GB ice dancers Coomes & Buckland advance – highlights & round-up

February 19, 2018February 26, 2018 admin 431 Views 0 Comment advance, Buckland, Coomes, dancers, Highlights, roundup

XXIII Olympic Winter Games
Venue: Pyeongchang, South Korea Dates: 9-25 February
Coverage: Watch live on BBC TV, Red Button, Connected TVs, BBC Sport website and mobile app. Full coverage times

Great Britain’s Penny Coomes and Nick Buckland safely progressed to the final day of the ice dance competition at the Winter Olympics.

The pair scored 68.36 in the short dance and finished 10th, with the top 20 competing in Tuesday’s free dance.

GB’s Rowan Cheshire, 22, also qualified for the ski halfpipe final but Molly Summerhayes, 20, missed out.

Briton Aimee Fuller, 26, fell on both runs in the snowboard big air and failed to make the final.

Coomes and Buckland are making their third appearance at a Winter Games, two years after Coomes smashed her kneecap into eight pieces and was told she would never skate again.

Christopher Dean, who won Olympic gold alongside Jayne Torvill in 1984, helped choreograph the pair’s routine.

Coomes and Buckland will now compete in the free dance on Tuesday, starting at 01:00 GMT, with the medals awarded to the pairs with the highest cumulative score over the two dances.

Canada’s Tessa Virtue and Scott Moir lead the standings after the short dance with a world-record score of 83.67.

“I’m so happy, relieved and overwhelmed to be here,” Coomes said. “No matter what, we did it. I’m so proud of us and our team.”

Elsewhere, the British women’s bobsleigh team of pilot Mica McNeill and Mica Moore impressed in pre-competition training despite having never claimed a World Cup podium.

They finished joint-second and third in the final two runs on Monday. The competition begins on Tuesday at 11:50 GMT.

A mixed day on snow

Cheshire qualified for the halfpipe final in ninth place with a score of 74.00 while Canada’s Cassie Sharpe topped the standings on 93.40.

The Briton missed the 2014 Games in Sochi after suffering heavy concussion in a fall and has since contemplated quitting the sport owing to anxiety.

Summerhayes, whose sister reached the ski slopestyle final, is competing at her first Games and could only manage a score of 66.00 to finish 17th.

Fuller came 25th after crashing on both runs of the big air, having also crashed in the snowboard slopestyle final, which was described as “too dangerous” owing to winds.

Austria’s Anna Gasser produced the best score in qualifying, an impressive 98.00 on her second run.

GB move closer to qualification Great Britain men’s curling team moved up to joint third in the table with a 7-6 victory over Denmark after a thrilling last end.

The Danes led 6-5 but failed in their attempt at a crucial double take out that would have taken the match to sudden death. It left GB skip Kyle Smith with the simple task of finding the house with his final stone, which he did for a crucial win.

Only the top four in the table progress to semi-finals.

“It’s all in our own hands and you can’t ask for more than that,” Smith told BBC Sport.

“A couple of wins and we’ll be in a perfect place in the semi-finals.”

They play Norway on Tuesday before their final match against the USA on Wednesday.

Other news from Pyeongchang

A Russian athlete suspected of failing a doping test at the 2018 Winter Olympics has been named as medal-winning curler Alexander Krushelnitsky.
The boyfriend of Olympic giant slalom champion Mikaela Shiffrin has been sent home from the Winter Games following angry comments made about his own team after his own giant slalom race.

Medals won on day 10

Norway’s Havard Lorentzen sets an Olympic record to win the men’s 500m speed skating final by 0.01 seconds
Canada and Germany share the two-man bobsleigh gold medal as a remarkable contest finishes as a dead heat
Norway win the men’s ski jumping team event