Estonia's curling duo Kaldvee and Lill win in Madison
Estonian mixed curling pair Marie Kaldvee and Harri Lill secured took first place at the Madison Doubledown World Curling Tour event in, Wisconsin.
The pair are hoping represent Estonia at the 2026 Winter Olympics in Milan, meaning every top match counts. If successful, they would be the first Estonian curlers to make it to the winter games, in the past more the preserve of Estonian cross country skiers and, more recently, freestyle skiers.
So far, things are on track and the Madison win will have helped things along; Lill is recovering from injury, however.
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Kaldvee and Lill, who reached the semifinals at a previous world tour stage a week ago, started the tournament in Wisconsin with three consecutive wins, only to go down 5:4 to Australian duo Tahli Gill and Dean Hewitt.
The Estonians then won the next game, then lost to the U.S. partnership of Lexi Daly and Luc Violette.
The Estonians then needed a win to get to the knockout stage, and did just that after beating Aileen Geving and John Shuster 7:5.
In the quarterfinals, Kaldvee and Lill got their revenge on Daly and Violette, beating them 7:3 before going on to defeat Canadian pair Nancy Martin and Steve Laycock 9:2 in the semifinals
They then face Gill and Hewitt for a second time, in the final, this time prevailing, 12:7.
Lill told Vikerraadio that the pair has managed to play their best game during the most critical moments of tournaments in this pre-Olympic season.
"What pleases me the most is that when the knockout round began, we played our best games. The quarterfinal, semifinal, and final were all pretty strong," Lill said.
"The tournament was at a particularly high-level. All the teams left standing at the end were in the world's top ten," he continued.
"In the other semifinal, the world champion from two years ago lost; there were even Olympic medalists present."
"In the final, we played against the Australian team, who we had lost against twice in two weeks. This was a vital win for us, as we are in the same group at the World Championships," Lill went on.
"In fact, it was a very tough tournament for us—four days and ten games, which is quite a heavy load in mixed doubles," he added, noting that the knockout system the tournament used means the more you lose the more you end up having to play, and with three strikes a team is out altogether.
Lill said he has recovered from his injury, but noted that his shoulder still needs to adapt to the strain of tournaments.
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Editor: Juhan Kilumets, Kristjan Kallaste, Andrew Whyte
