Early action from Copenhagen

The first games were finished today before the opening ceremony took place!! Nine o'clock saw three men's games which produced what looked like a straightforward victory for Canada over Hungary and two much tighter wins for Italy against Japan and New Zealand against Netherlands. And then after the teams for the next session had done their practice and thrown their last stone draws we had a 5 minute opening ceremony - surely the shortest ever. A brief speech followed by the raising of the flag and the first stone, delivered by Kristine Jensen wife of Johannes the driving force behind the Taarnby rink.

Some photos below will give you a flavour of the event:

Then it was straight into the second set of games and a couple of surprises with the Slovakian women at their first event taking the Swiss medal winners from last year to an extra end and the Finns, who won the European Seniors, defeating the USA with some big hitting.

The England team, resplendent in their Loudmouth trousers as modelled below by Tommy Campbell, came through against a dogged Slovakian team while the shot of the session was JohnJo Kenny's last stone for Ireland against Russia. After the Russian skip had used a plant to knock out the Irish shot, JJ then played a great runback to remove the Russian shot and win the game 7-5. Elsewhere there were routine wins for Switzerland men against Latvia, Sweden women against New Zealand and the Czech Republic women against Japan..

Having had a bye in the first session because of the non-appearance of the Polish team, Scotland's men then suffered a shock defeat against New Zealand by 2-6 in the day's third session, Hans Frauenlob carrying on from Peter de Boer's successes last week. Barbara Watt's Scottish ladies also lost, to Russia while Ireland's ladies lost to the USA. Elsewhere Canada's two teams had early finishes as they defeated Italy and Finland and Japan's men defeated Hungary.

Today's final session will see the first appearance of Wales and of Eigil Ramsfjell's Norway in a full session of 7 games (4 men's and 3 women's).