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Wednesday, April 1, 2015

{allcanada} Simmons rebounds over Swiss at worlds

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The Fault in Our Stars / Divergent / The Descendants

HALIFAX - Canada's Pat Simmons rebounded from his first loss at the Ford world men's curling championship by defeating Switzerland's Marc Pfister 8-4 on Wednesday morning at Scotiabank Centre.

Simmons hit a takeout to score three in the fourth end and stole two more points in the fifth to put the game out of reach.

"I'm happy to see that we bounced back," Simmons said. "We were ready to play this morning against a good team and managed to play pretty well."

Canada opened the round robin with six straight victories before falling to defending champion Thomas Ulsrud of Norway on Tuesday night.

After 12 draws, Norway and Canada were tied in first place at 7-1. Round-robin play continues through Thursday night.

Four teams will advance to the Page playoffs. The top two seeds will meet Friday night in the 1-2 game with a direct berth in the final on the line.

The third and fourth seeds will meet in Saturday's 3-4 game with the winner to advance to the semifinal against the loser of the 1-2 game. The semifinal winner will play for gold and the loser will play for bronze.

"Lots still can happen," Simmons said. "Obviously our goal coming into this week was to get into that 1-2 game. We're in control of that ourselves, which is great. But (there's) more work to do though, we can't let off the gas pedal for one second or we won't be in that game. So we need to keep working."

Canada will play Scotland's Ewan MacDonald in the evening draw.

Ulsrud defeated Italy's Joel Retornaz 9-2 in a game conceded after six ends.

"We got a good start and picked up from where we left off yesterday against Canada," Ulsrud said. "We have a lot of confidence in the ice and it's really coming together right now.

"The only thing I'm worried about right now is the guys peaking too early in the week, so we just have to keep it going."

In other early play, Sweden's Niklas Edin outscored American John Shuster 11-6 and China's Jialiang Zang beat Russia's Evgeny Arkhipov 8-3.

Switzerland and Sweden were tied in third place at 5-3. Japan was alone in fifth place at 4-3, followed by the Czech Republic and Finland at 3-4.

The United States and China were next at 3-5, just ahead of Scotland at 2-5. Russia and Italy shared last place in the 12-team field at 2-6.

Canada opened with back-to-back steals before Switzerland got on the board with a single in the third end.

Pfister gave Simmons an opening in the fourth and the Canadian skip took advantage. The Swiss skip was off with his final throw, giving Simmons a lane for his three-ender.

Pfister had a chance to get back in the game in the fifth end but his runback attempt was off the mark. With the game well in hand, Canadian alternate Tom Sallows replaced second Carter Rycroft in the seventh end.

Several groups of schoolkids watched the action from the upper level of seats. That helped boost attendance to 1,680 at the 10,500-seat venue.

The medal games are scheduled for Sunday. Canada is hoping to return to the podium after settling for a fourth-place finish last year in Beijing.

Glenn Howard was the last Canadian skip to win this event. He took the gold at the 2012 competition in Basel, Switzerland.

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