Winter Olympics 2014 diary: Mr Angry badly needs a medal to calm him down

 
GETTY
Marco Giacomelli21 February 2014

Some sportsmen use disappointment to fire them up for their next challenge. Not Marcel Hirscher, he is just angry.

And the Austrian will be absolutely seething if he fails to win a medal in tomorrow’s slalom. The 24‑year-old is the overall World Cup leader and arrived here tipped for a podium place in both the giant slalom and slalom. However, he finished fourth in the first of those events in Sochi, matching his position in Vancouver four years ago. Hirscher moaned: “What good is fourth to me? It would have been better to quit the race than come fourth. I’ve got an Olympic jinx. You can write up your headline, ‘Hirscher fourth again. Yippie’.”

Oh no! We’ve got Bieber

TALK about a booby prize. While the winners of tonight’s men’s ice hockey clash between United States and Canada will get a place in the final, the losers must keep Justin Bieber. Well, that was the suggestion in a cheeky billboard advert posted on the eve of the match by a firm in Chicago. It’s clear some people would love to dump the Canadian pop star/brat on their North American neighbours but a spokesman for the company behind the ‘Loser Keeps Bieber’ advert said: “We just have fun. We don’t use the sign other than to have fun.”

MUST CREDIT:@CommandSign

Gold served with extra relish

Burgers are the diet of Olympic champions… sort of. Biathlete Tiril Eckhoff was feeling a little unwell before her 12.5km race on Monday so tried an unusual remedy, one that won’t be prescribed by a doctor. “I ate a burger and decided just to have a good day,” she said. And it did become a good day. Eckhoff faulted only once on the shooting range to take the bronze. But a few days later she did even better, helping Norway win gold in the mixed relay. So how many burgers were on the menu that day? “None, I was eating healthy,” said Eckhoff, who didn’t miss any of her targets. “My shooting was good. So I guess it worked.”

Hairy times on the slopes are now over for ‘Ned Kelly’

Aussie Anton Grimus failed to reach the latter stages of the freestyle skiing yesterday but the bearded wonder is a winner with us. Grimus has spent two years growing his bushy beast and will shave it off for charity tomorrow. So far, he has raised £5,500 for a youth foundation set up by team-mate Scott Kneller. Grimus has been likened to famed Aussie bushranger Ned Kelly but Kneller said: “He’s a very handsome guy so I’m sure the ladies will be swooning once it comes off.”

Create a FREE account to continue reading

eros

Registration is a free and easy way to support our journalism.

Join our community where you can: comment on stories; sign up to newsletters; enter competitions and access content on our app.

Your email address

Must be at least 6 characters, include an upper and lower case character and a number

You must be at least 18 years old to create an account

* Required fields

Already have an account? SIGN IN

By clicking Create Account you confirm that your data has been entered correctly and you have read and agree to our Terms of use , Cookie policy and Privacy policy .

This site is protected by reCAPTCHA and the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply.

Thank you for registering

Please refresh the page or navigate to another page on the site to be automatically logged in

MORE ABOUT