Leslie reports from Moscow:"If Scotland has a bogey team it must surely be the Czech Republic who once again proved the nemesis to our team in winning 8-4 after nine ends.
Despite this second loss David, Glen Muirhead, Ross Paterson and Richard Woods are only one point behind joint leaders Denmark, Germany and Sweden after five round robin games.
The Czech Republic's Jiri Snitil was able to manufacture two steals of one shot in ends three and four to lead 3-1 at the interval. David blanked the fifth end.
In the sixth, having split the house, David was left with a simple draw for the two shots to tie the game 3-3. The Scots lost the initiative in the next end when David missed his shot and Snitil made it two with a draw and restore the two shot advantage on the scoreboard.
Eighth and a jungle of stones lay in the house and with last stone David attempted an across-the-house play by coming in off his own stone. But he hit too straight and collected only one shot. Then in the ninth with his final stone of the end David was too heavy with his draw and sat towards the rear of the house completely open. Snitil could not believe his luck, played a simple takeout for a three and down 8-4 David called it a day.
Also in this session, Germany's unbeaten run came to an end, losing heavily to Norway 10-3 in only six ends.
Percentage summaries after five games have been released by CurlIT (see here) which shows David as last of the ten skips on an average of 69%, Glen sixth equal on 79%, Ross as number one of the seconds on 88% and Richard sixth in the leads on 78%."
Scores: Switzerland 8 France 3, Denmark 8 Italy 3, Czech Repulic 8 Scotland 3, Sweden 6 Latvia 5, Norway 10 Germany 3
Standings: 4/1 Denmark, Germany, Sweden 3/2- Norway, Scotland, Switzerland 2/3 Czech Republic 1/4 France, Latvia 0/5 Italy
Mike Haggerty's report is here.
All the results are here.
If you are interested in action curling photography (as I am of course), then take time to look at the galleries of photos from the event on the WCF website here. These photos are being taken by Richard Gray, and are generally excellent. Some are really quite spectacular!
Of course, if I can be just a little critical, I feel that all photos, especially on the World Curling Federation site, should be captioned to show who the curlers are in each pic. A few are, but not all. Otherwise, what do these photo galleries represent, other than simple garlanding of the competitions? For those of us who are curling enthusiasts, it is great to be able to identify the players are who are competing, and these photos should help us to do that, and provide a future record.
But I know this is not easy. I can spend as much time checking on the names of the curlers I photograph as I do actually getting the shots. And I still get them wrong, for example at Ayr recently, now all correct (I hope)!
Top: Photo of Glen and David is © Leslie Ingram-Brown.
