British curlers recover as skiers perform well

Published on Monday 15 March 2010 21:37

BRITAIN'S wheelchair curlers rounded off a good day for ParalympicsGB with a big victory over Switzerland to get their medal bid going on Sunday.

The second day of competition at the 10th Paralympic Winter Games had begun with three British alpine skiers scoring top-10 finishes in the slalom as the alpine skiing events finally got under way at Whistler Creekside, the downhill having been postponed on Saturday due to poor visibility caused by heavy fog.

Kelly Gallagher of Bangor, Northampton's Anna Turney and Sean Rose of St Neots were all in the mix in their events. Gallagher, with her guide Claire Robb took sixth place in the women's slalom for visually impaired athletes while sit-skiers Turney and Rose claimed sixth and eighth places respectively in their slalom races. "It was pretty good and I'm pleased with it," Turney said. "I think that's a result I can be proud of in my first Paralympic Games."

Fellow debutante Gallagher was also satisfied with her performance having overcome some first-run nerves.

"I'm really proud of our runs, it was the culmination of all our training. The first run was all about nerves ...

then in the second run I actually skied and followed Claire and actually listened."

Having lost their two opening round-robin games at the Vancouver Paralympic Centre, the British curlers replied with a 10-2 victory over the Swiss in their only game of the day.

"It's only the beginning," skip Michael McCreadie said afterwards.

"Now we need to play every game like it's a final to get to the semi-final."

Britain were due to play Korea and the United States yesterday.