When curlers need snookers: Team GB fight on at Winter Olympics after day of drama
These are strained days at the curling arena, where the chances of the two British teams are teetering like a bus full of bullion that’s backed over the lip of a cliff,Both the men and women ended up in a position where they need to win every game they play and hope other results go their way to have any chance of making the semi-finals,Curling is one of the very few sports left being contested at the Winter Olympics in which the British fancy their chances, and Team GB’s hopes of getting anywhere near their medal target will turn on the curl of the stones in the next few days,Hang on a minute lads, anyone got a bright idea? “Play better,” the British skip Bruce Mouat told his team,The Brits had three matches between them on Wednesday.
It started just before nine in the morning with the first instalment of a double bill against USA – the women, then the men playing them – and was finished just before nine in the evening, with the conclusion of the women’s match against Japan,Team GB needed to win all three of them, and they did, in 12 hours of excruciating slow‑mo sport, as tense as the seat of a skip’s pants as they slide down the ice to deliver the hammer,There were some extraordinary moments in among it, the best of them Becky Morrison’s 15th, and very final stone, of the 10th end against USA,Morrison’s team were trailing 7-6, USA had the hammer and a stone sitting flush on the button,There was only one possible shot Morrison could play to save the day, an improbable hit-and-roll which ricocheted off a stone sitting way out to the left, shot across the ice and knocked the USA stone off and stopped dead.
It was a two-point swing, and the stunned USA team were still talking about it hours later.Minnesota Fats couldn’t have worked the angles any better.“It’s up there with the best stones I’ve ever thrown, for sure, especially considering the situation,” Morrison said.“One of the best stones I’ve ever seen,” her teammate Sophie Sinclair said.Their third, Jen Dodds, said: “What a way to finish the game.
I’ve got a bit of adrenaline going, because it was so amazing to watch.That is a very high tariff shot.You’re aiming at a third of the stone, and it’s way out there on a line you don’t really play often, in the 10th end of an Olympic Games, to keep your chances alive.”And the fun was only just beginning.The British men beat USA 9-2 after just six ends.
The problem was they don’t just need to win; they need the Norwegian and Italian teams to lose, too.Whenever Mouat and his teammates weren’t focused entirely on their own game, they had both eyes on what was happening on rinks either side.It was like the final day of the Premier League, only they were playing all the games in the same stadium.When Britain were two up against USA, Norway were trailing the Swiss by the same margin, but Italy were leading Canada by three.Then when the British were leading by six, Canada had come back to one‑down in their match against Italy, but all of a sudden the Norwegians had equalised with Switzerland.
Somehow at the end of it all, everything fell the right way,Canada came back to beat Italy 8-3, and the Swiss pulled ahead again to beat Norway 10-4,Now, the British have to spend Thursday morning watching while Norway play Canada, and Italy play Switzerland,As long as one of Norway or Italy lose, GB will go through,And if you followed that here’s a Rubik’s Cube for you to do.
“I’ll be literally refreshing my phone every 20 seconds,” said Hammy McMillan, who will be following it from the athletes’ village.The British women will be back at the rink.They beat Japan 9-3 in the evening, and now need to defeat Italy on Friday afternoon.Mouat, crawling ever so slowly towards the back of that wobbling bus, says only: “I’m actually oddly calm.I feel like things are going to go our way.
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Mikaela Shiffrin overcame grief, crashes and her own self-doubt to win slalom gold again
The greatest American skier of all time won her first Olympic medal in 2014. The 12 years in between have been marked by brutal ups and downsA lot can happen in 12 years. If you’re Mikaela Shiffrin, as a teenager you can become the youngest ever person to win the Olympic slalom, stack a couple more medals at the next Olympics, become the most successful World Cup skier of all time with a record 108 victories, go 10 more Olympic races in a row over three Winter Games without reaching the podium, overcome the two biggest crashes of your career and subsequent battles with self-doubt and post-traumatic stress disorder and eroding trust in your own skiing, and then bring it all back home with a second Olympic slalom gold.You can also lose your dad.Shiffrin, considered by many the greatest alpine skier in history, saw her incandescent career come full circle on Wednesday beneath the jagged limestone peaks above Cortina d’Ampezzo, winning her signature race by 1
‘Princess Anne thought I was Joe Marler’: Heyes mixed up in case of mistaken identity
Anyone who tuned in to the celebrity version of The Traitors last year will be familiar with the former England rugby player Joe Marler. With the exception, it turns out, of Princess Anne who was involved in a case of mistaken identity during the Calcutta Cup pre-match formalities at Murrayfield last Saturday.Clearly unaware Marler had retired from rugby 15 months ago, the Princess Royal stopped for a chat with her new favourite prop while being introduced to the England team in her role as patron of Scottish Rugby. She even confided how amusing she had found him on Celebrity Traitors, which would have been fine had the player in front of her been Marler rather than another bearded English front-rower, Joe Heyes.“She thought I was Joe Marler which was … quite upsetting,” said Heyes
Soft toys and a jagged edge: how Russia is circling the Winter Olympics
First came the reverberating cheers. Then a deluge of soft toys lobbed from the stands. But across the face of the brilliant Russian skater Adeliia Petrosian there was only the faintest of smiles. For now.So far at these Winter Olympics, a Russian is yet to win a medal
‘My DNA is in this car’: Lewis Hamilton revved up for Ferrari in new F1 season
Lewis Hamilton believes he is in the “best place” he has been at Ferrari, with a new car that carries his “DNA”.The seven-time champion failed to take a podium place for the first time and finished sixth in the drivers’ championship, behind his teammate Charles Leclerc in fifth in his debut season. By the end, he was clearly disenchanted, describing his first year at Ferrari as a “nightmare”.The Scuderia have looked promising in pre-season, and in Bahrain at the third and final test Hamilton, who has regrouped over the winter, presented a buoyant figure, optimistic about the forthcoming challenge.“I’ve gone through quite a bit and left everything, all of last year, behind me,” he said
Very good dog invades course but falls short of medal glory at Winter Olympics
A local dog has missed out on a historic cross-country medal at the Winter Olympics despite a lung-bursting surge in the homestretch.Nazgul, who according to NPR lives at a nearby hotel in Tesero, broke on to the course on Wednesday morning and sprinted for the line behind Croatia’s Tena Hadzic as she came to the end of the qualifying race for the women’s team cross-country sprint. Even if he had completed the entire race, Nazgul’s time would not have counted as he is male. And a dog.“I was like, ‘Am I hallucinating?” Hadzic said of her encounter with Nazgul, a Czechoslovakian wolfdog
Mikaela Shiffrin storms to stunning slalom gold to make Winter Olympic history
With one last chance to break her barren Olympic run stretching back eight years, Mikaela Shiffrin delivered in style. The 30-year-old American surged to victory in the women’s slalom on a sun-splashed Wednesday in the Dolomites with a two-run time of 1min 39.10sec, becoming the first US skier to win three Olympic gold medals.Switzerland’s Camille Rast, the reigning world champion and only woman to have beaten Shiffrin in her signature discipline this season, came in a yawning 1.50sec behind for the silver – the largest winning margin in any Olympic alpine skiing event since 1998 – while Anna Swenn-Larsson of Sweden took the bronze
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