Sports News Article | Reuters.co.uk – Brits win curling gold — 82 years late
Thu Feb 9, 2006 9:36 PM GMT
By Rachel Sanderson
TURIN (Reuters) – British curling swept to a gold medal on Thursday — the day before the Winter Olympics were due to open — after sleuthing fixed an 82-year-old injustice.
The International Olympic Committee (IOC) said it had decided medals presented to four of the country’s curlers at the first Games in 1924, when the sport was believed to have been only a demonstration, deserved official status.
A Glasgow newspaper persuaded the IOC to fix its oversight after it followed up evidence discovered in the Royal Caledonian Curling Club’s records.
“We have always been aware that our sport had a great history and we knew there had been curling in 1924,” World Curling Federation president Roy Sinclair said.
The posthumous win for Scottish curlers Willie and Laurence Jackson, Robin Welsh and Tom Murray gives Britain its second Olympic curling gold, to follow victory four years ago for a Scottish quintet in Salt Lake City.
Members of this year’s team, who are medal outsiders here, said the surprise 1924 upgrade had not given them a special boost.
“It’s nice, but I don’t see it as an omen,” Euan Byers, lead on the third-ranking men’s team said. “Success comes from ability and a bit of luck.”
Scottish housewife Rhona Martin pulled off a dramatic victory four years ago with a last throw in the final game against Switzerland that gave the nation its first winter win since Jayne Torvill and Christopher Dean’s Bolero ice dance in 1984.
Curling — where players use brooms to clear the path for a stone across an ice rink — was treated as a demonstration sport five times in a row before finally being granted medal status in 1998 at Nagano, Japan.
© Reuters 2006. All Rights Reserved.
(No Ratings Yet)
Loading ...
