Team GB are in action in four sports on the penultimate day of the Games, with a bronze medal match in the women’s curling the focus at the end of the day.
Team GB are in action in four sports on the penultimate day of the Games, with a bronze medal match in the women’s curling the focus at the end of the day.
Anna Sloan will use the pain of past experience to motivate her for today’s Olympic curling bronze medal match.
Sloan, Vicki Adams and skip Eve Muirhead lost an Olympic semi-final to Canada four years ago in Sochi, with Lauren Gray watching as the alternate.
They rebounded to win the bronze medal the following day - and they’ll be hoping history repeats in today’s clash with Japan, whose rink, skipped by Satsuki Fujisawa, they beat in the round robin stages.
“We’ve been here before, we know what it takes to lose a semi-final and win a bronze medal match,” she insisted.
“It’s devastating but we’ve got the chance to play for an Olympic medal, we just have to remember what that feeling was like, winning that medal four years ago.
“I think that gives us more perspective and I’m not going to dwell on this forever. We’ve got a massive match to win.”
Coach Glenn Howard also claimed he had no worries about Team Muirhead’s ability to process their semi-final loss to Sweden and bounce back on Saturday, with the game scheduled for 8pm (11am UK time).
He said: “It won't be a problem to pick them up, these girls put their heart and soul into every game they play.
“They will be disappointed right now because you want to get into that gold medal game and it's eluded them but the bottom line is it didn't happen. It won't be a big job to get them back, they're going to want to go out there and win that bronze medal.”
Great Britain’s four-man bobsleigh crews start their competition at 9.30am (12.30am) after banking two World Cup podiums this season.
Lamin Deen’s sled has been named Nixon64 - to remember Britain’s last bobsleigh Olympic champions, Tony Nash and Robin Dixon at the 1964 Innsbruck Games.
See the crew discuss their sled name choices below.
History will be made with the inaugural Olympic alpine team event on Saturday and Team GB will be looking to impress at 11am (2am).
The event features head-to-head racing over a shortened parallel slalom course with giant slalom gates. Two women and two men will face off against each other in individual match-ups with one point recorded for each victory.
The British quartet of Charlie Guest, Alex Tilley, Dave Ryding and Laurie Taylor will take on the USA in the first round, with a potential meeting with Norway or the Olympic Athletes from Russia should they win.
Ryding, who finished ninth in the slalom on Thursday, said: “We are going to give it everything we've got.
"We're not just taking part to make up the numbers, I think we've got a shot. You need to win two and be fast. Laurie finished inside the top 30 on the slalom, I was ninth. Alex and Charlie are full of potential. Hopefully we can surprise a few people."
Cross-country skier Andrew Musgrave will attempt to end his Games on high when he competes in the men's 50km classic at the Alpensia Cross-Country Centre at 2pm (5am).
The 27-year-old has already achieved three top 30 results in as many events at these Olympics– including a historic seventh in the 30km skiathlon.
The 50km event is the one which placed Musgrave in the international spotlight last year when he was fourth at the World Championships in Finland, less than three seconds off gold.
That event was raced however in the free skate technique and not the classic which is being contested in PyeongChang with Musgrave predicting it being “long, hard and brutal...just the way cross-country skiing is meant to be”.
Sportsbeat 2018