Curlers suffer double disappointment as Paralympics start

GREAT Britain's wheelchair curlers went down to a narrow defeat to Norway on Saturday night to round off a disappointing opening day of competition at the Paralympic Winter Games

The 2006 silver medallists had endured an opening 9-2 loss to host nation and defending champions Canada earlier in the day at the Vancouver Paralympic Centre and their round-robin campaign suffered a further setback with a 7-5 defeat to the Norwegians.

The British team, featuring three silver medallists from the 2006 Games in Michael McCreadie, now the skip, Angie Malone and Tom Killin, and joined by Aileen Neilson, with Jim Sellar as alternate, now face Switzerland hoping to start on a winning path to a top-four finish in the eight-team tournament and a place in the semi- finals next weekend.

McCreadie's team had enjoyed a strong first end against the reigning gold medallists which saw them steal a point against the Canadian hammer, the final stone of the end only for the hosts to quickly gain the initiative.

"It was a good start for us with a steal," McCreadie said, "but then we were too aggressive in the second and third ends. We tried to claw back but you just have to learn from these games."

There was a strong start against Norway, too, with Britain opening up a 3-0 lead after two ends before rival skip Rune Lorentsen engineered a comeback to put his team 5-3 up after five ends.

British fourth Aileen Neilson got her side back on track to score with a draw on the hammer at the end of the sixth and a missed take-out from Lorentsen with the hammer in the next end gave ParalympicsGB the steal to level the scores at 5-5.

Norway had the hammer in the final end and their lead Anne Mette Samdal sent down the crucial stone for the winning point.

McCreadie's team were the only ParalympicsGB team members taking part on the first day of action at the Games after the postponement of the alpine skiing downhill events due to poor visibility caused by persistent fog at Whistler Creekside.

With more bad weather forecast for today, organisers decided to revamp the entire alpine skiing programme, moving up the technical events and scheduling the slalom for yesterday and today and the giant slalom for tomorrow and Wednesday with the speed races now set for the end of the week.

That meant all seven British skiers were scheduled to see the Whistler Creekside run yesterday, with sit-skiers Russell Docker, Tim Farr, Sean Rose, Talan Skeels-Piggins, Jane Sowerby and Anna Turney and visually impaired skier Kelly Gallagher – competing with guide Claire Robb – all in action in the slalom.

The first medal of the Games came in the biathlon as Russia's Irek Zaripov won the men's 2.4km pursuit, sitting event at Whistler Paralympic Park, one of eight medals, three of them gold, for the Russian biathletes.