VANCOUVER (World Curling Federation) — Canada’s Brett Gallant (8-1) will challenge Denmark’s Rasmus Stjerne (7-2) in the men’s Page playoff 1 vs 2 game at the 2009 World Junior Curling Championship. That game will take place Saturday at 4 pm Atlantic, with the junior men’s and junior women’s semi-finals following at 11 pm Atlantic.
The winner will advance to Sunday’s championship final, while the loser will face the winner of the Page playoff 3 vs 4 game, featuring Sweden’s Oskar Eriksson (6-3) and defending champion Chris Plys of the United States (6-3).
Denmark thrashed Scotland’s Graeme Black 9-1 to confirm their place in the first Page playoff match, while Sweden stole two in the ninth end to upend Switzerland’s Roger Meier by a 7-4 score.
Plys and his United States teammates put forth a solid effort in overwhelming China’s Jialiang Zang by a 10-5 count and qualified for the playoffs in precisely the same spot – third place – as they did at the 2008 championships, in Ostersund, Sweden.
“We just gotta build on what we did tonight, everybody played pretty well,” said Plys.
“There was a better vibe tonight. This morning we were moping around.”
Plys competed in the U.S. Olympic Trials in Colorado before heading to Vancouver for the World Juniors. Now competing in his fourth world junior championships, Plys acknowledged a different mindset as the defending champion.
“It’s something we’ve had to black out (being defending champions), but it’s always there,” said Plys.
“When we lost, you can’t help thinking about it. But I think we’ve gotten over that now.”
In the other Thursday evening match, Russia’s Andrey Drozdov punted Germany’s Konstantin Kaempf 8-1.
Norway (Kristian Rolvsjord) finished at 4-5 along with Switzerland, while Russia, China and Scotland ended up at 3-6. Germany finished last at 1-8.
The women’s Page 1-2 game takes place Friday, March 13 at 16:00 Pacific time.
The 2009 WJCC is hosted by the Vancouver Olympic Centre, which welcomes the 2010 Olympic curling and Paralympic Wheelchair curling competitions next year.
Live scoring, statistics and shot-by-shot graphics of every match are available at: www.wjcc.curlit.com with results mirrored at the WCF Results website at: results.worldcurling.org
The event website is located at: www.wjcc2009.com