Nathan Young won’t play in today’s curling final at the World Youth Olympic Games in Lausanne, Switzerland, but the 17-year-old from Torbay still has a chance at winning a championship at the event.
Young and teammates Emily Deschenes of Ottawa, Jaedon Neuert of Winnipeg and Lauren Rajala of Sudbury lost 5-4 in an extra end Wednesday to Japan in the quarter-final round of the mixed team curling competition at the Games. It was the only loss for the Canadian team which had gone 5-0 in preliminary play.
Japan plays Norway in today’s final of the event.
Meanwhile, Young will be getting ready for the mixed doubles competition at the Games. The 96 curlers from the 24 countries that participated in the mixed team event will be scrambled and assigned partners based on finishes in the first week of competition.
Mixed doubles play starts Friday, with medal games next Wednesday.
Late in his team’s quarter-final game against Japan, there was reason to believe Young would be curling for a medal today. The Canadians took a 4-3 lead into the eighth, where the Japanese scored a tying point, but only after a lengthy and multi-rock measuring process to confirm they hadn’t scored two for the win.
That left Young and Co. with last-rock advantage in the extra end. However, the Japanese had managed to keep a a guarded counter, which meant that last shot for Canada turned out to be an attempted draw for a piece of the button.
Young wrecked on a corner guard, giving the Japanese the stolen point and win.
“You play every game to have that draw to the button for the win,” Young told Curling Canada’s website (curling.ca).
“We wanted to keep it as open as possible so I could have a draw to the button, We did that. I thought that was pretty good. I had been struggling with that in-turn draw running straight all week. On that shot, it stayed straight again.”
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