German surprise
At this year's Men's World Curling Championships, the final standings are decided after the last round robin matches are played. It is clear who will continue in the competition. Tomorrow morning, the Italians will face the Germans and the Scots will face the Americans in the so-called qualifying round. The winners will advance to the semi-finals against the Swedes and Canadians respectively. The Czech men are in ninth place, which can be seen as a moderate success compared to the paper expectations. Compared to the European championship, we beat the Norwegians. In addition, we got wins over three of the five overseas participants. On the other hand, the Czechs lost five of their last six matches, and that took away their hopes for a better position, which was still in sight halfway through the tournament. The vast majority of the final results indicate that these were evenly matched matches, but the player statistics, with the exception of Marek Černovský, put the Czech players in a worse position than the final achieved position, including the overall team comparison (twelfth place). The preparation of the Czech national team was marred by the injury of Lukáš Klípa, who had several weeks of training downtime, but overall the Czech team left a very good impression and the players Lukáš Klíma, Marek Černovský, Martin Jurík, Lukáš Klípa and Radek Boháč deserve sincere thanks for more than worthy representation of Czech curling at the highest world level. The Schaffhausen championship is visibly struggling with the quality of the ice and even the double paper of the rocks did not help to ensure the full technical standard. An illustration, perhaps slightly provocative, was the "demolition" of the ice surface by broom-pushed stones by the Canadian team during the practice session preceding the Canada-Norway game. When hosting top curling events in Europe, the obvious problem remains finding a suitable venue equipped with technology capable of creating flawless competition ice. Six teams are yet to play and two playing days are still to come, but already it can be said that the biggest surprise is the young Germans' qualification for the World Championship play-offs. Three of them are still in their junior years (Kapp, Messenzehl and Scheuerl), yet they have given a very mature performance so far and have clearly earned the trust of their association. So who will be world champion? Youth or experience?
rnphoto: Germany