U.S. men’s curling team, the defending champion, goes home without a medal
"At the end of the day, no one can ever take that medal away from me, and I’m just stoked to be here with my friends.”
The Canadian men’s curling team — still smarting from returning home from the 2018 Olympics without a medal — clinched the bronze Friday, defeating the United States, 8-5. The Americans, who had entered the tournament as the defending Olympic champion, will leave Beijing empty-handed.
Canada pulled ahead in the final ends of the match to claim a decisive victory. The team’s failure to win a medal in 2018 was tantamount to a national crisis in Canada, long a dominant force in the world of curling, and prompted soul searching and investment to try to bolster the country’s curling teams for the Beijing Games.
Canada entered the bronze medal match after a hit-and-miss run, having won only five of its previous 10 matches. On Thursday, the Canadians lost to Sweden, which will play Great Britain in the gold medal game Saturday.
“We certainly didn’t stop fighting and stop believing in one another,” Canada’s Brett Gallant, whose first Olympic appearance was in Beijing, told reporters after the win. “It’s a really good way to end maybe a tough week for us and to stand at the podium.”
The United States maintained a brief, close lead during the middle of the match before the Canadians picked up steam. The Americans had been surprise gold medalists in 2018, winning the country’s first gold in curling.
“It definitely is not as great as the last go-round,” Matt Hamilton, who played in both 2018 and 2022, told reporters. “But at the end of the day, no one can ever take that medal away from me, and I’m just stoked to be here with my friends.”
The U.S. women’s team ranked sixth in the round robin standings in Beijing, having lost five out of nine games. The Canadian women’s team was fifth.
Like Canada, the U.S. men had won five out of 10 matches before the bronze medal game. Hamilton said the team had managed to be resilient, even during some “grindy games where it got tough and we had our backs against the wall and always seemed to be able to pull out.”
“Unfortunately,” he went on, “we just didn’t get lucky today.”
This article originally appeared in The New York Times.
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