VERNON – China's Bingyu Wang dominated Canada's Jennifer Jones 7-5 in a playoff to qualify for Sunday's 2008 Ford World Curling Championship final.

China stole three early points for a 3-0 lead. While the final game statistics actually favoured Canada, the key statistic occured in the first half of the game, where Wang fired a perfect 100 in shooting percentage to Jones' 73 per cent.

The teams swapped deuces and singles up to the ninth end. Down 7-4 and without last rock, Canada cooked up a line of three stones in the four-foot, but Wang made a pressure-packed tap to hold Canada to a steal of one.

In the 10th end, Canada threatened early but Chinese second Quingshuang Yue cleared five stones with a single takeout.  

China defeated Canada 9-7 in the round-robin when Jones was heavy on a winning draw in the 10th end. Canada drops into Saturday's semifinal against Japan, who held on to defeat Switzerland 6-4 in the earlier playoff.

Wang reflected a mixture of shock and joy after the match.

"So surprised, so surprised," said Wang.

"I don't know how to say that. I'm so happy."

"They played very well today," said Canada third Cathy Overton-Clapham. "And we came out kind of flat at the beginning." 

"As usual we finished strong," said Canada's Jill Officer. "And we like to put ourselves in that position."

The semifinal featuring Japan and Canada begins at 11:30am Pacific time (PT). 

Seven broadcast partners are delivering live and tape-delayed action to world curling fans. Eurosport, NHK (Japan), TSN and CBC (Canada), WCSN and NBCOlympics.com (United States) and CurlTV are all on site in Vernon, with live results also available via curling.ca and results.worldcurling.org

CCA photos by Michael Burns