Switzerland win World Mixed Doubles Curling Championship 2014

Switzerland beat Sweden by 8-6 to win the 2014 World Mixed Doubles Curling Championship on Wednesday, at the Dumfries Ice Bowl in Scotland.

At the same time, Spain won their first-ever World Curling Championship medal for their nation when they beat defending champions Hungary by 7-4 in the bronze medal game.

The Switzerland duo of cousins Michelle and Reto Gribi scored one point to open the scoring in the gold medal game, but Sweden – Camilla Johansson and Per Noreen – came right back into the game, scoring three points in the second end to take the lead at 3-1.

They then moved further ahead with a steal of two more points in the third end, for 5-1.

The Swiss then bounced back in the fourth end, scoring two points to go into the half-time break just 5-3 down.

After the break, Switzerland first levelled the score at 5-5 with another steal of two points in the fifth end, and then took the lead for the first time since the first end with another steal, this time scoring one point in the sixth end for 6-5.

The seventh end saw another steal of two points for the Swiss, for an 8-5 lead, and when Sweden could only score one point with their final shot, the teams shook hands, with a final score of 8-6 to Switzerland.

Speaking afterwards, Switzerland’s Reto Gribi said: “It’s great, it’s awesome, we need a little time for it to sink in I think.”

His cousin Michelle Gribi added: “In the second part of the game we really played our game. We made all of our shots so we were pleased with our performance.”

She also had a word for her opponents saying: “They played very well and in the end it came down to the very last stone.”

This is the fifth victory for Switzerland in the eight year history of the World Mixed Doubles Curling Championship and when asked why the Swiss seemed to be so good at this discipline, Reto Gribi said: “I don’t know, maybe we practice a lot. But a big reason might be our coach (Al Moore). I think this is his third time here and I think it depends a lot on the coach.”

Sweden’s losing finalist Camilla Johansson also spoke after the game, saying: “We got a silver medal two years ago and we would have liked to win this time. But they were playing well, they played a good game. We had quite a good lead but we let them back in again.”

In the bronze medal game, Hungary scored one point in the first end, but Spain took control in the middle part of the game. They scored two points in the second end and then had single-point steals in each of the third, fourth and fifth ends to take a 5-1 lead.

Hungary responded with two points in the sixth end to reduce the Spanish lead to 5-3, but Spain scored another two points in the seventh end to take a 7-3 lead.

Hungary could only score one point in the eighth end and this gave Spain their historic 7-4 victory.

Spain’s Sergio Vez spoke afterwards about how important this win could be, saying: “We’re speechless. We didn’t even imagine getting to the play-offs. We’re here, we played for bronze, we’ve won it, but we don’t believe it…it’s awesome really. You don’t know how important this is for curling in Spain. We have no arenas so maybe now people will like to spend money on curling resources. We are really looking forward to coming back to Spain with our medals.”

 His partner Irantzu Garcia added: “We were playing the reigning world champions and we know they’re really good, but we played with no pressure and were just happy to be here, I think that counted in the end.”

Meanwhile, a disappointed Zsolt Kiss from Hungary said: “I don’t think that we didn’t play well. It’s just that if we made a mistake, they immediately took advantage of it.”

FINAL STANDINGS

1. Switzerland (Gold)

2. Sweden (Silver)

3. Spain (Bronze)

4. Hungary

5. Norway

6. Russia

7. Czech Republic

8. Austria

9. Canada

10. Scotland

11. China

12. Australia

13. France

14. Finland

15. Korea

16. Poland

17. Latvia

18. Japan

19. USA

20. Wales

21. New Zealand

22. Estonia

23. Romania

24. Italy

25. Netherlands

26. Ireland

27. Denmark

28. Kazakhstan

29. Slovakia

30. Slovenia

31. Belarus

32. Germany

33. England

34. Brazil