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VANCOUVER2010

Pärson sets sights on slaloms

Riesch and Pärson both came away from the downhill and super-G medal-less,

although the German claimed gold and the Swede bronze in the super-combined

event on Thursday.

It sets up a mouth-watering clash between the two in the slalom and giant slalom in Vancouver. Pärson, who rebounded from a horror crash in the downhill to win bronze in the super-combined, is the defending Olympic slalom champion and Riesch is the reigning world slalom champion.

The Swede, in particular, will benefit from a less packed schedule, with the giant slalom scheduled for Wednesday and slalom two days later.

Pärson suffered severe bruising in a spectacular crash last Wednesday’s downhill while racing to a near certain silver medal and also complained after the super-G of a numb foot.

“In training I felt comfortable: I thought I could be up for the win,” said the Swede, whose super-combined bronze was her sixth Olympic medal, equalling the record set by the now-retired Janica Kostelic of Croatia.

“But in the race I didn’t have any feeling in my foot. Trying to get pressure down on my ski was impossible.

“I pretty much tried to ski the whole run with a right foot.

“It was a horrible run and I’m really bummed I couldn’t be up there, in for the win.”

She added: “It was pretty fast, with the rollers up there. You have to be really aggressive. Everyone was feeling uncomfortable today.

“It was a pretty fair podium,” she added of the super-G won by Austrian Andrea Fischbacher, with Slovenian Tina Maze claiming silver and American Lindsey Vonn taking bronze to add to her downhill gold.

Pärson eventually finished in 11th position, 1.84sec off Fischbacher’s pace down the Franz’s run.

Riesch was in eighth at 1.32sec and admitted that it had been “really tough.”

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CURLING

Swedes claim Paralympic curling bronze

The Swedish curling team has claimed the bronze at the Paralympics overcoming the USA 7-5 in Vancouver on Saturday. The host nation, Canada won the gold after beating the Koreans 8-7.

Swedes claim Paralympic curling bronze

Sweden played without an alternate, after officials suspended Glenn Ikonen on Friday after a random drug test detected a beta blocker in his body.

The drug is used to control high blood pressure and Ikonen, who said it was prescribed by his doctor in Sweden, told reporters he had not intentionally taken a drug on the banned list.

Canadian wheelchair curling skip Jim Armstrong led his team to a gold medal win Saturday in the final match of the Paralympic Winter Games, narrowly beating Korea 8-7.

The Canadians reached their final score midway through the game in the fourth end. Tension rose in the Vancouver Olympic/Paralympic Centre as the Korean team, skipped by Kim Haksung, edged a little bit closer with each end of the nail-biting match.

But in the eighth and final end, a rock thrown by Armstrong careened down the sheet of ice to smash one of two Korean rocks out of the rings, averting a possible tie and securing the gold for host Canada in front of a crowd of more than 5,000.

“It’s tremendous and overwhelming,” Armstrong said. “This game really showed that the best part of wheelchair curling is that no lead is safe.”

The Vancouver event was the second time wheelchair curling was included in the Paralympics.

The 10 countries participating were Canada, the US, Britain, Germany, Italy, Japan, Korea, Norway, Sweden and Switzerland.

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