[ritchiebaby]

You'll have noticed in my speed in posting this, that Scotland failed in their Qualifying Game against United States, losing 4-6. Despite this the Scottish players competed well as, after being 1-5 down after 5 ends, they came back to 4-5 with one end to play. A long raise shot by Ross Paterson missed the US stone by an inch or so - if successful Scotland would have had lain 3 shots (and game) with one stone to come from US.

In the other game, Italy beat Switzerland by 10-4, greatly helped by scoring 4 shots in the 1st end. However, the 2 winners didn't get the chance to contest the Gold/Silver Medal Game, as Canada defeated United States by 8-5 and Sweden beat Italy by 8-4.

The Bronze Medal Game is as good as finished with a comprehensive lead built by Italy over United States by 13-4 after 7 ends.  Italy once again scored 4 shots in the 1st end and have just scored 6 shots in the 7th end to surely secure the Bronze Medal. I have no idea what happened to the United States team tonight, but the US 2nd, 3rd and 4th players scored 61%, 61% and 59%, absolutely horrendous figures for players in a World Championship. For goodness sake, I'd be gutted at scoring those percentages in an ordinary club game.

I would like to point out that I did predict the top 2 teams in the round-robin and the 2 teams in the Final, as well as 3 of the 4 other Qualifiers. Embarrassingly, one of my picks, Korea, were replaced by Scotland in the final reckoning.

The Gold/Silver Medal Match between Canada and Sweden will take place at midnight tonight. And United States have conceded their game in the 8th end.