The Courier & Advertiser (Angus and Dundee)
Smith pays price – but Dom slides to bronze
Perth skip remains positive as GB rink still in contention despite defeat to Sweden
British curling skip Kyle Smith paid the price for untimely mistakes as he slipped to a second defeat against Sweden on the day Team GB finally landed its first medal of the 2018 Winter Olympics in Pyeongchang.
Niklas Edin’s experienced rink had outclassed Team Smith in the final of the European Championships last year but this was a much closer encounter, the British team finally going down 8-6.
Coach Viktor Kjell saw his team dominate the first five ends but Edin seized advantage in the sixth end with a triple that swung the momentum decisively in his favour.
However, Perth curling ace Smith was determined to accentuate the positives, with his team sitting joint third in the overall standings. Edin’s Sweden and Kevin Koe’s Canada – considered the most likely finalists – both remain unbeaten.
“I think we’ve been getting stronger with each game,” said Smith.
“There’s just a few things that we need to change and just tighten up on in some moments but there’s positives to take.
“There’s a long way to go and we’ve played arguably three of the best teams. Won two, lost two, it could be a lot better but it could be a lot worse as well. I think we took a lot of our chances but we played well together and worked well together. If we can keep playing like that, we’ll be in a good place.”
Kjell certainly knows all about Edin having been part of his rink in two previous Games, winning bronze four years ago in Sochi.
Next up are hosts Korea, who are winless in their four games but pushed Canada the distance yesterday.
“We can’t make silly errors, especially against Niklas, who is one of the best in the world,” said Kjell.
“I felt like we were the better team and we’ve let one slip away a bit.
“I’m very proud of how the guys played because definitely this was another step in the right direction. They’re only getting better and better as the tournament goes on.
“There’s details that we need to sharpen up a little bit and if we do that we’ll beat any team here.”
Meanwhile Dom Parsons defied the odds to deliver GB’S first bit of Olympic magic – living up to his Wizard nickname.
The 100-1 shot hadn’t won a major medal in five years and arrived in Korea nursing an abductor muscle injury.
And yet he conjured up the goods when it mattered to win Britain’s first men’s medal, in what is surely our national winter sport, in 70 years.
Every British skeleton slider has a story of how they suddenly found themselves swept up in this crazy event.
And Parsons probably beats the lot. He was several drinks in at a student barbecue when a friend persuaded him to come to team trials at Bath University’s push start facility the following morning.
Sliding, it seems, is the perfect hangover cure.
Parsons was third coming into the final run but saw his position overtaken by Nikita Tregubov – with two sliders left on the track.
He looked dejected – second with two sliders to come – the hugely experienced Martins Dukurs and World Cup winner Yungbin Sun, he didn’t need his PHD in Mechanical Engineering to know the numbers were stacked against him.
But Dukurs – a silver medallist four years ago and multiple World Cup winner – made a series of errors and bronze was secure, indeed Parsons’s time was just two hundredths of a second off silver.
“I thought I’d lost it after that fourth run, it felt like it’d had gone, I thought I’d binned it,” he added.
Britain have now delivered skeleton medals in five consecutive Games.