Curling: Nerveless Japan defeats China

Japan applied pressure after the break to beat world champion China 8-5 in the women's curling final at the Winter Games.

Kotomi Ishizaki, Anna Ohmiya, Mari Motohashi and skip Moe Meguro caused a major upset when they beat the Chinese at the Maniototo International Curling Rink.

"I'm very happy," Meguro told the Otago Daily Times after the game.

"We were the challenger and remained relaxed and didn't get any nerves.

There was not so much pressure on us."

Japan led 5-4 at the break after five ends and then scored singles on the next two ends to stretch the margin to three shots and force the Chinese to play catch-up curling.

"We wanted to avoid pressure and did not think about winning until the end of the game," the skip said.

"We just thought about each single shot and did our job."

Meguro played a key role in the game.

Her bonus shot on the second end brought Japan back into contention after China had scored two on the first end.

Japan took the lead with a three on the fourth end when Meguro pushed out the Chinese shot with a brilliant angled take-out.

It was the most decisive shot of the game because it gave confidence to the Japanese team and created doubts in the minds of the Chinese players.

Singles on the sixth and seventh ends after the break kept the initiative with Japan and gave it a three-point cushion with just three ends left.

Third Motohashi and the skip combined to push Chinese rocks out of the house and give Japan a vital steal on the seventh end.

Japan held a three-point advantage before the final end and just concentrated on emptying the house.

Chinese national coach Daniel Rafael was disappointed by the world champion's performance.

"There were a lot of critical strategy mistakes and when we did call the right shot we didn't execute it correctly," he said.

China was actually more accurate, making 83.5% of its shots compared with Japan's 82.5%.

Chinese lead Zhou An had the best score with 96.3%.

Ishizaki (88.2%) and Ohmiya (85%) were the best of the Japanese curlers.

New Zealand put up a brave fight but had to settle for fourth place when Korea won the bronze medal game 12-7.

Korea led 6-2 at the break and stretched the margin to 9-3 on the next two ends.

But New Zealand showed its ability by scoring a rare four on the eighth end to close the gap to 9-7.