The Best Missed Curling Shot In History?

One of the great first thrills to a new curler is making their first double takeout. The second thrill, it is said, is to make their first *called* double takeout. Then you start to make shots more or less by design. For some of us, the “less” never goes away.

Tahli Gill is far from a stranger to the game. Her and Dean Hewitt had played a fabulous week, going unbeaten in pool play and advancing to one of two mixed doubles playoff finals of the Olympic Qualifying Event. Their game against South Korea was, to put it mildly, turbulent. Nerves were visible in both players’ demeanor, especially Hewitt, who was trying to figure out some way to discover draw weight. Instead, he tried to set up ends through brute force, throwing more hits than draws for the match. 

By the fifth end, Korea was well in control, 3-2 with hammer. Hewitt had again bailed out the entire outback with a double. Lee Ki-jeong responded with a hit, leaving a rather svelte double to set up a force. 

That, however, was not what happened. What did happen may have been the luckiest double in Olympic qualification history. It was so narrow she didn’t even call line, possibly out of bewilderment, or possibly because she was cueing up some other type of madness to ensue. Which did:

Sander Rølvåg’s “I cannot believe what I’ve just seen” is no Jack Buck’s call of Kirk Gibson, but the improbability is on par.

As I was watching, I wondered if it would curl enough to run the guard straight into the yellows. I did not portend the red-yellow combo, mostly because I had not noticed the three stones were lined up perfectly. In a bit of bad luck, Hewitt swept the “wrong” stone, as the other yellow stuck around the side, but Australia’s red was still biting more, leaving Kim Min-ji to draw for her single. (Which, it should be noted, was a foot or two from being overthrown.)

That may have been the momentum shift needed in the game, as Australia took three in the power play to grab ahold of the steering wheel.

In the stat sheet, Gill had a 100 percent shot percentage on four takeouts. And that’s all she needs to say. It’s all any of us would say.