Australia mixed curlers claim first win after getting green light to play on

Tahil Gill tested positive but Chinese health authorities allowed her and Dean Hewitt to continue competing under close contact provisions.

Australia’s Tahli Gill and Dean Hewitt have been allowed to carry on competing despite Gill’s positive Covid test (Andrew Milligan/PA Images). (PA Wire)

Australia’s mixed curling team returned to the ice to claim their first win of the round-robin competition hours after being told they were being thrown out of the tournament due to a positive coronavirus test.

The Australian Olympic Committee had announced earlier on Sunday that Tahli Gill had tested positive and been placed in an isolation unit, and that they would work to ensure Gill and team-mate Dean Hewitt could return home as soon as possible.

But hours later the Chinese health authorities relented, allowing the pair to continue under close contact provisions, and after a frantic dash to the Beijing Aquatics Centre they scored their first win of the tournament with a 9-6 success against Switzerland.

Gill said: “It has literally been the craziest, craziest 24 hours. My bags are still packed, I only just had time to pull out my uniforms.

“I was ruffling through my bags and ripping clothes out left, right and centre. I played with only one glove on – and it was the wrong one.”

Gill and Hewitt are the first curlers to represent Australia in the Olympic curling competition since it returned onto the official programme in 1998. Hewitt’s father Steve played when it was still a demonstration sport in 1992.

Gill had tested positive for coronavirus prior to the Games but was cleared to compete under close contact provisions, and was subject to additional testing procedures.

It has literally been the craziest, craziest 24 hours. My bags are still packed, I only just had time to pull out my uniforms. I was ruffling through my bags and ripping clothes out left, right and centre. I played with only one glove on - and it was the wrong one.

Tahli Gill

Gill said she it had been “devastating” to hear they would have to draw from the competition, adding: “I’m so incredibly grateful to the medical team to get me out on the ice and I’m able to compete and finish off our campaign on a really positive note.

“We knew coming into this that this Olympics would be very different from others just considering the whole global situation, and you kind of have to take everything as it goes and go with the flow as best as you can.”

In a separate development, Games organisers have been strongly criticised by German Chef de Mission Dirk Schimmelpfennig over the quarantine conditions for Nordic Combined athlete Eric Frenzel.

Frenzel, a three-time Olympic champion, tested positive for the virus upon arrival in the Chinese capital this week, and was forced to go into isolation.

Christophe Dubi, the executive director of the International Olympic Committee said: “It is a duty and responsibility we have to make sure that expectations are met.

“We have heard and discussed with the IOC, and in the meantime the situation has been addressed.

“Nevertheless, the conditions were not good enough that night and it should not happen and we want to make sure that it does not.”