PYEONGCHANG, Feb. 11-- China failed to qualify for the semifinals after losing to Norway in a tiebreaker following the round robin session of curling mixed doubles at the PyeongChang Winter Olympics here Sunday evening. "We tried our best, but our opponents performed better at some key points, especially in the last end, and they controlled the game," said Chinese player Ba Dexin after the match. "We will try to learn from this game and do better in the future...And we really enjoyed the games," said Ba. China and Norway, both with four wins and three losses, played a tiebreaker for the last spot in the semifinals in the evening following the round robin session. China opened the match with a 2-0 lead, but the Norwegians caught up and took the lead 3-2 after the second end. Both sides gained one more point in the next two ends, and in the fifth, China, with the hammer, turned the tide 5-4 with a spectacular last shot from Wang Rui that knocked out a key stone of the opponents and earned China two points. The sixth end turned out to be a decisive one in which China mishandled most of the shots and let the Norwegians steal four easy points. Although the Chinese struggled to retrieve two more points in the seventh, it was too late to stop the Norwegians who sealed the game 9-7 in the eighth. "We had a key miss in the sixth end, (in fact) a couple of key misses... and that is a big turning point," said China coach Marcel Rocque after the match. |