---

Thursday early morning.

We filled yesterday's free day by watching one round of matches right in the hall. I then took advantage of the Swedish Curling Association's invitation to celebrate its centenary and in the evening we watched the Canadians' crushing win over China on the streams. Now for today. Up at 5.40. Breakfast at 6.10. Bus departs at 6.46. That's quite an unpleasant arrangement leading up to the last group game. The opponents are the Russians. We're playing decent LSD, but it's not enough for an advantage. The first end is a disaster. We're either short or long, but the Russians are accurate. We cash in a six and the game seems lost. But from that point on, we are the better team and slowly chip away at the Russian lead. On a power play in the seventh end, we only need to make two to go into the last one down. We have two chances to get to two, but we miss both by a whisker. So you enter the eighth at 6-8. We're running out of time. The opponent's last stone is hit on one of the two open Czech stones in the circle. Over. 7:8. We're sorry we let our opponent get such a comfortable lead, because it would have been impossible to lose with the performance we put on. We're waiting to see how the Scots, who are the favourites against Brazil. If they win, we'll go into the tie-break with them at three-quarters to six. We have to keep the performance from the seven-eighths of the previous game and we'll be OK.