GRAND FORKS – First the women, now the men. Another world curling championship and another win for a Chinese curling team over mighty Canada.

Fengchun Wang, competing in China's first-ever World Men's Curling Championship, defeated Canada's Kevin Martin 6-5 on an extra-end steal to send more shock waves reverberating through the world of curling. Little more than a week ago, China's national women's team beat Canada twice at the Ford World Women's shootout and ended up with the silver medal.

Canada jumped out to a 3-0 lead, but found it difficult to score the rest of way. Wang, a 26-year-old former short-track speedskater, caught up with steals in the third and sixth ends, and was gifted a stone in the four-foot when Martin missed a big-weight runback takeout and spilled the Chinese counter closer to the button.

One guard later, Martin faced a tricky wide draw for the win, but the stone never curled to the target.

"Did you see that?" Martin said, referring to his first stone of the 10th end. "Throw the big meat down there, and it rolls to the button. Geez.

"It's so straight out there," Martin continued. "Just that sheet, and now we don't have to play there again.

"And we don't have to worry about the streak anymore, do we?"

The Chinese snapped Martin's 25-game win streak which traced back to his provincial playdowns, and included a 13-0 run at the Canadian championship.

A beaming Wang spoke to reporters after the game, accompanied by a translator.

"This is very big for confidence," Wang said. "It's the first time China beat Canada, so there is big confidence for the rest of the games."

Coach Daniel Raphael, a Canadian, credited his team's concentration.

"I was surprised they stayed focussed the entire game," said Raphael. "They tend to lose focus for one end each game, thank God it happened in the first end."

Canada dropd to 7-1 while China improves to 4-4, tied with Denmark and Germany. Denmark lost 7-4 to France's Thomas Dufour and the Germans continued their collapse, falling 6-5 to Sweden's Anders Kraupp. Germany held a comfortable 5-1 lead into the ninth end but the Swedes took two and then stole an outrageous three points to win the match. 

In the other Wednesday morning game, Australia climbed to 5-3 - and into a second-place tie with France - with a narrow 7-6 win over Switzerland, which fell to 2-6. The Swiss had control of the game until the Aussies scored a deuce in the sixth end and then stole a pair in the seventh. 

Numerous television groups are delivering live and tape-delayed action, plus highlight packages, to world curling fans. Eurosport, CBC/CBCSports.ca/Bold (Canada), NBCOlympics.com and WCSN (United States) and CurlTV are all on site in Grand Forks.

Live results, with linescores and shooting percentages, are available via: worldmenscurling2008.com with mirrored scores also posted at: results.worldcurling.org