THE CANADIAN PRESS
CORTINA D’AMPEZZO, Italy — Canada’s Kevin Koe resumed his winning ways at the Capital One World Men’s Curling Championship on Wednesday.
The Edmonton skip registered two easy victories, beating Japan 12-3 before downing France 8-1. Both contests went just six ends and came after Koe suffered his first loss of the tournament, a 9-6 decision Tuesday night to Germany.
Koe improved his record to 8-1 and leads the overall standings.
"It was a good day, and 8-1 going into the last day is pretty good," Koe said. "That one loss may come back to haunt us, but we would have taken 8-1 at the start of the week.
"But we’ve got a couple of tough games (Thursday). China is always tough, we’ve actually played them quite a few times and they always seem to be close games. Then we have Norway at night, so it’s a big day for us."
China has struggled so far, sporting a 3-5 record heading into its game later Wednesday against Sweden. But Norway is second overall at 7-1 and will take on Germany in the late draw.
Koe wasted little time taking control of his match against Japan, scoring four in the first end before stealing three in the second. The Japanese did score one in the third end, but Koe countered with three in the fourth for a commanding 10-1 advantage.
After the break, where alternate Jamie King came on again in place of Carter Rycroft at second, Koe cleared out a Japanese rock that was partially frozen to score two and take the 12-3 advantage before the Japanese shook hands.
"That was a good win," Koe said. "I was happy we got right back on the ice this morning after that (Germany) game last night.
"That wasn’t our best game and so we were looking forward to getting back out here today and starting to play well. We played a really good first end."
Koe again started strong in his game against France, scoring three in the first end before stealing one in the second.
France scored one in the third, but again Koe countered, this time scoring two in the fourth before registering a steal of one in the sixth before the French side conceded.
"That was another good start and another good win," Koe said. "We’ve played a couple of teams at the bottom of the standings who are out of it so you don’t typically get their best effort from them.
"But we played well, so it was partly us, partly them."
Koe is making his first appearance at the world championship and said the experience has been pretty much what he expected.
"I don’t think there really has been too much that has surprised us," he said. "All the teams here are pretty good.
"I mean we’re 8-1 but we’ve had a lot of close games. There’s not quite as many top teams as we see back home, but they’re good teams. But we knew that coming in, so it doesn’t surprise us at all.
"What’s surprised us most is just how beautiful it is here and how well this has been organized — it’s just unbelievable," he said. "Even the crowds are bigger than we expected."