GANGNEUNG, South Korea (AP) — John Shuster’s closing throw in the eighth pause of the Olympic curling final clacked off one Swedish stone and knocked it into one other, sending them both skittering out of scoring fluctuate.
Five yellow-handled American rocks had been left on the motivate of.
The score, identified as a 5-ender, is so rare it has entirely been topped once sooner than in the ancient past of the males’s or females’s Olympic final. And it successfully clinched gold for Shuster’s erstwhile « rejects, » who rallied from the brink of pool play elimination to enlighten entirely the second curling medal ever for america.
« Or now not it’s onerous to rationalize desperate to diagram it, » vice-skip Tyler George said after the People beat preferred Sweden 10-7 in nine ends in the gold medal match on Saturday. « But then days love this happen. »
With the King of Sweden and Ivanka Trump taking a search for on — and bolstered by social media messages from actor Mr. T., NFL quarterback Aaron Rodgers and speedskater Dan Jansen — Shuster skipped the People from a 2-four file before the total lot up of pool play to 5 wins in a row, starting with a victory over three-time defending Olympic champion Canada.
No U.S. curling team, males or females, had ever beaten Canada on the Iciness Video games.
Shuster’s team did it again in the semifinals.
That attach of dwelling up a gold medal match with Sweden, the enviornment championship runner-up and top winner in pool play, including a 10-four victory over the People on Feb. sixteen.
After three motivate-and-forth ends in the final, the Swedes squandered some extent in the fourth even supposing they’d the closing-rock advantage identified as the hammer. (The resolution became once too shut to be made with the bare witness; an umpire measured it with a machine that goes to the millimeter.)
From there, Sweden became once playing take-up.
Tied 5-5 in the eighth, but with the People controlling the hammer, Sweden skip Niklas Edin failed on a double-takeout, clearing away ethical one in all the 2 stones he became once aiming for. That left Shuster with a barely mundane shot for an practically unparalleled score. (Canada’s six-ender in the 2006 males’s final became once the entirely other score of extra than four in an Olympic gold medal match).
« All via your complete pause we would perhaps per chance even beget of genuinely feel it constructing. Their margin for error bought genuinely puny, » Shuster said in the news conference with teammates team Tyler George, Matt Hamilton, John Landsteiner and alternate Joe Polo. « I will now not train you how un-nervous I became once sitting in the hack to throw it. Appropriate let it inch. »
The People played protection in the ninth pause to preserve a long way from giving up a mammoth score. Sweden scored two, but with the hammer going to america for the tenth, a victory became once out of reach.
On his second-to-closing stone, Edin made a lunge-o-rama out of the starting block, bringing laughter from the crowd.
Then he shook hands to concede the match.
« After I missed (in the eighth), we knew for obvious he became once going to diagram that double, and we knew we had been going to lose, » said Edin, who said he threw in the lunge to lighten the mood in train that presumably he would perhaps per chance even « pick up a silver medal with out throwing it into the ocean. »
« I do now not know if I’d employ the note ‘fun’ in that discipline, » Edin said. « As an different of ethical shaking hands, it became once numerous strikes that you simply are making an are trying to give the crowd, the final disappointment we felt, give them a dinky one thing motivate. »
Sweden took the silver medal. Switzerland beat Canada in the 1/Three-dwelling game on Friday for bronze.
South Korea will play Sweden in the females’s final on Sunday.
A four-time Olympian who won bronze in 2006 with Polo — america’ entirely other curling medal — Shuster left that team after Turin to beget his possess foursome and skipped them motivate to the Iciness Video games in Vancouver.
But he performed so badly he became once benched, after which carried out ninth of 10 groups in Sochi. After failing to diagram the national coaching program the next year, Shuster teamed up with two of the others who had been nick (and George, who hadn’t even tried out) and known as themselves « Group Reject. »
They beat all of the groups chosen in its attach of them.
« From the day the 2014 Olympics came to an pause, each single day became once with this run in mind, » said Shuster, including that he became once impressed by Jansen’s skill to leap motivate from six years of tragedy and Olympic failure to clutch his final speedskating flee.
« Time and time again, he bought motivate up and he wrote his account, and he is an Olympic champion, » Shuster said. « I am so proud that I became once in a situation to diagram one thing linked. »
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More AP Olympics: https://wintergames.ap.org
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