Image: Australian Olympics Team
In the final day at Beijing before the official start to the Winter Olympics, the action continued in the Curling and Luge events for our Aussie olympians.
It was a tough day again for the mixed Curling duo, which went down narrowly in both sessions while there were another two training sessions for the Men’s Luge.
Curling: Mixed Doubles Round Robin Session 5 (vs Sweden) and Session 6 (vs Great Britain)
It was another tight day of contests for Aussie duo Dean Hewitt and Tahli Gill who fell to single-point losses again, this time to Sweden and Great Britain.
Coming up against Sweden in Session 5 was no easy challenge, with Oskar Eriksson earning a bronze medal Sochi 2014 and a silver in PyeongChang 2018. Paired with partner Almida de Val, the duo won bronze at the 2021 mixed doubles world championships.
Sweden were consistent from the get-go, only dropping one point in the first five ends, making Australia activate its powerplay in the sixth end
Hewitt and Gill were able to score three points to level with Sweden, with Gill’s throw knocking two stones away to increase Australia’s scoring rocks to three.
By the eighth round, Australia scored two points to fall devastatingly short to force the ninth round tie-break, going down 6-7.
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It was similar scoring scenes for the Aussie duo when they came up against Great Britain in Session 6, also falling short by one point, 9-8.
It wasn’t as easy though for Hewitt and Gill to reach the tie-breaking ninth end, who trialled by five points at the fourth end and opted for the powerplay in the fifth.
As the powerplay did in previous sessions, it caught the Aussies up and the comeback begun with the duo levelling the scores at the sixth end.
At the eighth end, scores were levelled 8-8, but the composure of Great Britain triumphed over the Aussies.
Luge: Men’s Singles Training Run 5 and 6
Australia’s first ever triple Luge Olympian Alex Ferlazzo competed in two more training sessions on Day Zero, finishing in the top half of the ranking in both.
In Training Run 5, Ferlazzo finished 12th with a time of 58.300. He finished +.0798 ahead of Austria’s Wolfgang Kindl who finished first in the training run with a time of 57.502.
Meanwhile in Training Run 6, Ferlazzo finished slightly slower in the ranks, this time 15th. He finished with a time of 58.569. Ferlazzo’s time put him +0.855 behind Germany’s Johannes Ludwig who finished the session first overall with a time of 57.714.
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