John and Sinead Kerr had high hopes of making the top five at Vancouver

By Martin Conaghan

Ten Scottish athletes travelled to the 2010 Winter Olympics in Vancouver with Team GB, but none will return with a medal.

BBC Scotland casts an eye over the Scots involved and assesses their performances in their various winter sports disciplines.

Brother and sister pairing John and Sinead Kerr from Dundee had high hopes of reaching the top five in the hotly-contested ice dance event.

The duo have not had the best of seasons and Sinead admitted before the competition that eight countries were in with a good chance of taking one of the three medals home.

Finished: 8th place with 186.01 points

David Murdoch's all-Scots men's curling rink had arguably the best chance of bringing back a medal from Vancouver - after all, the Scots invented the game and are the reigning world champions.

Eve Muirhead's rink under-performed at the women's curling

A brave performance put them into a tie-breaker with Sweden for a place in the semi-finals, but they slipped up and head home without a gong.

Meanwhile, teenage skip Eve Muirhead's women's rink struggled to gain traction on the ice and their slim hopes of qualifying for the semi-finals were extinguished by Canada.

Men finished: lost 7-6 to Sweden in the tie-breaker for the semi-finals.

Women finished: round-robin record - Won 3, Lost 6 and failed to qualify

Fresh from his first-ever podium place on the half-pipe at the World Cup in Calgary, 21-year-old snowboarder Ben Kilner was aiming for the sky at Vancouver but came up short in the semi-finals.

Finished: Men's Halfpipe - 7th in heat 1, score: 32.1. Progressed to semi-finals, where he finished 18th, with scores of 3.1 and 17.0.

Meanwhile, Aviemore's Lesley McKenna was competing in her third Winter Olympics as she attempted to banish memories of 2006, when she failed to reach the final of the snowboarding event.

This time around, she crashed in both her qualification runs in the women's half-pipe and ended up taking home the wooden spoon.

Finished: Women's Halfpipe - fell on both qualification runs and ended in 30th place with scores of 5.1 and 2.8

As if it's not difficult enough skiing downhill, 19-year-old Andrew Musgrave opted for the endurance events in his first-ever Winter Olympics.

Andrew Young finished in 74th place in the men's 15km individual freestyle

Musgrave is the first British skier to earn a top-10 place in a world-class cross-country event, coming ninth in the World Junior Championships in France in 2008, but he struggled on the big stage in the Canada snow.

Finished: Men's 15km individual freestyle - 55th with a time of 36mins, 32.4secs. Individual sprint - 58th place with a time of time 3mins, 58.43secs. Men's 30km pursuit - 51st place with a time of 1:24.07.9

Andrew Young set a new record in 2008 by becoming the youngest male skier ever to start a World Cup race, in which he finished 77th.

The 18-year-old Huntly boy was hoping to follow up his win at the Austrian Championship two years ago with a strong performance in the cross-country skiing but failed to make the grade.

Finished: Men's 15km individual freestyle - 74th place with a time of 38mins 45.1secs. Individual sprint - 60th place, time: 4:02.19

Musgrave and Young also participated in the cross-country skiing team sprint freestyle event but failed to finish.

Gillian Cooke from Edinburgh used to be a successful track and field athlete, representing Scotland in five separate disciplines.

She set a new Scottish pole vault record and competed in the event at the 2002 Commonwealth Games in Manchester but landed with a crash in the two-man bobsleigh event at Vancouver along with her partner Nicola Minichiello.

Finished: 10th after 2 runs with times of 53.85 (run 1) and 53.73 (run 2). Crashed in run three and did not start in run four.

Edinburgh-born Elise Christie emerged as a genuine hope for a speed skating medal after taking silver home from the World Junior Championships in Italy at 500m - the first medal in the history of the championships for a British athlete.

She put on a strong performance in the quarter-finals of her main event but will return home disappointed.

Finished: 500m - 3rd in quarter-final with a time of 44.821secs but did not progress. 1000m - 3rd in heats with a time of 1:31.363 but did not proceed to the quarter-finals. 1500m - 4th in heats with a time of 2:23.898 but did not progress.

E-mail this to a friend

Printable version