On the final day of competition at the European Youth Olympic Winter Festival in Slask-Beskidy, Poland, Team GB curlers won a gold and silver medal achieving Team GB’s best ever result at this competition.
Early in the morning Team GB’s women’s curlers beat Denmark 7-6 to make it through to the final against Switzerland with the men beating Norway 9-7 to also book their final spot against Switzerland.
In the final, the women always looked in control and dominated the match winning 8-4. The game swung to the GB women after aggressive tactics, resulting in 3 on the 5th end. Leading 8-4 playing the final end, the team ran the Swiss team out of stones to be crowned 2009 European Youth Olympic Winter Festival curling champions.
Commenting on the match Skip Anna Sloan said:
“I am so pleased with this result. We knew this was our only chance to get this medal here and now. We wouldn’t have been happy with anything else apart from the gold, so we went all out and played fantastically as a team”.
Following the match, their delighted coach Debbie Knox, who herself won an Olympic gold medal in curling at the 2002 Salt Lake City Olympic Winter Games seven years ago tomorrow said:
“I am really proud of the girls, the whole team pulled together to win this gold medal today. We have a really strong set of curlers here to watch out for in the future. I enjoyed this more than winning my own Olympic gold medal, it has been such an amazing and enjoyable experience for me to coach these players”.
Team GB’s male curlers fought a closely contested match that went down to the last stone with the Swiss team scoring two in the final end to win the match 6-5.
Skip Colin Dick said:
“We played well and it was a close match but we were unlucky and didn’t take our chances. Considering we didn’t think we were initially coming to this competition we have to take heart from our silver medal but naturally we are disappointed”.
In other results today, Harry Mattick finished 12th in the men’s figure skating competition and in the mixed relay cross country race Team GB finished in 17th place with Callum Smith recording the 9th fastest classic leg.
