Olympic round up: sixth place for Accola

Accola last won an Olympic medal at the 1988 Games Keystone

Veteran Swiss skier Paul Accola marked his fifth successive appearance at the Winter Olympics with a sixth place finish in Wednesday's combined event.

Accola, who turns 35 next week, is only the second alpine sportsman ever to compete at five Winter Games. At one point, following the downhill section, it seemed possible that the Davos skier might cap that achievement with a place on the Salt Lake podium.

But after finishing the downhill in fourth, Accola fell back to sixth in the first slalom run, a position he was unable to improve on in the second run.

Accola was looking to add another Olympic medal to the combined bronze which he won no less than 14 years ago in Calgary.

Norway’s Kjetil Andre Aamodt lived up to his billing as hot favourite to take the gold ahead of America’s Bode Miller and Austria’s Benjamin Raich. Aamodt’s win leaves him with a staggering total of 16 Olympic and world championship medals, while Miller will have been happy just to have earned the American team their first alpine skiing medal of these Games.

Swede revenge

Switzerland’s men’s curling team recorded a significant win over Sweden on Wednesday to get their Olympic campaign back on track.

A perfectly placed final stone from skip Andreas Schwaller saw the Swiss team edge out their fierce Swedish rivals 8-7. The result was made all the more dramatic on account of the recent history between the two sides.

Sweden were the team who denied Schwaller’s men victory in the finals of both the world and European championships.

The victory also came at a good time for the Swiss men, after they had earlier sustained their first defeat of the Games – going down 6-5 to Finland.

A rare mistake by skip Andreas Schwaller saw the team from Biel miss a vital opportunity to beat the 2000 European Champions, and with last stone advantage the Finns were able to clinch the game in an extra end.

While the Swiss men’s record now includes three wins and one defeat, the women’s team are still unbeaten at the Games.

On Wednesday Luzia Ebnöther’s Bern side made it three wins out of three, finishing strongly to wrap up a 7-5 win over Norway.

Bad day for biathletes

The Swiss trio of Roland Zwahlen, Jean-Marc Chabloz and Matthias Simmen never came close to achieving their top 30 targets in the men’s 10km biathlon sprint.

Zwahlen was the best placed Swiss in Wednesday’s event – coming in 55th. Chabloz finished in 64th place with Simmen a further three places behind.

Just a few hours after Simon Ammann became the first double gold medallist of the Salt Lake Games, Norway’s Ole Einar Björndalen became the second.

Following his victory in the 10km sprint, Björndalen took Wednesday’s gold medal ahead of Germany’s Sven Fischer and Austria’s Wolfgang Perner.

swissinfo with agencies