Exit looms for honest GB curlers
Let’s be honest, we’ve all been there, trying to summon up a reason why our team deserves to be through and the opposition should be somehow dethroned.
A missed off-side, a nationality question to undermine a whole team or some bit of underhand play – that of course we would never use in our favour – that has robbed us and the sport of the correct result.
If we get hot under the collar, fail to see the other side of the story and are indignant in our standpoint, it just adds to the moment. We are, after all, sports fans.
So it was on Monday night at the curling. Great Britain’s women’s team were in a must-win situation – it was not quite “lose and you are out” but as near to that as it can be.
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The British opened strongly with a three in the second end to lead 3-1. The teams traded twos in ends three and four and singles in five and six so that Britain entered the seventh end with a two-point lead – but without the last stone.
The Danes packed the rings with stones but Eve Muirhead had a chance with her last throw to apply some pressure and, crucially, limit the damage to a loss of only one. But her draw attempt came up short, the Danish skip’s didn’t and we went from two up to one down in a minute flat.
The British fans groaned but the team battled on to level in the eighth end. But one point with the last stone often isn’t enough and the Danes proved that theory by scoring two in the ninth.
And there we all thought it would wind down – the 10th end was, at the time we all witnessed it from the stands, a damp end to a downbeat night. The Danes dominated -Muirhead had to produce a last stone to move four Danish ones. And whilst she is good, she is not that good. She moved three but, crucially, one last stone deprived the Brits of the two points they needed.
We started the post-mortem, the parents gave interviews, the athletes owned up to their mistakes and we packed our bags. Then the phone calls started – the viewers had spotted something, a trailing Danish foot that had stopped a stone and possibly changed the last point of the last end. Hope sprung within us. The indignation echoed on phones, texts and online.
But the curling community doesn’t deal in such matters. BBC commentator Rhona Martin was absolute in her judgement within moments: if it isn’t noticed on the ice at the time, the result cannot be changed. The reality is that it happens very often in curling – an unintentional touch, a foot wrong – but it’s decided there and then by the players. Either the stone is removed or the players agree it doesn’t matter. No recourse, no appeal, no video evidence necessary. Indeed, the Danish player drew it to the attention of Jackie Lockhart, who agreed it wasn’t important.
It’s the best result, too. How often do we gripe at the rules and the judgements that allow mistakes to stand. Here, for once, is a sport that almost referees itself. Team GB were honest enough to say that they didn’t play well enough to go through and if they can move on then so should we.
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