GANGNEUNG, Korea (WCF) – Less than a week after winning her record-setting third consecutive World Junior Curling Championship title, 18-year-old Scotland phenom Eve Muirhead is in first place at her first-ever World Women’s Curling Championship.
Muirhead led her newly-formed squad to solid wins over host Mi-Yeon Kim of Korea (6-4) and Italy’s Diana Gaspari (11-2 in six ends) to lead the 12-team field at 2-0.
Sweden’s Anette Norberg, the defending Olympic and two-time world champion from Sweden, is also 2-0 after victories over Italy (7-2) and Korea (10-8).
The Koreans lost two winnable matches. The match against Sweden went into a second extra-end – the 12th end – when Norberg mistakenly hit and rolled out for win in the 11th end.
The 2009 Mount Titlis Worlds, presented by Capital One, are the final – and critical – qualifying opportunity for women’s teams for next year’s Vancouver 2010 Olympic Winter Games.
Great Britain, which earns its points from Scotland performances at world championships, is in eighth place in the Olympic qualifying race. Ten teams will qualify for Vancouver.
To Muirhead, it all seems like a walk in the park. Or, as it turns out, a walk on the beach.
“It was roasting,” said Muirhead, in describing her beach visit prior to competition. The unseasonably warm Korean weather has virtually all of the teams out by the seaside.
“We were just all over them,” said Muirhead of the Italian match.
“We put pressure on them. They were playing lots of freezes and missing them. We played the simple stuff.”
In other afternoon games, Denmark’s Angelina Jensen thrashed Norway’s Marianne Roervik 10-2 and Switzerland’s Mirjam Ott, the reigning European champion, defeated German veteran Andrea Schoepp by a 7-5 count.
In evening play, defending champion Jennifer Jones of Canada beat China’s Bingyu Wang 11-5 in a rematch of last year’s championship final, and Russia’s Liudmila Privivkova won her opening match 7-5 over Debbie McCormick of the United States.
The Canadians were delighted to see a small handful of Canadian fans, who cheered lustily.
“That was great,” said Jones. “They were awesome.
“We definitely didn’t think we would see any Canadians here.”
Jones overcame a 2-1 deficit to post a 5-2 lead after four ends. After Wang closed the gap to 5-4 the Canadians scored a deuce and stole the following end to lead 8-4. A big three-ender in the ninth end brought the handshakes out.
The Mount Titlis Worlds mark the first adult worlds ever hosted in Korea. The city of Jeonju previously hosted the 2006 World Juniors.