Medals update: Sweden win women's curling bronze at Beijing 2022

The duel between defending Olympic champions, Sweden, and reigning World Champions, Switzerland, could have been the women's curling final but instead both teams were fighting to take the final podium position on offer – third place and the bronze medal.

It was Sweden who came away with the win on Saturday (19 February) at the National Aquatics Centre, beating Switzerland 9-7 in a tense game that saw the Swiss side come back from 6-2 down in the seventh end to take it to a tenth. With the score 8-7 to the Swedes at the end of the ninth, it was anybody's game.

In the end, it needed four Swedish sweepers on the final stone in the tenth end to guide the stone home to claim the bronze medal, leaving Switzerland in the dreaded fourth place.

Despite being the best sides during the round robin, with the Swiss winning eight out of nine games, and the Swedes beaten only twice, the two sides found themselves playing for the bronze medal.

The Swiss lost to Japan in the semi-finals, which set up the bronze medal game against the Swedes.

For their part, the Sweden took part in a curling game for the ages in which Team GB survived a breathless, topsy-turvy clash to come out on top 12-11 in an extra-end thriller to make it to the final against Japan, the team who beat them in the third-place match in PyeongChang.

The women's gold medal-match between Japan and Great Britain takes place on Sunday (20 February) the last day of the Olympic Winter Games Beijing 2022.

Post game, Switzerland's Silvana Tirinzoni spoke about falling behind in the early ends: ""I don't know, we made some unusual mistakes. I have no explanation for that, actually. I felt before the game that we were ready, but then I don't know what happened on the ice."

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