Swiss men take bronze

Sweden's skip Peja Lindholm accepts defeat in style

By BBC Sport Online's Mike Haggerty

Switzerland's Andreas Schwaller won the men's curling bronze medal, beating reigning world champion Peter Lindholm of Sweden by 7-3 in the bronze medal play-off game at Ogden's Ice Sheet.

Switzerland, the 1998 Olympic champions, scored a single in the first end, and then stole two in the second to open up a margin that set them on their way.

After the match, Swiss skip Schwaller, who had bounced back from a horror end to his semi-final game when Norway scored four successive points, said, "Our goal was to win a medal.

"It was not easy, but we did. A medal is good and that's OK".

Sweden came back into the game when skip Lindholm delivered a magnificent double-raise takeout to eliminate the Swiss stone for a score of two.

The teams swapped singles in the next two ends and then Switzerland blanked the sixth and moved further ahead, scoring two in the seventh and a further single steal in the eighth.

Our goal was to win a medal

Andreas Schwaller
Switzerland

Sweden blanked the ninth end in a most unusual way.

Knowing that the game was beyond him, Lindholm held onto his final stone all the way up the ice for a completely illegal full-length draw, and then conceded by hugging the victorious Schwaller, giving Switzerland their win.

"I saw my sweepers and they were really sad," Lindholm said of the surreal finish.

"They were almost crying. It's not a great memory to cry at the end, therefore it is better to have a good laugh."