Eventful first day at the 2010 WWhCQ

Even before the games started at 4pm, there were some unfortunate news for two of the teams. Even though team France had arrived in Lohja to participate in the tournament, they were not able to start the competition because of a FFSG (The French federation for ice sports) ruling. France would have been playing against the home team Finland in their first game, so Finland's scorecard will remain empty after the first day.

The other team to experience some changes in their original team line-up was Italy, after their skip Andrea Tabanelli had to return to Italy on the first day of competition. Edigio Marchese is now playing 4th and skip, Gabriele Dallapiccola as 3rd and vice, their alternate Emanuele Spelorzi as 2nd and Angela Menardi as lead. Italy started their competition against Russia with both of teams scoring big ends. After a great comeback from 7-3, Italy eventually won the high scoring game 11-10 by taking 2 points in the last end.

One of the thrillers of the first round was Japan vs. China. Considering Japan's great success in the 3rd Annual Wetzikon International one week before the WWhCQ and the fast improvement of the Chinese wheelchair curlers, it was expected to be a tight, interesting game. However, China entered the ice extremely focused and took a 5-0 lead only after three ends. Japan evened things out with 3 points from the 4th end and continued to catch up by forcing China to take only one point in the 5th and 7th end. In the last end, three points for Japan would have guaranteed them a chance for an extra end, but they only managed to score two and thus lost the game 6-7.

Slovakia vs. Latvia, as well as Denmark vs. Switzerland, were fairly clear cut games.
Bolliger's swiss team dominated the game right from the start and continued to play well
all throughout the game. Denmark made a good effort in the last three ends with two
consecutive steals, but despite their efforts Switzerland won the game 9-6. Slovakia and Latvia had a much more even battle for points, until Slovakia took an impressive five points in the 5th end. This served as the turning point for the game and guaranteed Slovakia their first victory, after they went on to steal one more point from the 6th end and 3 more points from the 7th, finishing the game 11-3.

Tomorrow's first draw starts 10.30am local time. In this draw, home team Finland will be playing against Switzerland on sheet B and their game will be webcast.

The other games will be Russia-Slovakia, Denmark-Italy and Japan-Latvia. China will have a by, because France was not able to participate.

The schedule, updated team line-ups and results can be found at:

http://www.curling.fi/en/home.

A LIVE Daily webcast will cover games scheduled on sheet B:

http://www.curling.fi/fi/kilpailut/curlingkanava

On-site Media contact:

Katja Kiiskinen

Kisakallio/Finnish Curling Association

viestinta [a t] curling [d o t] fi (viestinta[at]curling[dot]fi)

+358 40 5898 194

WCF Media contact:

Joanna Kelly

Media Relations Officer

World Curling Federation

media [a t] worldcurling [d o t] org (media[at]worldcurling[dot]org)

+372 592 442 35