Last Sunday night brought down the curtain on the Beijing 2022 Winter Olympics that saw four MCC Members represent an Australian team who registered the country’s most successful Winter Olympics campaign.
The Australian Team finished with its greatest ever single tally in a Games, with four medals – one Gold, two Silver and a bronze. Beyond that, Australia recorded some of its best-ever results in events such as bobsleigh, skeleton, luge and alpine skiing (moguls).Of the MCC members, alpine skier, Greta Small competed in three disciplines, completing the Women’s Giant Slalom (finished 31st) Women’s Downhill (26th) and the Women’s Alpine Combined (13th). Louis Muhlen-Schulte will build on his first Olympics experience. While he crashed out in the Men’s Slalom, the Men’s Giant Slalom event saw him place 23rd overall.
Snowboarder Cameron Bolton finished 13th in the Men’s Snowboard Cross, before teaming up with Belle Brockhoff for the debut of the Mixed Snowboard Cross event. The Australians finished 9th overall.
Cameron Bolton
“It’s a pretty amazing feeling that we’re the first (curling team to represent Australia at a Winter Olympics), and hopefully not the last. Hopefully we can get a lot more curlers out there, and make a real story out of curling,” Mr Hewitt told mcc.org.au.
“We wanted to embrace the whole Olympic experience and something that we’d never had before, and were pretty fortunate to have.
“We wanted to have goals and we wanted to finish in the top half. Obviously all athletes want to finish a medal, and it didn’t come to fruition this time, but we’re now super motivated for 2026 (in Milan and Cortina d'Ampezzo, Italy).”
Hewitt and Gill not only made history by being the first Australian curlers to compete at the Olympics, but kicked off the entire Beijing 2022 schedule back on Wednesday night, with the sweltering Melbourne summer night a major contrast to the conditions the pair faced.
Ultimately, a one-point loss to the United States did nothing to dampen an Australian public that went from curling novices to experts in the space of a few hours.
And with Dad and 1992 Winter Olympics athlete, Steve on commentary for the Seven Network, all of a sudden, curling took centre stage.
Greta Small
“It was pretty amazing to have so many Aussies and people that we knew, or knew from secondary contacts, or people that we’d never met before.
“To have those people watching, that’s staggering and amazing for the sport. We really felt the support all week.”
Unfortunately, the USA match spelled a string of seven losses of a possible nine games in the round-robin phase of the competition for Hewitt and Gill, even despite taking it up to the likes of Great Britain and China.
“We knew throughout those games that we were playing well enough to beat anyone out there, it was more just half a shot a game (that we were missing); that’s all it was.”
The toughest test was to come on their final day of competition.
Gill, who had contracted COVID-19 pre-competition, struggled to shed the virus and again tested positive on the Sunday, seemingly ending the pair’s campaign prematurely. So certain was the verdict that both Gill and Hewitt posted social media messages explaining their withdrawals from competition.
But the tireless work of the Australian team’s medical staff won them a dramatic reversal at the 11th hour, allowing Gill to leave an isolation hotel on Sunday morning and play the game against Switzerland in the afternoon.
Louis Muhlen-Schulte
“Tahli had packed her bags and was pretty much ready to head home, and I was the same as well. So that was a tough few hours.
“Then we kind of heard whispers and questions around what the latest time would be that we could get on the ice…and then we heard the official word that we actually could play.
“The excitement among the team was incredible. We basically had 45 minutes to then get to the ice, which involved having some food, finding Tahli’s clothes that she’d packed away and got to the ice about 15 minutes.
“We had almost no time to get our shoes, jackets, brooms and microphones on and we were into playing, with no warm-up or anything like that, or talk about what our plan was.
“Our mantra was: this is a bonus. We didn’t think we were playing this morning, and now we just embraced that Olympic spirit and the Olympic rings that were out there.
“You don’t really know what you’ve got until it’s gone. When it’s gone, it’s tough, but when you get it back, it’s really special.”
As it would turn out, the ‘rushed’ approach worked. Hewitt and Gill beat 2018 Olympic silver medalists Switzerland 9-6, recording Australia’s first win in eight outings. They then backed up to beat Canada in a thrilling duel that saw the Canadians fight back from 7-0 down to level the game at 8-8 and force an extra end.
Gill and Hewitt went on to claim a narrow 10-8 win after nine ends over the Canadian team of Rachel Homan and John Morris.
“I think that relaxed nature and just enjoying ourselves is when we play our best. It’s probably what we’ll take into our competition going forward,” Hewitt said.
For now, as Hewitt and Gill catch their breath back home and look forward to more World Championship events later this year, they are both reflecting on their achievements. And hopefully kick-start the developments to rectify some eye-opening realities surrounding the sport of curling in Australia.
“I don’t think I’ve got through one-tenth of messages. The amount of media coverage and clippings that we got and the sport of curling got is incredible,” Hewitt said.
“One of our biggest goals is to get a dedicated curling rink in Australia, and hopefully with this exposure, we’ll get some dedicated ice in Australia.
“That’s what we need as a team, and that’s what we need in this country, just so that we can even host National Championships in Australia.”
Photo Credit: Getty Images