Canada's Jennifer Jones falls to Japan in women's curling at the Beijing Games

BEIJING -

Canada's Jennifer Jones dropped an 8-5 decision to Japan's Satsuki Fujisawa on Friday afternoon at the Ice Cube.

Under pressure from the start by the 2018 Olympic bronze medallists, Jones was unable to settle into a rhythm in her second round-robin game at the Beijing Games.

It was the first time Jones has lost a match at an Olympic Games. She won her opener here and ran the table en route to a gold medal at the 2014 Sochi Olympics in Russia.

Canada's Brad Gushue was scheduled to play Switzerland's Peter de Cruz on Friday night.

Fujisawa stole single points in three of the first five ends and notched a deuce when she had hammer in the third.

Canada cut into the lead when Fujisawa made her first error of the game, a flashed open hit in the sixth end.

Jones took advantage with a deuce but any momentum was snuffed in the seventh after Kaitlyn Lawes hogged a stone to set up a Japanese pair.

Fujisawa ran Jones out of rocks in the 10th.

In early men's games, Switzerland beat Russia's Sergey Glukhov 6-3 and American John Shuster topped Great Britain's Bruce Mouat 9-7.

Sweden's Niklas Edin dumped Italy's Joel Retornaz 9-3 and China's Xiuyue Ma edged Denmark's Mikkel Krause 5-4.

Sweden (3-0) and Canada (2-0) were the only unbeaten men's teams entering the evening session. The defending champion Americans were alone in third place at 2-1.

Great Britain, Norway and Switzerland were 1-1 ahead of China and Russia at 1-2. Denmark and Italy remained winless at 0-2.

This report by The Canadian Press was first published Feb. 11, 2022.