I’D BLOWN MY CHANCE
DOM PARSONS feared that he’d blown the chance of a medal – but mistakes elsewhere in the men’s skeleton handed him bronze and GB’s first gong of the Winter Olympics.
Parsons thought mistakes on the fourth and final run would cost him but Latvia’s five-time world champion Martins Dukurs slipped up as South Korea’s Yun Sung-bin triumphed.
The Brit, who finished 12th on the World Cup circuit this season, said: “I was pretty gutted after that run. I thought I had thrown it away with the mistakes I made.
“I’m grateful I got lucky and I’ve got to try to process what happened because it doesn’t seem real to me.”
Yun won by a huge margin of 1.63 seconds on his home track, with Nikita Tregubov, representing Olympic Athletes of Russia, ahead of Parsons by 0.02secs. Dukurs trailed the Briton by 0.11.
Lizzy Yarnold faces a battle to retain her Olympic skeleton crown today after falling 0.10 behind leader Jacqueline Loelling of Germany after the first two runs. Yarnold led after the first run but a mistake midway down her second shunted her back to third, with GB team-mate Laura Deas also in the medal hunt seventh hundredths of a second behind.
But the men’s curling team were beaten 8-6 by medal contenders Sweden to move to two wins and two losses from the Scots’ four games to date.
Sweden’s Frida Hansdotter claimed gold in the women’s slalom as pre-race favourite Mikaela Shiffrin of the US had to settle for fourth.
Hansdotter, second after the first run before she overhauled Switzerland’s Wendy Holdener to win by 0.05 seconds, said: “I can barely believe it.”
Austria’s Matthias Mayer claimed the men’s Super-G title ahead of Beat Feuz of Switzerland with Norway’s Kjetil Jansrud third, 0.18 adrift.
And Britain’s Andrew Musgrave failed to build on his seventh place finish in the men’s skiathlon as he came in a disappointing 48th in the cross-country 15km free.