Winter Paralympics: Great Britain remain in curling semi-finals fight

Winter Paralympics: Great Britain remain in curling semi-finals fight
_123588663_gettyimages-1382375514.jpgGB skip Hugh Nibloe has previously won silver and bronze at the World Championships

Great Britain remain in the hunt for a wheelchair curling semi-final spot at the Winter Paralympics after beating Estonia 10-5.

Skip Hugh Nibloe, Gregor Ewan, David Melrose and Meggan Dawson-Farrell are tied for fourth with China in the standings, with the top four advancing to the semi-finals on 11 March.

GB face Sweden next at 11.35 GMT.

In the biathlon middle distance, Britain's Scott Meenagh finished ninth and Callum Deboys was 18th.

Dawson-Farrell said of the curling win: "Coming into the day with a win brings you back up again and makes you want to really fight for it."

GB have won three of their five round-robin matches with another five to play.

'I am the Tom Daley of Paralympics'

Following Olympic champion Tom Daley's knitting example at the Tokyo summer Games, Dawson-Farrell has been crocheting a blanket for her grandfather to stay busy between matches.

"My aunt taught me to crochet during lockdown and I am in the process of making a blanket while I am here - I am the Tom Daley of the Paralympic world," she told Paralympics GB.

"I like to just sit and block out the world and give it a go."

'The most difficult Paralympics' - Ukraine succeeds in adversity

Despite athletes struggling with news from home, Ukraine are second in the medal table - with six golds to China's eight - after claiming two clean sweeps of the podium in the biathlon.

Iryna Bui took gold in the women's middle distance standing biathlon, with Oleksandra Kononova winning silver and Liudmyla Liashenko bronze.

Liashenko had pulled out of her cross-country race after her home in Kharkiv was destroyed on Monday as the city suffered heavy bombing.

Compatriot Anastasiia Laletina, 19, did not go ahead with her biathlon middle distance sitting race on Tuesday after discovering that her father - a soldier in the Ukrainian army - had been taken prisoner by Russian forces.

Team spokeswoman Nataliia Harach said: "She was very upset and couldn't take part in the race."

After winning silver, Kononova said: "All my thoughts, my heart and my soul is with my family and with my child.

"Emotionally it's very difficult to focus and to concentrate on the race and the competition, so this is the most difficult Paralympic Games for me."

Winning the men's middle distance vision impaired, Vitaliy Lukyanenko won his eighth Paralympic gold as Anatolii Kovalevskyi took silver and Dmytro Suiarko bronze. Compatriots Iaroslav Reshetynskyi and Oleksandr Kazik completed the dominant showing as they finished fourth and fifth.

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