One-third of the regular season has been played.
The round robin stage of the men's Olympic curling tournament is over. Canada and Switzerland are in the lead without a loss. At the opposite end are the Czechs, China, and, surprisingly, Sweden, which is also without a win so far. The women will complete the first third tomorrow morning. So far, things are looking good for the Swedes and the Swiss. The British, Italians, and Japanese are struggling. The sporting event, which is currently being watched by a half-full arena, has been accompanied by a series of surprising controversies, starting before the Games began with the elimination of one of the Italian players from the squad and her replacement by the daughter of the team's manager. That might have been an internal matter for the Italian Curling Federation, had the Italian captain not reacted emotionally by publicly dedicating her bronze medal from the Mixed Doubles category to her long-time teammate, with whom she wanted to share the Olympic experience in the four-player team competition. The intermission was marked by a discussion about the appropriateness of loud cheering during matches between the organizers, TV crews, and the players themselves. However, the escalation came in the match between curling giants Edin (Sweden) and Jacobs (Canada). Mutual accusations of rule violations are essentially unheard of in the world of curling and testify to the tense and over-motivated atmosphere that prevails in Cortina d'Ampezzo. Some of the expressions used in the discussion between Oskar Eriksson and Mark Kennedy definitely do not belong on the curling ice. The Czech team, which played on the other rink, apparently did not even notice the problem. The Czechs only had a chance of winning in yesterday's first match against the USA, where they appeared balanced and determined, especially in the first half. Against Switzerland and also tonight against Norway, the Czechs faced better opponents and, practically from the start, slowly but surely lost steam and were unable to create promising situations from which they could have gained more points. The second third of the program begins for our team tomorrow afternoon with a match against Great Britain.