in the eighth end gave the Czechs a steal of two and a 6-1 lead, but the Scots fought back hard, scoring three in the ninth and being denied by an umpire’s measure the second steal in the tenth that would have forced an extra end.

Afterwards, Kubeskova said, “we are at the worlds for the first time, so we are nervous. We made some mistakes in the ninth end and we have problems being defensive. It was pretty hard in the end but it feels good to have a first win”.

Meanwhile, Scottish skip Anna Sloan was philosophical about the game-turning pick-up. “These things happen” she said, “you’ve just got to keep going”.

The new-look Swedish team skipped by double Olympic champion Anette Norberg bounced back from their opening loss to Norway by beating Russia 8-4, thanks largely to a score of three in the ninth end.

Making their debut as Team Canada, Amber Holland’s Saskatchewan-based outfit beat China’s former world champions, skipped by Bingyu Wang, by 8-6 in Saturday morning’s session and afterwards, Holland said, “to have a win is great, it’s nice to come out and get adjusted to the ice.
Obviously China is a great team and there’s a lot of great teams here, Olympic champions here too, so I’m not going to say it gets any easier”.

Standings after 3 Sessions:
Germany 2-0
Norway 2-0
Canada 1-0
Czech Republic 1-0
Russia 1-1
Sweden 1-1
Switzerland 1-1
USA 1-1
China 0-1
Scotland 0-1
Denmark 0-2
Korea 0-2

RESULTS:
Session 2: Russia 9, Korea 5; Scotland 5, Czech Rep. 6; USA 3, Switzerland 5; China 6, Canada 8.
Session 3: Germany 10, Switzerland 7; Denmark 6, USA 7; Sweden 8, Russia 4; Korea 2, Norway 5.

TV and Web coverage from the event: https://wwcc2011.com/tv-web-coverage
Event website for news, photos & results: https://wwcc2011.com
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