PYEONGCHANG, Feb. 19 (Xinhua) -- China lost to the United States 10-4 after an eventful match Monday evening in the round robin session of women's curling at the PyeongChang Winter Olympics here.
The Chinese players, apparently not in their best form, opened the match by trailing 3-0 in the first end.
China got back one point in the second end, but lost four more points in the third due to a series of mistakes.
The rest of the match saw China struggling to level the score but failing to turn the tide in face of the strong defense of the U.S. players.
"We started badly, and had little chance to catch up. The U.S. made very few mistakes today, and they played very well," said China coach Tan Weidong after the game.
The polished stones cause lots of trouble to the Chinese players.
"The stones were polished overnight. The U.S. team had a morning game and knew the change of the stones. We had only nine minutes to get used to the stones," said Chinese Wang Bingyu.
U.S. skipper Nina Roth admitted, "We played earlier this morning, and we know the stones were a little different today ... It' s definitely the advantage."
"It's good to take the advantage early on. They are a good team, so we know that we had to hold on to that lead. We played as sharp as we could, and we managed to do that," she added.
A fault stone made thing worse for the Chinese as they didn't find the problem of the stone until the eighth end.
"It's our fault that we didn't find the problem earlier," said Tan.
Also on Monday evening, Britain beat Switzerland 8-7, Denmark lost to Olympic Athlete from Russia 8-7, and Japan defeated Sweden 5-4.
Ten teams are competing in the round-and-robin stage with top four finishers qualifying for the semifinals.
South Korea currently top the standings with five wins and one loss, followed by Japan and Sweden, 5-2, respectively.
