An outage at the Olympics? Korea became a bewildering victim.
Kim Sun-young (Gangneung City Hall) and Jeong Young-seok (Gangwon Provincial Office) lost 4-8 on the 5th (Korean time) in their second mixed doubles round-robin match of the Milan-Cortina Winter Olympics at the Cortina Curling Olympic Stadium in Cortina d'Ampezzo, Italy, to the home team Italy (Stefania Constantini-Amos Mosaner). Earlier, having lost 3-10 to Sweden in the first match, Korea fell to a second consecutive defeat.
A ridiculous incident occurred. In the early stages of the first match against Sweden, an unprecedented situation unfolded when the entire venue experienced a power outage. Korea's momentum was completely broken. Added to that was a controversial forfeiture ruling that was hard to understand, leaving the Kim Sun-young–Jeong Young-seok pair unable to conduct a normal match. It was an "operational disaster" rarely seen on the Olympic stage.
The senses and momentum chilled by the outage were hard to recover in a single day. In the second match against Italy, Korea trailed from the start. They took the first point in the 1st end, but consecutive losses in the 2nd and 3rd ends handed the initiative away in an instant. Especially in the 3rd end, conceding a two-point steal quickly widened the gap.
Misfortune repeated in the 5th end, trailing 1-6. In a crucial situation where they could have taken advantage of having the last stone, the final rock missed the button, yielding only one extra point. It was the moment even the last chance to regain momentum slipped away.
After conceding another point in the 6th end, they recovered two points in the 7th, but by the 8th end the momentum had already fully swung to Italy, making it impossible to produce the four points needed. In the end, Korea finished the match without a comeback.
This tournament held special meaning for the Kim Sun-young–Jeong Young-seok pair. Through the Olympic qualifying event (OQE), they became the first Korean athletes to qualify for mixed doubles on their own. Of the 10 participating countries, they were the team to clinch a spot in the main draw the latest. Kim Sun-young also built the milestone of becoming the first in Korean curling history to appear in the Olympics three times.
But the Olympic stage was unforgiving. The tournament, which began under the unexpected variable of a power outage, resulted in consecutive defeats, and advancement to the semifinals—reserved for the top four teams in the round robin—suddenly became distant. Korea will play its third match against Switzerland at 3:05 a.m. on the 6th.
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