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WJCC-B, Lohja 2023.

The Kisakallio Sports Centre near the town of Lohja is hosting this year's World Junior B Championships. No surprise. Lohja, with its forty-five thousand inhabitants, has traditionally been an active community in culture and sport, and curling has a reserved place here. It takes about an hour by bus from Helsinki to reach the snow-covered complex, equipped with various sports facilities, accommodation and a social centre. For a number of years, this sports complex has been hosting qualifying curling events, especially junior ones, but also, for example, qualifiers for the adult world championships or the world junior championships themselves. Czech women have already played their tournament and went back home. Third place in the group leaves the Czech women without participation in the World Championships for next year. The men arrived at the venue on Wednesday and after an evening team meeting, without the opportunity to practice on competition ice (like the women), they took on the Swedes in their first group game at noon local time on Thursday. The game, in which the Scandinavian opponent got the advantage of the last stone in the pre-match training, was very even until the end. We were unable to force the Swedes to score just one point in the seventh end, and thus go - one point down but with the advantage of the last stone going into the last end - for the overall win. With the final stone of the eighth end, the Swedish skip moved our excellently placed stone a few decimetres to gain one. The trajectory of the played stone was a bit suspicious, but when directly asked by the Czechs if the stone had been "set on fire", the Swedish skip replied "No." after a short hesitation. So no, maybe it was a flat spot or a hair on the ice.

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In tonight's game, the Hungarians were up against us. We know each other from Prague and we know they are a good and ambitious team. We definitely count them among the difficult opponents. We were under pressure from the beginning and despite our best efforts we couldn't create a promising position to take advantage of the last stone. We couldn't erase the loss of three points in the last end, so we record our second loss. Tomorrow we have a looser schedule in the form of a single match against the Slovenians. We will have the space to put together a realistic plan for the next matches and fulfill it.

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Photo is from the game against Sweden