AILEEN Neilson believes her wheelchair curling rink are within touching distance of the play-offs in Sochi after they quickly - and impressively - recovered from Britain's heaviest ever Winter Paralympic loss.
Despite winning three games in succession at the Ice Cube Curling Centre, Neilson found herself in trouble as Britain fell 8-1 behind at the halfway stage of their first match yesterday, against Finland.
Skip Neilson was even replaced by alternate Angie Malone, a veteran of the silver-medal winning British team at Turin in 2006, for the remainder, as the Fins gained their first win of the tournament with a 13-4 victory.
However, Britain, with Neilson back as skip, went on to beat Norway 7-3. Consecutive steals in ends four and five gave Britain a 4-1 advantage.
A two in the sixth had Norway only one behind at 4-3 but Britain scored three on the next end thanks to a fantastic takeout from Neilson and Norway had no answer.
Britain are third in the standings with four wins and two defeats and three round-robin matches remaining. Neilson said: "We were delighted to get the win against Norway. After our morning game, we had to dig deep."
At the Rosa Khutor Alpine Centre, heavy fog and rain led to the postponement of the morning's Super-G phase of the men's and women's super combined. The action began in the afternoon with the slalom aspect first instead.
Briton's Jade Etherington and guide Caroline Powell produced a solid run to lie second overall in the visually impaired race. The super-combined will now be completed on Friday, with Etherington and Powell needing only to finish to win their third medal as only three pairs remain.
Britain's newly-crowned first Paralympic champions Kelly Gallagher and guide Charlotte Evans crashed out of that race while the seated skiers Anna Turney and Mick Brennan are fifth and ninth.
The women's slalom has been brought forward from Friday to today with both Gallagher and Evans and Etherington and Powell competing.
n Sainsbury's is a proud long-term supporter of the British Paralympic Association and a champion of inclusive sport for all. For more information on Sainsbury's commitment to inclusive sport visit: www.Sainsburys.co.uk/activekids
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules hereComments are closed on this article