Curling-Britain defeat rivals Norway as mixed doubles launches Games

CORTINA D'AMPEZZO, Italy, Feb 4 : Britain emerged victorious in an early meeting between two major medal contenders in the mixed doubles curling tournament at the Milano Cortina Winter Olympics, beating Norway 8-6 as competition at the Games got under way on Wednesday.

Britain's Jennifer Dodds and Bruce Mouat, the 2021 world champions, were trailing 1-0 after the first end but scored three with the hammer to flip the script in the second.

Norway's twice Olympic medallists Kristin Skaslien and Magnus Nedregotten managed to level at 4-4, but another three points in the sixth proved enough for Britain to clinch the win.

"I think it's massive. You always want to start with a really tough opponent to hit the ground running and start how you want to continue," Dodds said.

"We definitely played well, but there's still elements we can improve on and we know what that is, and so we'll come out again tomorrow and just try and sharpen those up."

The top four pairs advance to the semi-finals after nine preliminary rounds in which all teams play each other once.

The game was briefly interrupted by technical issues at the Cortina Curling Olympic Stadium in the first end as the lights cut out and the scoreboards went blank.

"I forgot about it until someone just mentioned it there, but, yeah, we were so focused on the game," Mouat said.

"These things happen, it's happened in world competitions before so it's nothing new to us."

Canada's Brett Gallant and Jocelyn Peterman also delivered a strong statement of intent, leading throughout to clinch a 10-5 opening win over Czechs Julie Zelingrova and Vit Chabicovsky.

Sweden's brother-sister duo of Isabella and Rasmus Wranaa claimed a 10-3 win over South Korea's Jeong Yeong-seok and Kim Seon-yeong, who