{"id":449177,"date":"2025-05-04T08:39:36","date_gmt":"2025-05-04T08:39:36","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/sportinfo.pro\/?p=449177"},"modified":"2025-05-04T23:15:24","modified_gmt":"2025-05-04T23:15:24","slug":"brutal-reality-facing-aussie-curling-duo-despite-historic-feat","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sportinfo.pro\/?p=449177","title":{"rendered":"Brutal reality facing Aussie curling duo despite historic feat"},"content":{"rendered":"

Australia won its first-ever world championship medal in the sport of curling in an historic moment on Sunday \u2014 but a narrow defeat in an earlier match means the duo are yet to book their place in the 2026 Winter Olympics<\/a>, leaving them with cause for concern.<\/p>\n

Beijing 2022 Olympians Tahli Gill and Dean Hewitt\ufeff won the bronze-medal match in the mixed doubles competition at the world championships in Canada, trumping a pair from Estonia in a 9-2 drubbing in Fredericton in Canada's east.<\/p>\n

However, whether the duo will compete at the Olympics in Italy next February remains to be seen after they lost to Scotland 9-6 in a semi-final.<\/p>\n

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They will leave Canada thrilled with\ufeff creating history, but ruing that they didn't secure Olympic qualification.<\/p>\n

"Since 2018 we have built and built year in, year out, got to the 2022 Olympics and that was a fantastic feeling, and then this year we have had close to 11 podiums," Hewitt said.<\/p>\n

\"Australia's<\/p>\n

"It's impressive and I am proud of what we have done.<\/p>\n

"We have come up a little bit short for direct Olympic qualification which is bittersweet, but still getting the bronze, [we] can't be too disappointed with that."<\/p>\n

Ten teams will contest the mixed doubles competition at Milano-Cortina 2026, including the eight highest-ranked countries according to points earned at the 2024 and 2025 world championships.<\/p>\n

Australia's Gill and Hewitt will aim to snap up one of the two remaining spots at an Olympic qualification event in December, to be held in Kelowna in Canada's south.<\/p>\n

\"Australian<\/p>\n

They defeated eight countries at Canada's world championships, beating\ufeff the Czech Republic, Estonia, New Zealand, Norway, Spain, Switzerland, Turkey and the USA, and only lost twice, to Japan and Scotland.<\/p>\n

"It's huge for us," Gill said of the historic moment.<\/p>\n

"We have worked really hard for this moment, and like Dean said it's a bittersweet feeling, but [it] definitely gives us a lot of confidence moving forward and the momentum isn't going to stop here."<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Australia won its first-ever world championship medal in the sport of curling in an historic moment on Sunday \u2014 but a narrow defeat in an […]<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":449179,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sportinfo.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/449177"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sportinfo.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sportinfo.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sportinfo.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sportinfo.pro\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=449177"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/sportinfo.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/449177\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":449182,"href":"https:\/\/sportinfo.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/449177\/revisions\/449182"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sportinfo.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/449179"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sportinfo.pro\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=449177"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sportinfo.pro\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=449177"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sportinfo.pro\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=449177"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}