With one round robin game left, Sault Ste. Murray’s Brad Jacobs scored another Olympic victory today.
Jacobs Rink, who represented Canada in men’s curling, used three steals to defeat Italy’s Joel Letornaz, 8-3 in seven ends.
With the win, Team Jacobs, which features No. 3 Mark Kennedy, No. 2 Brett Gallant, and No. 1 Ben Ebert, improved to 7-1 in the tournament.
With the hammer off, Retornaz scored one point in the second end, took a 3-0 lead through three ends, and stole two more points in the third.
After scoring a pair in the fourth end to cut the gap to one point, Jacob’s Rink scored a steal in the fifth end to return the match to even terms.
Jacobs stole four bases in the sixth end to break up the game and finished off the scoring with one more steal in the seventh end.
After opening the tournament with a win over Germany’s Marc Muscatewicz last Wednesday, the Jacobs rink also added wins over Daniel Casper (USA) and Niklas Edin (Sweden) on Friday.
Team Canada suffered its first loss of the tournament against Switzerland’s Yannick Schwaller on Saturday, but returned to the win column with a win over China’s Xiaoming Shu on Sunday.
The Canadian then defeated Lucas Klima of the Czech Republic on Monday to improve to 5-1.
On Tuesday, the team clinched a playoff spot with a 9-5 victory over England’s Bruce Muat.
Team Jacobs will complete the round robin early Thursday morning as they face Norway’s Magnus Ramsfjell.
The standings after Wednesday’s game are as follows:
- Switzerland – 8-0
- Canada – 7-1
- UK – 5-4
- Italy – 4-4
- Norway – 4-4
- America – 4-5
- Germany – 3-5
- China – 2-6
- Czech – 2-6
- Sweden – 2-6
Switzerland and Canada are the only teams to qualify for the playoffs, heading into Thursday’s final round-robin draw.
The top four teams advance to Thursday’s semifinals, with the winners of those matches advancing to Saturday’s gold medal match. The other semi-finalists will compete in the bronze medal match on Friday.