Britain’s medal hopes on line
OLYMPICS2018
for all the short-track experts out there I was always going to get a penalty because I didn’t finish the race! I have so much love for short track.”
Whether it is a case of blind optimism remains to be seen but, for now, it is possible to think one of sport’s greatest redemption stories could still be written.
“It’s a bit of a fight against time whether she can make it or not,” said British Olympic Association chef de mission and team leader Mike Hay.
“Nothing is broken, she has got soft tissue damage to her right ankle and we won’t be making a decision until Tuesday morning.
“It’s how the ankle responds. She wants to make it but it might not be her decision – you’ve got to be able to get the boot on your foot.” CURLING is not normally the place for controversy at the Winter Olympics – until yesterday.
British skip Eve Muirhead found herself at the centre of a decision that leaves her medal ambitions in the balance.
Britain had taken gold medal favourites Sweden to an extra end but as Muirhead delivered the crucial last stone, the lights on the handle flashed to indicate she had not released the rock before the red ‘hog line’ – curling’s equivalent of a no-ball. She protested her innocence but it was too late, and Sweden secured an 8-6 victory with a free shot.
Defeat leaves the British rink with three wins from six and no margin for error in their remaining three group games.
“It is the first stone I think I have hogged in my life and I guess when it comes at a time like that it is horrible,” she said.
“When something like that happens, it makes it very tough to knitting,” she said. “I’m only knitting strips because I can’t do a pattern, that’s too complicated. But it’s very calming. “My nan taught me to knit years ago and passed away two years ago so it’s a way to feel connected to her.” For someone who has made a career out of dashing down the ice head first on little more than a tea tray, the revelation Yarnold spends her downtime counting stitches may come as a surprise. Not to those in the know. She celebrated her Sochi gold with a ‘nice cup of tea’ while her love of The Archers earned her a cameo in the radio soap. Then take and it’s gutting it finished that way. But it just makes it worse when you see it and it doesn’t look like it is, but it does come down I guess to inches and millimetres.
“When you see the replays and it looks like all the ones before it, it is hard to take.
“We did get the stone tested and the stone is fine so there is nothing we can do. We have to move on.”
Muirhead now cannot afford to lose in remaining matches against Switzerland, Japan and Canada while Kyle Smith’s men’s rink claimed a there was the bookkeeping course she did for ‘fun’ during a sabbatical from the sport in 2016 – and don’t get her on to the subject of making lampshades.
A fan of The Detectorists television series, she listened to the theme tune before her PyeongChang gold-medal run. Four years previously it was Dizzee Rascal. Yarnold is predictably unpredictable.
Coming into these Games, she had not won a race since the 2015 world championships. Yet by Saturday night she had another Olympic gold to her name after triumphing by nearly half a second. It was mission accomplished to become the first