By Aadi Nair
CORTINA D’AMPEZZO, Italy, Feb 16 (Reuters) – Anna Hasselborg’s Sweden continued their perfect start to the women’s competition at the Winter Olympics on Monday as they defeated Switzerland 6-4 to pick up their sixth straight win and cement their position at the top of the round-robin standings.
While Sweden already had five victories to their name, the game against Silvana Tirinzoni’s Switzerland, who are four-times world champions, was the toughest test of their campaign so far.
“We know they were the team to beat,” said Hasselborg, who won gold at the 2018 Olympics in Pyeongchang and bronze in Beijing four years ago.
“They’ve had an amazing season and we haven’t played them this year, but they have played so well. So we just wanted to go out there and play the other rock colour and just make our shots.
“We were playing well and we were like, and we went pretty hard, like offensive and made a lot of good draws today.”
Switzerland bounced back quickly to beat Sophie Jackson’s Britain 10-6 in the evening session.
They are joint-second in the standings with four wins and two losses, along with Tabitha Peterson’s United States and Gim Eun-ji’s South Korea.
CANADA BEAT CHINA, JAPAN
Rachel Homan’s Canada were much-improved on Monday as they beat China 10-5 to claim their second win of the competition, before defeating Japan 9-6 to boost their hopes of finishing in the playoff spots.
“I think every game we’ve seen us play better and better as the event’s gone on and we just have to keep going the way we are,” Homan said.
Canada are two-times world champions and were pre-tournament favourites to win gold, but Homan’s record at the Olympics is poor.
She has participated in the past two Games, finishing outside the qualification spots for the semi-finals on both occasions.
Canada are joint-fifth with Denmark in the standings with three wins from six games.
Hosts Italy finally bagged their first win of the competition after five straight losses, beating the U.S. 7-2 much to the delight of home fans at the Cortina Curling Olympic Stadium.
“We really had a good performance this evening,” said Italy skip Stefania Constantini, who won bronze in the mixed doubles last week alongside Amos Mosaner.
“We were in control of the ice. We really worked good with the teamwork to put every stone in the right position. It’s good to finally have a win.”
(Reporting by Aadi Nair, editing by Ed Osmond and Pritha Sarkar)
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