26 April 2024
“Sport is all about challenging yourself and always trying to do better”
With the exception of New Zealand, the team with the longest journey home from the World Mixed Doubles Championship will be Australia.
But when it comes to the length of the journey being travelled to be competitive enough to get onto this stage in the first place, the Australians win hands down.
Now, for a second Olympiad, Australia’s Tahli Gill and Dean Hewitt have been spending months and years away from home in pursuit of their curling dream. They have been living and practising in Canada on almost a full-time basis, determined to simply get better and better in their play.
They have been doing this for so long, that, during the worst of the Covid pandemic restrictions, they simply did not go back home, for fear that the draconian isolation rules that Australia had in place meant they wouldn’t be able to get back out again.
This meant that they travelled to the Olympic Qualifying Event in the Netherlands from Canada in December 2021 and then went back to Canada, before doing the same for the Beijing 2022 Games themselves, where they became Australia’s first curling Olympians.
And just to add to their drama, during the Beijing Games they were physically on the way out because of Covid, before literally being hauled back from their plane at the last minute to play in and win their last game, which, ironically, was against Canada.
For the minute, life is less dramatic, but no less demanding of sacrifice.
As Dean explains, “We’ve been in Canada since Boxing Day (December 26th). We’ve been all across Canada, but mainly in Edmonton training. And we came over to Europe early before this to get used to the time zone.”
Tahli adds, “This is what we have to do. The teams are getting better every year, so we just have to maintain our level, or try to get better.”
Dean also says, “It’s been a lot of time away from family. That’s always the hardest thing. But what we’re trying to do is get to that dream and if you’re trying to get towards this, you’ve got no choice – you have to be overseas for that kind of stint.”
Despite all this sacrifice, the Australian campaign at this event has not gone to plan. In their round-robin programme they were involved in three extra-end games, losing two of them, and eventually had to play in a relegation eliminator against France. They won that game by 7-5 to stay in next year’s world championship field with the possibility of earning more Olympic qualification points.
Thinking about what was a disappointing performance in Oestersund, and before they rescued the situation with the win against France, Dean said, “It’s been frustrating. We’ve played a lot of good games and they’ve been really tight, and they just haven’t gone our way. A lot of them have come down to last rock or extra end, we just can’t find that win at the moment. We’ve just got to keep battling and see what we can do.”
Looking for positives, Tahli said, “We just have to keep in mind what the big picture is, and that it’s a two-year stint. You just have to keep focussing on the positives that we can take away from everything. We’ve had really close games – if a few shots here and there had gone our way, then you’re looking at a totally different result.”
The Australian pair are the first to recognise the great support they receive from back home, with financial backing coming from a variety of Australian sporting and governmental institutes.
Tahli readily acknowledges that – “We have a great support behind us. They’re backing us 100%. If we just keep the support, we know results will come.”
But still, thinking about these two athletes and the sacrifices they are making, it always comes back to the question…why?
Here is Tahli’s explanation: “Sport is all about challenging yourself and always trying to do better. That part has always been fun for us. When it’s going this way [this week’s poor campaign], it’s always tough…but that’s how it goes.”
It seems that the road to Cortina is going to be longer for some than for others.
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