Photo: Rebecca Jean MacDonald, Robert Campbell (Credit: World Curling Federation)

Team Canada (PEI’s Robert Campbell and Rebecca Jean MacDonald) won both their games on Thursday at the World Mixed Doubles in Saint Paul Minnesota, beating Russia 7-5, and downing Italy 13-1 to finish up round robin play with a a 4-3 record in their pool, behind unbeaten Switzerland (7-0),  and Russia (5-2), who both advance to the quarter-finals, and tied with Denmark and Slovakia. The three 4-3 teams will now play in a tiebreaker round, with Canada playing Slovakia at 9 Atlantic this morning,  at the winner facing Denmark at 12:30 ADT this afternoon. The winner will advance directly to the quarterfinals, and the others playing in a qualification round at 4 pm Atlantic today, for the last quarter-final spot.

The championship round looks like this:

QUARTERFINALS (9 pm Atlantic today):
GAME 1 – Sweden vs winner of qualification game
GAME 2 – Switzerland vs best ranked third place team once tiebreakers are complete
GAME 3 – France v USA
GAME 4 – Japan v Russia

Semifinals – Saturday morning (10 am Atlantic)
Medal Games – Gold & Bronze – Saturday afternoon (3 pm Atlantic)

In Thursday’s games, Team Canada took a triple in their first end against Russia, but the Russians pulled ahead, scoring singles in five out of the next six ends, while Campbell and MacDonald only managed a single point and trailed 5-4 after seven, before taking another triple in the final end for the 7-5 win.

Canada was all over Italy in the final draw of the round robin, taking five points in the first end, and stealing triples in the next two for an 11-0 lead after only three ends. The next end was blanked, with the Italians getting on the board with a single in the fifth. It was handshake time after Canada picked up  a deuce in the sixth end. Italy finished play at 1-6.

Mixed doubles curling has teams of two players – one male and one female (no alternate/spare player is allowed).
– Teams have only six stones each (instead of eight) – and one of those stones, from each team, is prepositioned on the centreline before each end of play starts.
– Player one delivers the first and last stones and player two plays the second, third and fourth stones. If they choose to, the two players may swap positions from one end to the next.
– Sweeping can be done by both team members.
– Each team receives 46 minutes of playing time and games are fixed at 8 ends – compared to 73 minutes and 10 ends for “traditional” curling.

Website: www.2011worldcurling.com