Medal hopes dashed but Nibloe says Melrose accident no excuse
Hugh Nibloe refused to blame a freak injury suffered by team-mate David Melrose for Great Britain blowing their Paralympic wheelchair curling medal chances on a woeful Wednesday in Beijing.
The British team lost to Canada and Korea yesterday to make it mathematically impossible for them to finish in the top four of the group stage and advance to the semi-finals at the Winter Games.
The 6-3 loss against Canada was marred by a bizarre incident involving Melrose, 56, who fell from his chair when reaching for his delivery stick and had to be rushed to hospital on a stretcher.
That thrusted alternate Gary Smith back into the fray, and he played as Britain went on to suffer an 8-6 defeat against the Koreans.
Nibloe, who himself went off with tiredness in Tuesday night's defeat against Slovakia, confirmed Melrose is fine - and had left hospital – and insists the distressing scenes did not inhibit his team’s performance in the must-win clash against Korea.
The Scot, 40, said: “When we were on the ice for the game against Korea, we were all aware that David was going to be fine and everything would be alright.
“We can’t put it down to that – maybe a little bit on the Canada game but we also can’t lay any blame there.
“We are a close-knit bunch andit’snevereasytoseeanyone you care about taken away on a stretcher. The most imporwon
tant thing is that he is okay. “He’s reasonably good - he’s on his way back to the village tonight so we’ll see him when we go home.
“It will be good to see his face – I don’t know how may painkillers he’s going to be on, but it’s great he’s coming back and he’s not had to stay in hospital overnight.”
Nibloe added: “It’s disappointing [to not be able to win a medal] – finishing early is not what we came here
for. We just gave ourselves too many mountains to climb and couldn’t overcome them.”
Britain have struggled for any form of consistency all week and racked up just three wins from seven matches.
Losses against Norway, Slovakia, Canada and Korea have proved costly and they’re now faced with the prospect of playing two meaningless clashes against Latvia and hosts China today.
Paralympicsgb have already
five medals at the Winter Games in China but it’s the alpine skiers who are leading the charge as the curlers, Nordic skiers and snowboarders have failed to fire.
Menna Fitzpatrick and Neil Simpson have both grabbed two medals apiece and Nibloe, whose team will now have a weekend off after completing today’s clashes, added: “It is really frustrating.
“We had a good camp before coming out but we’re a young
team and it wasn’t our week – that’s just curling.
“We now want to finish off on a high, before hopefully going out and enjoying watching some skiing over the weekend.”
No one does more to support our Olympic and Paralympic athletes than National Lottery players, who raise more than £30 million each week for good causes including grassroots and elite sport. Discover the positive impact playing the National Lottery has at www.lotterygoodcauses.org.uk and get involved by using the hashtag: #Tnlathletes