Curling titans to lock horns in Switzerland
Canada’s Brad Gushue and Sweden’s Niklas Edin are locking horns at another world men’s curling championship.
The latest tilt takes place Thursday afternoon (1:00 p.m. ET) in Schaffhausen, Switzerland with Gushue’s St. John’s, NL foursome sitting second with an 8-1 won/loss record.
Edin, the 2022 Olympic champion and six-time world champion, is first at 9-0.
The combatants might have eyed each other during their Thursday morning victories, which qualified both squads for the weekend’s playoff round.
Draw 15 saw the Canadians overwhelm Norway’s Magnus Ramsfjell (4-5) by a 7-4 count. The performance echoed most of their Brier victories (“the precision of Team Canada just … wears teams down”) and the Norwegian skip did well to keep the match close on some pressure-packed last stones, particularly in the first half of the game.
Two sheets of ice away, Edin’s squad scored a 6-4 victory over USA’s John Shuster. The Americans fell to 4-5 for the week and are in grave danger of missing the six-team playoff picture.
Edin has now beaten Shuster nine consecutive times since December of 2019, when the U.S. skip won 6-4 at the ill-fated Curling World Cup in Beijing.
“We’re gonna have to win a couple of games between now and the end of the week,” said Gushue.
“Tonight’s a big one, but it’s not the be all, end all. So hopefully we can pull it off.”
Gushue’s sole loss came in an extra end against Italy’s Joel Retornaz, who defeated New Zealand’s Anton Hood 10-4 to climb to a 6-3 record. Italian losses have come against Sweden and Bruce Mouat’s defending world champions from Scotland, as well as Shuster.
Also at 6-3 are the Germans, led by skip Marc Muskateweitz. The team has switched some personnel from the 2021 “Bubble Worlds” where The Curling News first took notice.
Scotland’s Mouat sits in third place at 7-2 following a 5-3 win over Dutch skip Wouter Goesgens.
Switzerland’s Yannick Schwaller was idle on Thursday morning, and currently sits fourth at 6-2.
Gushue and Edin have been evenly matched since the latter’s comprehensive victory at the Beijing Olympics. The Swedes have won seven times since then while the Canadians have scored six victories in reply.
Gushue has won four of the past five matchups, however, including a run of three in a row in April of last year—which included two wins at last year’s world championship in Ottawa.
Edin placed fourth at last year’s worlds—despite making his mark with the famed “spinner” shot against Norway—the first time he’s missed the podium since 2016, when his team struggled to a 6-5 won/loss record.
Overall, Gushue holds a 27-16 win advantage over Edin since their first matchup in October of 2011.
The top six teams qualify for the playoffs, with the top two receiving byes directly to the semifinals.