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The audience in Prince George.

Sometimes an audience is useful. The Canadians can attest to that, as they mistakenly set up a red stone instead of a yellow one on their last throw in the second end. The attentive spectators started chanting loudly "yellow, yellow,...", and following this recommendation, Shanon replaced the wrong stone with the correct one. The atmosphere at the CN Centre Prince George is intoxicating. The crowd continues to grow, already over a thousand for each round, and the boisterous, deafening reactions to well-played stones are reminiscent of hockey, football or basketball. For us, of course, this is relatively new and unusual. We're learning just how big a sport curling is in Canada. The information cube located above the centre of the hall works wonderfully. It often has shots of the audience in the form of a "Kiss camera", "Hug camera" or various escapades of the curling mascot, but most importantly it is running one of the curling matches live. The Czech team challenged the Norwegians on Thursday morning and the Turks in the evening. Both matches were characterized by our persistent but unsuccessful efforts to get more points. The Norwegians played very solidly. The good performance of this Scandinavian team was positively influenced by the inclusion of experienced players (Skaslien, Roervik) in the line-up. The Turks also gave an excellent performance, being flawless defensively and not allowing us to create virtually any hopeful situation. We lost both games, although we fought until the last moments. Tomorrow we will face the Italians and the Canadians. Let's get some rest and go at them.rn

photo: Kristin Skaslien (Norway), silver and bronze from the Olympics in mixed doubles