Italian curling raises its hands to the sky. Debut with a bang for the Azzurri on the first day of the World Men’s Curling Championship – Capital One World Men’s Curling Championship, taking place today in Cortina d’Ampezzo.
On the ice of the Olympic Stadium, the team of the Trentino skip Joel Retornaz demonstrated to the world that “Italy is there and is able to express excellent curling”, as Retornaz himself declared at the end of a very tight first round against Japan , which ended at 7-6 after the extra end.
Today Italy fielded the Retornaz quartet, Davide and Silvio Zanotelli and Giorgio Da Rin, and in the first six ends it was a continuous back and forth, which led the two teams to start the seventh hand at 3-3. Tsuruga and his team did well to gain a two-point lead and the match was going uphill for Italy.
“At 5-3 the match had taken a bad turn – said Retornaz – but we were good at maintaining concentration and immediately brought ourselves back to parity. After that they suffered our pressure.” In fact, Retornaz responded to the Japanese partial “in kind” with two winning stones that brought the match back to a draw. At the tenth end the score was 6-6, and in curling in these cases an extra end is necessary. Today the blue team was concentrated like never before, and so Retornaz’s last stone ran “with the rev counter” right up to the middle of the house (the baseline target) and released the cry of joy from the blues accompanied by the enthusiasm of the fans in the stands.
Source: Press Release
