Team Canada continues to gain momentum while maintaining position in Group A standings at the 2022 World Mixed Curling Championship from Curl Aberdeen in Aberdeen, Scotland.
With a dominant 9-2 win over India (2-3; P.N. Raju) in draw 14 on Tuesday, the Canadian roster of skip Jean-Michel Ménard, third Marie-France Larouche, second Ian Belleau, lead Annie Lemay and coach Eric Sylvain (4-1; Etchemin/Des Collines, Québec) extended its current winning streak to three games.
As the lone match on Canada’s Tuesday schedule, Ménard and company came out swinging. Canada opened with hammer and grabbed an early score of three in the first end. After forcing India to a single in the second, Canada would itself be forced in the third making the score 4-1 in favour of the Maple Leaf after three ends.
Though Canada would have a relatively comfortable three point lead, It wouldn’t be until the fourth end that the Canadians would land a vital blow in the form of a steal of three to extend its lead to 7-1.
India would muster a single point in the fifth end with hammer to close the gap to five points, but Canada had already switched to a defensively oriented strategy limiting rocks in play. Canada would bide its time with hammer blanking the sixth before scoring an additional two points in the seventh.
India would then concede the match, marking a 9-2 win for Canada.
The win maintains Canada’s second place position in Group A behind Finland (5-0; Markus Sipila). Though still too early to solidify a playoff spot, Canada is in an excellent position to qualify with three games remaining on its round robin schedule versus Portugal (2-3; Bridget Ribau) and Hong Kong (2-3; Jason Chang) on Wednesday followed by Slovenia (1-4; Stefan Sever) on Thursday.
The top team in each of the four groups will receive a bye to a quarterfinal match, whereas the second and third place teams from their respective groups will play a qualification match to earn the remaining quarterfinal berths.
Both the qualification matches and the quarterfinals are scheduled for Friday.
Draw, live scoring, rosters and more information are available here: https://worldcurling.org/events/wmxcc2022
