They started the day five consecutive wins away from being world champions - and telling themselves it had been done before.
Two years ago in Victoria, there was a remarkable six-way tie for first place, and Randy Ferbey and his Edmonton rink had to take the longest road to a gold medal that anybody had ever taken.
But by noon yesterday, two of them were out - last year's Olympic silver medal winner and this year's Cinderella story.
Markku Uusipaavalniemi of Finland lost the morning tie-breaker 8-5 to Andy Kapp of Germany.
"When I got home from the Olympics I had to do three days of TV," said the man they call M-15 because of the number of letters in his last name.
"Probably not this time."
Not unless he gets involved in some sort of jackpot as a new member of the Finland parliament.
"We just played inconsistent for the whole tournament, right until the very end. We were too inconsistent in this tie-breaker game, too.
"We still got our chances. But it was like the whole week for us," he said of the 8-5 loss to Kapp.
Thomas Dufour of France, who said getting to the playoff game "was like Christmas," said it hurt to lose 6-5 in the other morning playoff against Peja Lindholm of Sweden.
"We played them pretty close but they deserved to win. They are a very good team," Dufour said of the Swedes.
"Peja made two amazing shots. I was not very confident with my takeouts. He made his shots. He won the game."
Dufour, who recorded a 6-5 record in the round robin - only the third winning record in the entire history of France at the world championships - said it was very difficult walking off the ice and knowing it was all over.
"This was so amazing," he said.
"We are very pleased with it all. It's a little difficult now, but after two hours I think we will be all smiles because of what we accomplished here."
France and Finland each earned 6.5 points toward qualifying for the Vancouver 2010 Olympic Winter Games.
Scotland, Norway, Australia and Denmark all missed the playoffs and ended up with 4-7 records and 3.5 Olympic points.
Korea, alone in last place with one win, ended up with one point for making it to the worlds.
Edmonton 2007 was the first of three successive world championships in which points were available to be one of the nine teams to join Canada at Vancouver 2010.
The gold medal winner will receive 14 points, the silver medal winner 12 and bronze medal winner 10 with the fourth place team taking away nine.
That left Sweden's Lindholm with nine after losing the afternoon tie-breaker 8-4 to Kapp. But eight points probably qualified Sweden for the Olympics right here and now.
"It's very good for Sweden but for our team it means nothing," Lindholm said of his first-year-together team.
"Fifth place here is not bad. You can't get all your dreams in the first season."
Kapp moved on to play Ralph Stoeckli of Switzerland last night, while Lindholm moved on to a different venue.
"Beer time!" were his first words after he left the ice.
