U.S. WINS CURLING GOLD
Their gold medals were intended for the women’s curling champions.
But that didn’t seem to bother John Shuster and the rest of the U.S. men’s curling team at the Gangneung Curling Center.
After all, minutes earlier they had shocked Sweden 10-7 on Saturday to win the first U.S. gold medal in curling. The history was enough, even if the medals were wrong.
“A gold medal in curling is a gold medal in curling,” Shuster, the team’s leader, said afterward.
Shuster and his motley crew had already been through enough to get to this place.
The small inscription on the medal didn’t matter. They were quickly swapped out.
After Shuster’s team finished second-to-last at the Sochi Olympics, USA Curling’s high-performance program rejected him. So, the easygoing former bartender who is a part-time employee at Dick’s Sporting Goods, persuaded Tyler George, Matt Hamilton and John Landsteiner to go it alone.
They quickly came up with an unusual nickname.
“I don’t think ‘team of rejects’ is the right term,” said Shuster, who also competed at the Turin and Vancouver Games. “I think it was just ‘team reject.’ ”
The rejects eventually won the national championship in 2015 — beating the two high-performance program teams. They represented the U.S. at the world championship the same year, then were added to the high-performance program in 2016.
“We never held it against anybody who didn’t want us in the program,” Shuster said.
The path at the Pyeongchang Olympics wasn’t much easier.
Shuster’s group dropped four of their first six matches and faced long odds to qualify for the medal round. But they defeated Canada, Britain and Switzerland — three of the world’s top teams — to advance.
In the semifinals, the U.S. beat Canada — the defending Olympic champion — to reach the gold-medal match against Sweden, the secondranked group in the world.
And they ended up with gold medals, even if they were for the women’s winners.
“From the day the 2014 Olympics came to an end, every single day was with this journey in mind and I was extremely lucky with these incredible guys ... went along with me in not being selected for the high performance program because this wouldn’t have ever happened,” Shuster said. “My family has a mantra and I have a mantra that everything happens for a reason. It’s days like today that you just have to believe.” —Nathan Fenno
Germany gets all the gold in bobsled
Germany is leaving the Pyeongchang Olympics with gold medals in all three bobsled events.
Francesco Friedrich finished off the sweep for the Germans on Sunday, driving his four-man sled to victory in the final day of the Games. Won Yunjong of South Korea and Nico Walther of Germany tied for second and shared the silver.
The top U.S. driver was Codie Bascue, who placed ninth. “A ninth place, with everything we’ve gone through, I’m happy,” said Bascue, who competed despite a left leg injury in Pyeongchang. “We gave it our all.”
Friedrich becomes the fifth German pilot to sweep two-man and four-man golds in the same Olympics, joining Andreas Ostler in 1952, Meinhard Nehmer in 1976, Wolfgang Hoppe in 1984 and Andre Lange in 2006.