Youth Olympics: Hannen stays in hunt for curling medal in Innsbruck

AFTER a long wait for a British curling success story at the Winter Youth Olympics in Innsbruck, Rachel Hannen could well deliver one after qualifying for the last 16 of the mixed doubles.

The mixed doubles competition pairs a boy and a girl from different Olympic countries together in Austria and Hannen found herself teamed up with Marek Cernovsky of the Czech Republic.

And, despite their lack of a common language, the pair produced an impressive first-round performance on Friday afternoon as they saw off an Italian and New Zealand combination 8-5.

And Hannen, who was part of the British quartet that crashed out of the mixed team competition after the round-robin stage earlier in the week, admitted the win went some way to repairing the damage.

“I’m very pleased to have won,” said Hannen, from Hamilton, who will take to the ice again on Saturday in a bid to reach the quarter-finals.

“I was very relaxed coming into the doubles event and that probably helped my performance with the guy I was partnered with. My partner and I are still trying to get to know each other and understand each others’ games and he speaks a little bit of English but not much so we are still learning as a pair.

“The game is different to the team event, I would say a bit more exciting and if we play the way we did in our first match then we’ve got a good chance of progressing in the competition.”

There was less good news for fellow Scot Tom Muirhead who found the language barrier too much to overcome in his first-round match with Japanese playing partner Mizuki Kitaguchi.

Despite a promising start the duo eventually lost out 9-5 to a pair from Canada and New Zealand and Muirhead admitted it had been pretty tough going.

“We couldn’t really communicate with each other, a lot of it was hand signals and gestures but it was a great experience nonetheless and we did quite well,” said Muirhead.

“The Canadian boy played really well and on the third end we lost out in a big way and that cost us in the final result.

“But these games are about so much more besides the curling and I got a good example of that in playing with a brand new partner.

“It’s just a shame we couldn’t get the win.”

Angharad Ward was another curler who fell by the wayside as she and partner Markus Skogvold from Norway suffered heartache losing out on the final stone 9-8 to a pair from Sweden and New Zealand.

Skip of the British quartet Duncan Menzies was partnered Taylor Anderson from the USA and faces a New Zealand and Switzerland partnership in his first-round match.

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