Tough start.
After a ceremony that featured a number of speeches from sponsors, local politicians and curling officials, the 2018 Women's World Curling Championships got underway. Our first opponent was Canada, represented by a team of Olympic and world champions, led by skip Jennifer Jones. Tremendous experience, enhanced by the current Olympic gold medal winning triple team Kaitlyn Laws in the mixed doubles category (alongside John Morrys) is the main feature of this foursome. We were certainly not the lucky ones in this match. The four we got in the first end came after two near misses by the running back and a speeding split by Jones, helped by our stone in front of the rings. At another point a Canadian player licked our stone in front of the rings after falling in a slide, knocking out our well placed stone instead of her own. But honestly, even without the luck, the Canadians were the better team and deserved to win. We indicated our quality with a nice three in the third end, and then some nice play in the last two ends. After the match there was a public interview on the podium in front of several hundred fans, which our fivesome Anna, Betty, Terka, Klara and Ezen handled with bravura, including a funny competition for Czech T-shirts. The whole performance sounded nice and the audience appreciated it with a long applause. And again a number of group photos, autographs and even an urgent request to buy the coach's jacket. We had dinner - how else but - at Green Papaya. Ezen and I then headed off for more night training before midnight local time, ending today's programme to get up at 6.15am to take on the Olympic silver medallists - the Koreans.