USA sits at the top, Guadet NEW Canada skipper & wins!

What a difference 1 game can make! In the afternoon draw we saw a number of things change including the USA taking top spot all alone with a noteable win over surprise Slovakia.

Pat MacDonald seems to have this team on a streamroller at Worlds,  in what was to be a rebuilding year. Seems the rebuild is over and the skyscraper is now towering over the rest of the pact.



USA Skip - Pat MacDonald

“We’re going to take it one game at a time,” said Patrick McDonald after putting an end to the Slovaks winning run with an 8-2 score in the afternoon. “If we keep playing the way we’re playing – the front end is really strong right now, I feel that anything can happen and I’m hoping for the best. I’m sure we will do fine for the rest of the week and who knows, on the last day hopefully we’re still playing!”

 The rest of the top of the pack is jammed with Russia, China and of course Slovakia which is not out of this by far, Russia handed former champs Norway their 4 straight loss as Norway sits at the bottom of the pack with Italy. Italy had a great chance for a win by taking Korea to an extra end but lost 7-6 to now sit in 10th place.

Sonja Gaudet - Torino 2006

Russia lost their game against Scotland in the morning 4-1. Scottish Skip Aileen Neilson said the game was very defensive “We knew the Russian’s like to have stones out at the front and tap them in so we just made sure that we didn’t let them do that. We went in with a game plan and stuck to it and it paid off in the end.”

The other notable and somewhat surprising change came from Canada not only did lead Sonja Guadet take over as Skip but the skip Darryl Neighbour sat out the afternnon game. 
 
Seems a woman's touch is what Canada needed as Sonja was able to skip Canada to its second win and doing it in great fashion by going 8-2 victors over Scotland.

 Canada's Joe Rea was quoted with another great joeism- "Every once in a while you have one of these games but I think we’ll be ok tomorrow."

Standings (Round Robin) after 4 draws
 

Rank	Team	Games Played	Wins	Loses	Points For	Points Against
1	USA	4	4	0	27	14
2	Slovakia	4	3	1	26	21
3	Russia	4	3	1	22	15
4	China	4	3	1	17	14
5	Korea	4	2	2	23	19
6	Canada	4	2	2	20	18
7	Scotland	4	3	2	19	21
8	Sweden	4	1	3	14	21
9	Norway	4	0	4	24	31
10	Italy	4	0	4	14	32

Sonja spoke with reporters and said:  “We just wanted to change things up a bit” 

Gaudet who’s never skipped at this level of international competition before said  “I was certainly nervous out there. It was an opportunity I was looking at doing a few years down the road, but it came up now, and that’s ok.”

In follow up the Jim Armstrong story,  a few papers have been reporting that Armstrong returned home before even throwing a stone. See the Canadian press article here: Canadian Press

The KBS News in Korea has a great piece on the games however there are no english subtitles so watching is about all you can do unless you speak Korean: Link found here: KBS NEWS

And lastly we wrap the summary up by providing a  video of the open cermonies. We can note and much to my surprise and shock that the facility has or at least seems to have very little attendance. Both at the the opening and the games. This is much to my surprise as the Korean culture has often tried to make sure this type of event is packed, if for no other reason than putting on a good show.

Canada faces Norway and Russia on hump day. A day in which sees Canada needing wins to stay in the hunt just for a podium spot and sees Norway in a MUST win if they don't want to be relegated to quailifiers next year. Also of note is the fact that Russia wants to win to try and begin to lock into a podium appeareance. As Joe Rea puts it "I think we'll be ok tomorrow"

Wow, what confidence!