Swiss curler with 11 wins from 12 matches

The Swiss maiden team around Skip Yannick Schaller finished the World Championships round robin in Ottawa with a 7:6 victory over Japan and an impressive 8:5 victory over defending champions Sweden.

The additional program of the Geneva quartet of Pablo Lachat, Sven Michel, Yannick Schwaler and Benoit Schwartz is still open in full. They close the round robin with 11 wins from 12 matches and will be able to start the following games with the advantage of the last stone. The opponent in the semi-finals will only be determined on Saturday night from 8pm SST in the quarter-finals.

The quarter-final pair, in turn, came only in the last round (without Swiss participation), which took place on Sunday evening.

The confrontation between the Swiss and the Swedes, whose outstanding goal was to edge past Niklas Edin to win his fifth world title in a row, was balanced for the longest time. In the first half of the match, both teams were only able to convert the advantage of the last stone into a point. Sweden gained a real advantage with a stolen stone in the eighth end to take a 5:3 lead.

But the Swiss team fought back in the end: with a triple in the ninth and two stolen stones in the tenth end. Switzerland and Sweden are playing at a level worthy of the current World Cup finalists.

As in the previous match against the United States, the Swiss team also won the match against the Japanese, led by Reiko Yanagisawa in the tenth end. Being 5:6 late, they managed a two-man house. But in percentage statistics, the match was clearly dominated by the Swiss with a score of 92:80.