The Swiss curlers have reached the final at the World Championships in Moose Jaw, Canada. In the semi-final, the team led by skip Yannick Schwaller gave China no chance with a 7:3 win and will play for gold against Scotland.
06.04.2025, 07:02
06.04.2025, 09:29
SDA
The Swiss got off to an ideal start, recording a deuce in the first end. When the CC Geneva curlers regained the right to the last stone in the fifth end at 2:1, they used this advantage again to "steal" a stone from China and score two more points. As the Swiss were also able to record the third deuce of the game in the sixth end due to mistakes by the Chinese, the situation before the seventh end was quite comfortable for the Swiss at 6:1 and extremely complicated for the Chinese.
The team around skip Xiaoming Xu, who had lost 5:7 to Switzerland in the round robin, tried to take more risks to get closer to Switzerland, but Pablo Lachat-Couchepin, Sven Michel, Schwaller and Benoît Schwarz-van Berkel did not allow more than one stone each in the seventh and ninth ends, so that the young Asians gave up their chase to catch up before the last end.
This is the first time a Swiss men's curling team has reached the final of a World Championship since 2003. Back then, the Swiss team, led by Ralph Stöckli, lost 6:10 to Canada and had to settle for silver. However, Switzerland was denied a direct opportunity for revenge.
Canada stumbles against the Scots
In the final, which will be played on Monday night, the Swiss will face Scotland, who defeated hosts Canada 7:4 in the much more competitive second semi-final. The Canadians led by skip Brad Jacobs finished the round robin in first place ahead of Switzerland, losing only once to the Scots. After another defeat against the team led by skip Bruce Mouat, the record world champions (36 gold medals) now only have a chance of bronze against China.
Switzerland, meanwhile, have their 22 men's World Championship medals to their name and can become world champions for the fourth time after 1975, 1981 and 1992 with a win. At least the omens are not bad for Yannick Schwaller and his team. In the round robin, the Swiss came out on top 11:7 against the Scots, who started the knockout phase from fifth position.
