体坛英语新闻：Canada, Sweden to vie for women's curling gold at Vancouver Olympics

VANCOUVER, Feb. 25 (Xinhua) -- Top seed Canada clinched the gold medal final berth against defending champion Sweden on Thursday after they edged Switzerland 6-5 in the women's curling tournament of the Vancouver Olympic Winter Games.

Sweden overwhelmed world champion China 9-4 in another semifinals.

After trading singles in the first two ends, Canada took the advantage of their opponents' error from ship Mirjam Ott and pocketed two points.

But the fighting Swiss equalized the score with a single in the fourth and a steal of one in the fifth.

The hosts regained the lead by taking a 5-3 lead in the following end and kept the lead at 6-4 after nine ends.

The 10th end saw the Swiss skip OTT's last rock rolling out, giving Canada the one-shot win and match.

Sweden opened the first end with a single and stole two points in the following two ends, mainly based on the mistakes made by China skip Wang Bingyu.

Athough taking a single in the fourth, Wang and her teammates, not in the form during the Games, could not cope with the Swedish sound defence and offence. A tidy double in the eighth end by Swedish skip Anette Norberg on her first rock cleared the house of Chinese stones and left Sweden lying three, leading to a Swedish three, an insurmountable 9-3 lead and an eventual 9-4 victory.

"Today we played not well. (We were) thinking too much about going to the final and not play so well," said Wang, adding that they will try to win the bronze medal against Switzerland.

"We hope we have a good ending," Wang said.