Winning is an addictive feeling. Just ask Jeff Stoughton and Co.
Stoughton’s Canadian foursome from Winnipeg’s Charleswood Curling Club won its eighth straight contest at the Ford World Men’s Curling Championship, presented by Richardson, by knocking off the Czech Republic 9-4 on Wednesday morning at the Brandt Centre.
Canada (8-0), which clinched at least a tiebreaker game with the victory, is aiming to become the first team to breeze through the round-robin portion of the FWMCC undefeated since Mark Dacey of Halifax went 9-0 at Gavle, Sweden, in 2004.
“It’d be great. Why not? That’s the whole idea — never lose. I mean, who likes losing?” said Stoughton, whose team includes third Jon Mead, second Reid Carruthers, and lead Steve Gould. “I think it’d be awesome to go undefeated. We’ll see what happens. But the goal, really, is to get into the (Page Playoff) 1-2 game. We want to beat Sweden (5-2) this afternoon, and I think that pretty well puts us there. That’s really what we want to do — beat Sweden so they can’t catch us.
In Wednesday’s other Draw 12 results, France (6-2) continued its unlikely push for the country’s first FWMCC playoff berth since 1973 with a big 8-7 win over Alpen rival Switzerland (5-3).
Norway (4-4) kept its playoff hopes alive, needing just six ends to dispatch the winless Danes (0-8) by a 9-2 count, while the United States (3-5) doubled up Korea 8-4.
Canada scored big in the third end, counting four, and stole a point in each of the eighth and ninth to put things away.
“If we went really aggressive, they seemed to get in a lot of trouble,” remarked Stoughton.
On Sheet D, Thomas Dufour’s quartet from Chamonix got four of their own in the sixth as fourth-rock tosser Tony Angiboust, already looking at a favourable situation in the house, made a runback double for the big score.
France sits third overall behind Canada (8-0) and Scotland (6-1). Dufour’s best result came in 2007 at Edmonton, when he finished 6-5 and qualified for a tiebreaker, losing 6-5 to Sweden.