China loses to Canada in curling mix doubles

PYEONGCHANG, Feb. 9 (Xinhua) -- China lost to Canada 4-10 in the round robin session of curling mixed doubles at the PyeongChang Winter Olympics here on Friday.

Canada's Kaitlyn Lawes/John Morris, both Olympic champions, opened the match with a 3-0 lead. China capitalized on an error of the Canadians to score two points in the second, but a great final shot in the third helped the Canadians extend the lead to 7-2.

With a couple more smart double and triple take-outs, the Canadians sealed the match early in the seventh end with 10-4.

"It's a bit lopsided. We made a couple of errors, and they were able to pull together a couple of big scores on us. We had chances to bounce back... we didn't execute our chances but they did," said China's coach Marcel Rocque after the match.

Canada's coach Jeff Stoughton spoke highly of the performance of his team, especially of Vancouver Olympic champion Morris. "He played an excellent game, made great doubles and triples..." he said.

"I think their confidence is building in the right direction, and they got really comfortable on the ice. That's the key (to the win)," said Stoughton.

In Rocque's eyes, the gap between the Chinese team and their Canadian opponents is not in techniques, but in experience.

"Wang Rui is young...this is her first Olympics. These other players from Canada are very good and have a lot of experiences," he said.

With two losses and one win for China now, Rocque thinks it's still to early to predict the final results. "We won't be surprised to see tiebreakers here. It's going to be wide open. We will know more in a couple of days," he said.

"We just need to continue to grow and get more comfortable with the ice, play up little by little, and just try and hope we get enough wins in the round robin to qualify for the playoff. That's what we are trying to do," he said.

In the morning's other matches, Norway beat South Korea 8-3, Switzerland defeated the United States 9-4 for their third straight win, and Olympic Athletes from Russia outclassed Finland 7-5.

Eight teams are competing in the newly introduced Olympic event with the top four finishers in the preliminaries qualifying for the semifinals. Enditem